Another Year Older...Another Lesson Learned

Flower is seven this year.  Like most seven year old girls, she's into dressing up and spending time with her friends.  As we've had "friend" parties the previous two years, we decided this year that she and I would do something fun together just the two of us.  We're going to an indoor skydiving facility - and we're both really looking forward to it.

It seems though that her father thinks that she needs to have a birthday party with her friends.  Something that is his right - and I absolutely support his right to be involved.

As her birthday is this week, this past Sunday afternoon he decided that a party with ten of her friends should occur this week at a local indoor play area.

Most mothers would know that planning a birthday party of this size would require some forethought and planning.  Given there are 23 children in her class, if less than ten are being invited, perhaps only the girls.  Oh....but there are 12 girls in the class.  And the ten children include our two.  So that means four girls will be left out.  

So you're having a party including only eight girls from her class.  Of course you contact each of their mothers privately, tell them that only eight girls are invited and ask them to keep it quiet.

Or, you could just send the invitations with your seven year old daughter, who is very excited, into class mere days before you've planned the event.  Where of course, she'll tell all of the girls.  And the boys.  And a number of them will be upset that they haven't been included.

Of course...that will work out ok, won't it?

Oh...and then there's the fact that your invitations do not include the date of the party.

Or the time.

And they've all been written by a seven year old who's legibility is not completely up to par (although likely better than her father).

Part of me really wants to think that he's trying but doesn't have the social graces to understand that you can't only invite part of the class.  And maybe he just got so excited himself that he forgot to include the date and time of the party.

Part of me wonders if the day of the party will come, none of the children in the class will show up (because it's on a school night and they were only advised less than 48 hours before, assuming the invitations have even made their way out of their school bags).  

Part of me wonders if that's the actual plan.  To tell my daughter that he "tried" and it's "not his fault" that they didn't come.  Another big promise and huge let down.  Another lesson about her father.  And potentially about men in general.

I am, yet again, at a loss.  

I don't understand how you could do this, whether deliberately or not, to your own child. 

I'm always there for my children.  Of course.  But I don't want to keep picking up the pieces each and every time he devastates them.  I'm worried there will come a day when there are no pieces to put back together.

Image Credit:  “Girl Crying In Mothers Arm” by David Castillo Dominici / freedigitalphotos.net

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