In my 24 years of parenting I have anecdotally confirmed that many parents suffer from Birthday Party Performance Anxiety. I include myself in the anecodotal research. The thought of throwing a birthday party fills me with fits of condemnation over my housekeeping, cooking and organizational skills. I hate housework, I love cooking when I don’t have to do it or clean up after myself, and I hate having to focus on 27 million screaming children who all want the first prize for a game of “Pin the wart on the witch”. Exaggerating I am, but you get the drift I’m sure. Birthday party Performance Anxiety is about the parent, not the child. A Birthday Party is supposed to be about the child. Competition between parents who have thrown great parties, the consumer driven party marketing and a false image of attempting to make oneself look like a fantastic parent are driving Moms and Dads to an early grave.
In The Birthday Blues, Milton Alter, MD, PhD, reports that studies have revealed vascular events (like strokes and heart attacks) are more common on birthdays. The scientific research suggests that the reason may be stress actually caused by the birthday. Although the research looked at the birthday celebrations of the individual who was gaining a year in their life, I reflect upon the stress parents place on them selves when throwing a party for their child. Where does this high state of anxiety and stress come from?
While some people do suffer from a mental health condition called Social Anxiety Disorder, the parents I am referring to are suffering from “Perfect Madness – Motherhood in the age of anxiety.” A mother’s worth is measured against how well she raises her child. Raising a child is measured against the child having every middle and upper class trapping possible: including the super-dooper birthday party to outdo every other child’s party ever thrown. Oh dear! I never considered the social status of a birthday party to be the making or breaking of my child.
At interview, the author of “Perfect Madness”, Judith Warner talks of this “making or breaking”:
The malaise or “New Problem that Has No Name” (as I call it in the book) that I heard echo in the way middle and upper middle class mothers talk about their lives is symptomatic of larger problems in our society – problems which play themselves out sometimes as life and death issues for poor women and their families. The very same cult of individualism, the very same lack of a sense of collective responsibility, the same fear of “loserdom” that turn well-off women into anxious control freaks condemn poor women – and, very often, working class women – to lives of real fear and deprivation. The problems are not trivial, even if, for women with relatively easy lives, they can take a maddeningly trivialized form. In fact, they often take the form of a maddening obsession with trivia.
We recently had a birthday party for Master 11 year old. Our anxiety focused on whether his friends would be able to come. We genuinely wanted him to have a day to celebrate himself. We included him in all decisions. He helped make the piñata (directions found here at families.com thanks to Sherry Holetzky), shopped with me to buy the goodies and foodstuffs of his preference, and directed the water games with 11-year-old wisdom. It was his day. It was perfect for him. No anxiety for him, or us.
Although he does suffer from high anxiety and a maddening obsession with trivia, we helped him to overcome his phobia by attacking HIS party at HIS level. It was certainly not an upper middle class party with all the trimmings, and I cannot imagine that it would ever make a list of the best and most creative children’s parties designed by adults who need to make themselves feel good, but it was a day that he will treasure forever. A pool party, at home, with his five best mates.
He had his friends, his choices, and his moment to truly celebrate what being 11 is all about. Have I broken my child by not allowing him to experience everything that money can buy? Have I damaged his self-esteem by not hosting a party that was better than the one we attended a week before? No. I have given my son a gift for his mental health – him time, with him at the centre as creative controller.
Happy Birthday, darling. It was a fantastic day and you did well to stand up to your creepy anxieties that could have kept you hidden in the bedroom.
For further reading on anxiety, go to Beth McHugh’s article list.
For further make at home party games and ideas, go to FUN. Many writers present different ideas to help guard against falling victim to Motherhood in the age of anxiety.
To discover more about issues that affect the mental health of our children, take a look at my article list.