Half birthdays are not participation trophies
My oldest daughter is no longer five. Five is an understatement of the past six months – of her education, maturity, and her desire to turn six. She is no longer five. She is five and a half, and that, to her, is a milestone worth celebrating.
She was asking about her half birthday for a while, probably since her last birthday. When will my half birthday be? June 1st, I’d tell her. Is that in the summertime? Kind of. Can you even believe that someday soon I’ll be five and a half? I can, that is how time works.
I put zero thought into her pseudo-holiday until Memorial Day, when she realized from my responses to her weekly line of questioning that the next day would be June 1st. On the morning of, she tip-toed into our bedroom hugging her stuffed UFO and whispered: “It’s June 1st, Mommy.” I wished her a happy half birthday, and we sent her off to school.
But was there more I should do? When did half birthdays become a thing?
From time to time, another mom would share a photo of a *half cake* to her Instagram, but the thought never crossed my mind to manufacture another milestone for my child. For millennial parents, it’s a slippery slope from those cute milestone blocks (Ella is four weeks old!) to maintaining a developmental checklist of your 23-month-old daughter and sharing it on social media as some sort of toddler flex. Admittedly, I’ve dabbled in the past, but I am a much more relaxed parent having the granular but swift changes of early childhood behind me. (And yes, I realize how fortunate I am to be able to say that about child bearing, child development, and the like.)
Further along the line of creating something out of nothing, I worry about setting unreasonable expectations. I question whether I can keep up with continuously raising the bar to acknowledge moments like these, or whether I’m setting us both up for eventual disappointment that will be worse later on. What if that disappointment doesn’t stem directly from me but from real-life hardships she wasn’t prepared for because I was too busy turning her half birthdays into holidays? Is a half cake her first participation trophy?
I was torn and in need of advice. So I did what a reasonable person would do and turned to the sage beehive mind of Twitter with the following question:
My 5 y/o daughter’s *half birthday* is today, something she’s been talking about for months. I think it’s ridiculous but she’s excited. Do I:
(A) Be a good mom and acknowledge it with a cupcake; or
(B) Half birthdays aren’t a thing, she might as well learn now.
To my surprise, the results were resounding in favor of A, celebrating the day. It turns out, even on the saltiest of platforms, people have a soft spot for our children’s tiny joys.
Equipped with opinions that put some context behind it all, I reexamined the issue. Why was this so important to her?
In part, I realized, it stems from her education. She’s been working hard on telling time and understanding the calendar, and the kids use each other’s birthdays as a means to discuss the months and seasons of the year. Her class has also been doing a deep-dive into learning about the solar system, and their imaginary astronaut Delta’s birthday is June 1st (it’s questionable whether my daughter forced that upon them or not; we’ll never know). I should encourage her enthusiasm, as this could be her way of trying to share what she’s learning.
Also, her real birthday is sandwiched between Thanksgiving and The Winter Holidays, and truthfully, it sometimes feels lost in a blur of activities and a slush pile of presents for whichever occasion. Trust me, I don’t feel bad for her, but I will acknowledge it’s chaotic. Taking a minute to commemorate her in the off-season isn’t such a bad thing.
Most importantly, time is passing. She knows this now.
She knows The Virus began when she was four, and now, she is five and a half. During that time, she’s shown her resilience and positive nature in times when I couldn’t. She’s listened and felt the weight of things she didn’t understand. My concern that I’d be doing her a disservice was misplaced. In the coming years, she’ll continue to have more actual disappointments that don’t need to be manufactured by her mom to prove a point. I’m confident she’ll thrive despite them, based on what I’ve seen so far.
To adults, time may have felt like it stood still, but it hasn’t. If we can’t see this in ourselves, we can at least see it through our children. Getting older is worth celebrating, now more than ever.
Who am I to stop her?
After school, we sang exactly one-half of “Happy Birthday” and ate one-half of our favorite Elmo cupcakes (the icing half, of course). We laughed and hugged. It wasn’t a milestone – it was half of one, but even that is a gift in itself.
Do you have a half birthday tradition? LMK: averagejoelle3@gmail.com.
The little things
THERE IS LIFE!
After last May’s metaphorical “one peony” season, I am pleased to report our bounty is plentiful this year. This must be a positive sign of joyous days to come. Martha Stewart says that fragrant peonies are best enjoyed indoors, so these are the first few we’ve cut from our plant in the backyard.
Also
Paxton Smith isn’t looking for a participation trophy. This valedictorian of her Texas high school threw out her pre-approved graduation speech to speak out against the state’s new restrictive abortion law. More here, and everywhere else on the internet.