It seems like in every family, there comes a time of year known as “birthday party time.” For our family, this happens not once but TWICE a year in the spring and the fall. Every spring and fall my house becomes a giant mail box full of sparkly, brightly -colored and even confetti’ed birthday party invitations. The kids’ social calendars quickly fill up and I’m left holding an empty wallet wondering just that happened to all of my grocery store money? Sigh, but it’s all worth it – the endless party-going - because I know that it only happens twice a year…which is more than I can say for Christmas.
It’s always fun to see the new ways people send invites. We get everything from homemade construction paper invitations to some with no physical invitaiton at all, like a phone call or the ever increasing in popularity eVite, which I can’t really embrace like a thoughtful, hand written invitation (even if it’s only a fill-in-the-blank kind from the dollar store). I just like an invitation I can hold in my hand, I suppose.
But of all these invitations my children receive, I’ve been noticing a growing trend…the “list” of what the birthday child wants for his/her birthday. And I don’t like it one bit.
There on the inside flap of the invitation reads: Bobby would like DSi games and CASH!
Come again?
There are several things wrong with this picture. One, if you have to tell us what the birthday child wants for his birthday than we probably don’t know you well enough to have been invited in the first place. Call me crazy but we usually only invite people who actually know our kids to their birthday parties. I know, crazy! Furthermore, if I do know you, I’ll call you or send you a quick email asking what Bobby wants, if I or my child haven’t been able to think of anything Bobby needs. Second, it’s just plain rude. Maybe I come from a land where manners count for something but isn’t it rude to ask someone to get you CASH? Unless you’re a graduate or a bride – in which case you wouldn’t have to ask either because anyone with half a brain should know these things.
It just rubs me the wrong way. I know that my kids are by no means pillars of etiquette and manners everywhere they go, but we try. We try to teach them to be polite. We try to model that in our own interactions with people on a daily business. We try. But to actually instruct a child to write that they want CASH on a birthday party invitaion, or gift cards or whatever, is so impersonal, so – dare I say it – greedy.
The last thing we all want for our kids is for them to become greedy, I would hope. We’re already raising kids in an instant gratification world that would be hardly recognizable to the child I was in the 1970’s (and 80’s, I’m not that old…yet) and I fear that if we continue to allow these little slips of decency, courtesy and bad manners exist, even on the little things like birthday party invitations, we’re going to be sorry. What are we teaching them? What are they learning?
If it were up to me, I’d bring manners back.
Carrie can be found hanging out at her personal blog Stop Screaming I’m Driving! where she is kept busy wrangling three kids, one goofy Aussie, and her very own firefighter. She can be bribed with lattes and offers to do her laundry. Please send column suggestions to carrieb at seattle mom blogs dot com.