Observations from a kid's bday party

[Soren Lorenson]

Things have certainly changed since I was a kid. We just had a dozen 5 & 6 year olds over. First off, almost all of the parents stay. So now we have to make small talk, and feed them.

Many kids call all adults by their first name only. Can you imagine that when you were a kid?

We had pizza & cake. Only half the kids could eat it. The rest are "gluten free" or some crap & one mom brought the kid her own wheat free pancake things to eat in lieu of cake. WTF? If they have Celiac or something then ok but these people are all just doing because it makes them feel special or something.

OK time for beer & football.

[M.D. Holloway]

Haven't dealt with the dietary thing but kids here in Tejas either go old fashion or Mr / Ms. first name thing.

The gluten free thing is a scam - most folks who think they are sensitive (or their kids are) really are not at all.

[look 171]

Ours kids are 9 and 11 as of Monday. They get crap and are encourage to eat it. Oh yeah we have some of the young, organic, gluten free bla, blah, blah ones too. I just try to tell them to man up and eat the damn costo pizza like the rest of them. Well, Unless I know they are really allergic. We even have soda, but our kids do not touch it.

[RKDinOKC]

Just give them some sticks to chew on or some card board and tell them it's gluten free graham crackers.

[ckelly78z]

The "dietary thing" may well be a host of alergies from all the required/optional vaccines in circulation in the country these days.

Also, when we were young, and eating all sorts of junk food, it wasn't genetically modified, or have all the designer pesticides/herbicides now on the market.

I also think that many of these children of snowflakes, have never walked barefoot through a creek, thrown cow pattys at each other, or played in the mud like I know I did. These tender little flowers have delicate stomaches, and immune systems, because they have never been tested beyond the hallowed halls of suburbia, and have been medicated for every little ache/pain they can dream up.

[DanielDudley]

I don't know which kids can have stuff, and which can't, so I never speculate. My niece has a very bad reaction to peanuts and a couple of other things. I only found out as an adult that I have an allergic reaction to milk. Drank it all the time as a kid, and always had a ''cold''.

I gave it up in my 40s and my asthma practically vanished.

The trick is to ask for special requirements when they RSVP, and ask if the parents are attending. This is pretty much the new norm now, but I went through it 20 years ago, same stuff. Socialized with all the kids parents. Now they are all divorced...

Beer and football sounds good. I prefer the parties where the adults are invited, and the kids come along and then set up their own party semi supervised. I still hang with a lot of those people...

[M.D. Holloway]

Diary is a relatively new food to adults. Its really not meant to be ingested as much as it is by adults - remember, its meant to get babies as fat as possible as quickly as possible. As for other foods, the majority are really bad compared to stuff you grow or kill yourself. Combine that with the antibiotics that are prescribed constantly as well as all the other meds and you have a decent recipe for what is going on with many of the issues face today.

[Paul K]

The neighbors kids call me 'Paul'. If I'd have called our neighbor anything other than Mr. Jenkins, I'd be in a wheelchair right now.

Quite rightly so.

[scottmandue]

I'm 59 years old... I meet my friend at a restaurant to celebrate his mom's birthday... I still call her Mrs. G.

I tried to call her Nancy but the word would just not come out of my mouth.

[Soren Lorenson]

Originally Posted by M.D. Holloway

Haven't dealt with the dietary thing but kids here in Tejas either go old fashion or Mr / Ms. first name thing.

The gluten free thing is a scam - most folks who think they are sensitive (or their kids are) really are not at all.

Yep.

Well, at least none of the kids broke anything.

[Cdnone1]

Reminds me of when my kids where young, one of the kids arrives with his Vegan, organic eating only mother who makes an announcement that we can offer him cake but he chooses not to put that sort of stuff in his body. Mom left and the kid ate cake till he was almost sick, only taking breaks to ask everyone to please not tell his mom he was eating cake.
She got divorced and the kid moved out as soon as he was legal.

[87maniac]

[WPOZZZ]

Kids here call elders aunty or uncle. I could never get into that as they aren't my relative, so I just called them Mr. or Mrs. XXXXX.

[RKDinOKC]

Milk is for calves.

[pavulon]

Lots of helicopter parents today. They want to 'protect' their kids.

Really, they are trying to give others the impression that they're good parents. It's not about the kids...it's the self-absorbed parents trying to manage their own image.

[Yorkie]

Originally Posted by pavulon

Lots of helicopter parents today. They want to 'protect' their kids.

Really, they are trying to give others the impression that they're good parents. It's not about the kids...it's the self-absorbed parents trying to manage their own image.

Nailed it. Nothing to do with the kids. All about the competitive parents out parenting each other. I stopped going to those events pretty early on as it started to bother me listening to the Moms going on about how the have to "protect" their kids from the evils of TV or letting the kids ride their bikes around the neighborhood. Typically the Dads seemed to be ok about letting the kids have some free reign but jeez the Moms are just getting ridiculously over protective.

[74-911]

Originally Posted by pavulon

Lots of helicopter parents today. They want to 'protect' their kids.

Really, they are trying to give others the impression that they're good parents. It's not about the kids...it's the self-absorbed parents trying to manage their own image.

There is a lot of truth to that but there is also something else to consider. In large suburban areas in particular, your small kids may get invited to a birthday party by a kid they know at school and yet you have no clue who the parents are or anything about them. I am long past that issue but just dropping a 5 or 6 year old off at what is virtually a total strangers house ??

It's just no longer the world many of us grew up in...

[flatbutt]

My kids grew up calling the neighbors Mr Stan and Mrs Ruth, mostly because their surname was hard to pronounce. BUT they gave us permission to do so AND my children were taught to respect their elders. They had never needed to be corrected in that respect while growing up.

[legion]

This is my experience:

We had a birthday party for my older son this past summer as he turned 5. He invited 8 friends. All attended. We invited parents to stay if they wished. The only ones that did were the ones we already knew. The other kids referred to me as "Wyatt's Dad". No one had special dietary requirements. (One kid did ask if the summer sausage was made from a deer that I shot.) There was cake and snacks, but most just wanted to run around and play in the bounce house. No one got out of hand. Everyone had fun.

[Soren Lorenson]

Originally Posted by 74-911

There is a lot of truth to that but there is also something else to consider. In large suburban areas in particular, your small kids may get invited to a birthday party by a kid they know at school and yet you have no clue who the parents are or anything about them. I am long past that issue but just dropping a 5 or 6 year old off at what is virtually a total strangers house ??

It's just no longer the world many of us grew up in...

Yep that's a good point. But in this case it's a TINY private school we pay too much for & all the parents and kids know each other. They just can't cut the cord for 2 hrs.