My daughter, JJ, turned nine last week. Instead of throwing her a party surfeit with sugary treats and garrulous friends, my wife and I opted for a more subdued celebration. We invited a few of her classmates to a cinema-shindig where they would catch a movie quietly, while my wife and I would catch forty winks in the back row of the theatre.
I highly recommend this mode of celebration if your child has a birthday coming up. There is minimal party planning to be done (you just need to not pick an M18-horror movie like the Exorcist), and there will also be none of that surround-sound screaming frequently encountered at children’s parties (you just need to not pick an M18-horror movie like The Exorcist). Additional benefits: You won’t have to mingle awkwardly with fellow parents you hardly know (but secretly loathe already); and for the next four days, you won’t have to keep scrubbing off bits of renegade glitter persistently plastered on your eyelids.
Celebrating Too Soon
You’re impressed – I can tell. But I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t always the party-savvy parent I am today. There was a time when I mistakenly assumed birthday celebrations to be a top parenting priority, right up there with proper nutrition, firm moral grounding, and past-year PSLE exam papers.
I now know the error of my earlier ways, but only after years of exhausting, expensive parties. As proof of my dense parental love, I’ve thrown JJ party after party in the first eight years, each one more elaborate than the last. For the first few years, I suspect that baby JJ mainly tolerated her birthday parties, primarily for the sake of cake during and the loot of toys afterwards. It probably also helped that she was always allowed to do as she wished at her parties. She could just doze off if sleepiness gripped her; or even poop if her bowels so desired. And even if she performed both acts simultaneously, while her cake was being cut, it would still be perfectly acceptable behaviour. Party etiquette governing narcoleptic bowel movements was not yet a thing until she was a bit older.
Fast-forward to her fifth or sixth year when she finally starts to appreciate the proper rules of birthday partying. Thanks to the first five years where we had established that an annual party was a non-negotiable proof-point of our parental love, she had come to expect it every year. She had also, by then, been invited to enough birthday parties to start having her own ideas and references as to what a good and proper celebration ought to look like.
For one thing, “cute” wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Every party needed a theme. And not just any old generic theme like “rainbow unicorns”. No, the theme would have to match the accompanying lifestage she was in. And by lifestage, I mean the different Disney princesses du jour. This is not a bad thing at all, because it saved me the trouble of thinking up fancy themes to impress her friends with. That is, until I discovered that the price of a proper Disney-sanctioned Moana cake is really an indicator of just ‘How Far I’ll Go’ to make my daughter happy on her birthday.
Party Pooper
Before I stumbled upon the genius idea of a movie-screening celebration, I often wondered how I got trapped in this ridiculous birthday arms race. After much rueful reflection, it’s obvious to me now that most parents fall prey right at the start of their parenting journey. And to the biggest birthday scam of all – the 100-day party.
The first one hundred days is an important milestone, but only for a baby and the American president (easily confusable of late). It’s easy to make sense of the latter; after leading the country for three months, an incisive look-back on the accomplishments of the nascent presidency can help steer the rest of the leadership term. But the early life of a newborn doesn’t have the same level of activity as compared to leading the free world. Baby JJ’s first one hundred days were filled mainly with non-stop crying and endless drinking. Not only does this make her sound more like a jilted, heartbroken 22-year-old woman than an adorable three-month-old cherub, it is also not a feat I’d proudly throw a party for.
But I still did it anyway. I foolishly threw JJ her first party when she reached the 100-day milestone. I booked out an entire cafe, catered a fancy buffet spread, and I decorated the venue with balloons, buntings and other celebratory accoutrements. I also invited a long list of guests to come celebrate with JJ, even though none of them could actually claim any sort of friendship with my 100-day-old daughter.
Paediatric ophthalmologists tell us that at three months old, a baby’s vision is only good for peekaboo. Anything further than someone cooing right at her face with dramatic gesticulations is all a hazy blur to her. Gastroenterologists specialising in infants also advise parents that solid food should only be introduced at no earlier than the fifth-month.
Just think about what the science is telling us here: At her 100-day party, JJ was unable to eat anything from her sumptuous smorgasbord; she couldn’t see the lovely French-windowed cafe, all decked out in her honour; and she recognised none of the guests who turned up to fete her.
In other words, we might as well have celebrated her first hundred days with a screening of The Exorcist.
I Am Jenny's Father 
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