Parent Question

This story begins with me creeping on Facebook....

Everyone I know at this point is either pregnant, about to pop out a kid, or still somewhere in the toddler phase where they are characterizing their child's age as "blank months".

At this point I'm looking at these pictures and, OH MY!, they are turning 1 or 2 years old. So I get to see these cute little birthday party pictures (green with envy and a dash of pure jealousy) and then I see it. Right there. It's happening again.

They bought/made their 1-2 year old a cake all to themselves to engorge themselves in.

Everyone else gets a separate cake or cupcakes, but this miniature person who has certain nutritional needs gets to devour and destroy a pretty size-able cake at that age. What gives?

I'm not a parent so I need someone to explain this to me.

We are the fattest country. We are wasteful. We teach our kids decadence and then expect them to be humble. Why is this new custom considered adorable?

I think part of my frustration with this is also because touring the internet (and real life experiences) has led me to see 1 year old's being fed their first Happy Meals, eating whole bags of candy so they would be content and leave their parents alone, being the age of 4 and addicted, and I mean ADDICTED, to sweets so bad that obesity is setting in and they go through sugar withdrawl.

What happened to getting a cupcake at the age? What happened to getting a cake so that the family can mostly celebrate and feeding a few small bites to the kid? What happened to not letting a child that age eat junk at all and instead giving them something else while everyone else had cake? Especially at 1, they can't identify the difference.

I think kid's birthdays are adorable and special. I get it. I also agree with it. They are your precious offspring, by all means celebrate. But do they need the fondant covered cake with all the fixun's on it at that age?

I kept hearing the "We don't have money," sob story but then I always witness this.

I'm also wondering if it would be a good idea to start implementing different vocabulary into their birthdays. For example, instead of "What do you want for your birthday?" ask "What do you need for your birthday?" and start having the child recognize the difference between things that are necessary to live and things that are not. I have tried re-evaluating that with my life lately and I have found that I don't NEED a lot.

Kids are becoming spoiled with the notion that they deserve things and that they need luxurious and useless things (like cakes to themselves) to have a quality life.

Someone please bring back the simple life and show kids what that looks like.