Lately, Carmella was in a private children's party. And so with other parents I was there enjoying the usual party favorites and even more. For some wicked reason, I see parties as excuses to pig out.
As expected in children's parties, moms talk. What caught my attention was a story one mother was telling about a recent birthday of a classmate of her daughter. These children are in early grade school, around age 7, but the extravagance of the event was something that blew this mom's mind.
It was apparent the classmate's parents were pretty well off. Only the moneyed can actually afford to rent a special tent venue right in the vicinity of a former army base now an upscale business park and invite concessionaires, Starbuck's among them, to put up stalls to cater to invited guests who are mostly their daughter's classmates. Instead of the usual and once more personal offerings of party poppers, chicken lollipops, ice cream and cakes, there is now the mini food court.
While trying to process what I was hearing, I was also hard at work trying to remember when hands-on children's birthday parties became passe. I was also trying to figure where Starbuck's fits in all these.
School cafeterias, particularly in the bigger and more exclusive schools, have adopted the food court concept. The wall colors and the table settings are so fast food. Gone are the days when the type of food served are those supervised and prepared by certified dieticians. They have been replaced by concessionaires selling their fat laden, sugar rich, generally oh-so-very-unhealthy menus to kids. After exposing our children to all these, it should not come as a surprise if we are left with obese, sickly wards.
I personally find this approach as selling a life style more than food. So more woe to our children.
Sadly, the same concept is being adopted by the very well off for their children's parties. What was once a pure parental effort has now been sub-contracted. The parents are given to the idea they'd rather pay someone else to make things happen for them, for their children. This leaves me asking questions like where all this will lead, what have become of us as parents, what all these seeming indifference will eventually tell our children.
Please don't get me wrong. I believe that so long as we can afford it, we can go all out in celebrating our children's birthdays. We have actually done it with Carmella.
But when the focus is more on the event rather than the celebrant, then it becomes alarming. Our kids now becomes the excuse rather than the reason.
I believe that on birthdays, they need to be hugged more than the usual. Most specially on this day of remembrance, they need to feel how blessed we are because we have them. These expressions don't cost anything and yet their effect lasts a lifetime.
They need to be guided to become somebody rather than join the ranks of the anybody who would instead indulge on extravagant parties and others like it in their quest to be vainly recognized. They need to know they will always be above all the glitter and glamor this world can offer.
We should help them recognize their own gifts and birthdays are reasons to celebrate these gifts. Let us teach our little ones to share what they have been given to bless others.
Let us then teach our children, on their special day, to hug back.
