Things We Did For Birthdays

A friend asked me an interesting question recently. She asked, "what about how you were raised would you change?" Now, I loved how I was raised so the things I could come up with were more like adding to, rather than actually changing anything. But something I wouldn't change is how we did birthdays! 

I only have had one “birthday party” in my life.

By that I mean, what you think of as a traditional birthday party with friends at a place. And even then, it was still combined with my brothers.

I’m not sure where my parents got this idea or even if we’ve done it ever since my youngest brother was born, but in all my life that I can remember, we did one combined birthday party for all three of us. See, we are all 2.5 weeks apart, in the winter, and it was way too hard to try and find days that worked for all the family to come over three separate times. Combined just made sense. It was a family party, but each kid got to have one friend. And you know what? They were great! I loved our birthday parties and I never wanted anything else. There were many years that I got to have a sleepover with a friend for my own birthday, but otherwise we celebrated our birthdays on one day together and then did something just the five of us on our actual birthday.

Another unique thing my parents did was not get us gifts. We got enough stuff at Christmas and from our extended family that our parents would get us one “big ticket” item or experience. We’ve gone to a water park, gotten a video game, and gotten subscriptions to things. It was a good way to do something different and not have one more “thing” in the house. And we all loved it!

On our actual birthday, the birthday kid got the day off from school and chores, got to pick a restaurant for dinner, and got to pick a special dessert. We didn’t use the phrase “king or queen for the day” but the idea was there. We got to decide if we watched a movie or played games and what they were. They were always fun days.

Growing up, we got to go out to eat and go shopping with some extended family/family friends. Our one set of grandparents would take us individually to lunch or dinner and shopping (I usually went to Kohl’s and got some cute new clothes :) There were years that our aunt and uncle took us out to eat and shopping as well. I remember one year we went to the Hello Kitty store in some mall. That was a neat place that was also kind of overwhelming! And then we have some family friends who would take us out for a meal all together. That usually was a fun adventure. They are goofy friends :)

I have a lot of fond birthday memories and I’m not even that old! I’m sharing these partly because I find it fun to hear how other people celebrate things and partly because I am coming to discover that my family was kind of unique in how we did a lot of things and maybe our ideas will help out your family or spark ideas of your own! If you’ve ever felt like the way most people do birthdays is not for you, I hope my positive experience will help you know that you can change things up and your kids will still grow up with happy memories of their birthdays!


Okay, there is actually one thing I'd change and that is do summer birthday celebrations for any kid who's birthday is November through February! But even though my birthday is not far from Christmas, I still have always had great birthdays :)