The Overthinker

How I Managed to Turn My Child's Birthday Party Into a Massive Personal Crisis Over My Social Life

Children's birthday parties are a very popular topic for mom blogs. Usually these blog posts take one of two forms: (1) OMG how did my kid's birthday party get so out of control? or (2) We're not buying into the birthday party hype, and here's how we had a simple birthday party at home.

I, however, have not experienced either of these common blog fodder phenomena when it comes to planning my son's birthday party. I like to do his birthday parties at outside-our-home facilities, and the party packages at these facilities pretty much determine the menu/activities/number of guests, so it's hard for the party to get too out of control.

Instead, I think I may be the only mother in the history of the world to have the problem of not having enough guests to invite. And this problem has led me into a giant internal dialogue about how maybe I'm not a good enough friend, not social enough, not forgiving enough, etc., etc., etc., insert pathetic unpleasant personal quality here.

You might be wondering what the hell Nathan's birthday party has to do with my social life. Well, we all know that the guests at little kids' birthday parties are the children of the parents' friends. And this year I'm wondering if maybe I don't have very many friends left.

Now, let me point out that I have some good friends who are automatically off the list, either because they don't have kids or because they live too far away. So right off the bat my whole OMG I have no friends is a little bit inaccurate. I just don't know if I have enough local mom friends.

Another factor in the invite list is that Nathan has to know/like the kids who we're inviting. I think this is the first year he's had specific preferences about the kids who are coming. In the past, it was all these are your friends and they have come to celebrate your birthday and he just accepted it. But now that he's a big boy of four, he has strong opinions about who can and cannot come to his birthday. So there are a few kids where I know the mom, but for some dumb preschooler reason Nathan doesn't get along with the kid. (Although let me note that sometimes my reason for not getting along with the mom is just as dumb as Nathan's reason for not getting along with the kid.)

Or there are some situations where I know the mom pretty well, but Nathan doesn't know the kid that well. And vice-versa. A couple of the kids he wants to invite are from his school, and I don't know the moms at all, and I wonder if they will feel all awkward at the party. And then there are potential invitees where I'm wondering, will these people be more offended if they don't get invited, or if I invite them and they feel obligated to purchase a gift for a kid they don't know that well?

Let me stop and say that I know I sound like a dumbass right now. Nathan will have fun at his birthday party no matter who comes. It's not a big deal if he doesn't know some kid or even like some kid. He is four and the party is at a fun children's museum. There will be pizza, cake, and presents. It's a guaranteed good time.

But the actual birthday party isn't really the point here. I had to mention the party and all the parameters of the guest list to get to the bottom line of OMG when I look at this list, I feel like I have no friends left. Shouldn't I have a gaggle of mom BFFs who are practically family and wouldn't think of missing my kid's special day?

Instead I'm all, Oh, I don't think that mom likes me. Or, Oh, I haven't talked to her in a few months, maybe she's mad at me. Or, Well, I mean I talk to her at the gym, but does that make her birthday party material? Is it presumptuous to assume So-and-So from Such-and-Such Activity likes us enough to socialize with us on the outside?

I conducted a sort of friend analysis. I thought of all the people who had done some little thing that I interpreted as a personal attack against me. Or, worse, I thought of the people to whom I had done some little thing that they may have interpreted as a personal attack against them. And then it was all Oh crap, I think everybody hates me. I'm a bad friend.

Then I snapped out of it and realized that maybe, just maybe, people's behavior has nothing to do with me. Maybe they have other things going on in their lives that have nothing to do with their attitudes/opinions/behaviors toward me. Maybe I shouldn't write them off just because that one time they didn't return my phone call, or that one time they didn't sit at my table at the library. (What are we, in high school?) And maybe we haven't talked in awhile because it's January and we aren't running into each other at the pool or park like we do in the warmer months. We're all holed up in our houses alone, and before that it was the holidays, and, and, and ...

And also, if you write everybody off based on one little interaction/characteristic, you really won't have any friends. There is not a single person on this planet, not your spouse or your kids or your BFF, who you like everything about. You don't even like everything about yourself. (Or at least, I don't like everything about myself.)

So, I have used this massive bout of party-based overthinking to start a new campaign of reaching out to people. No, we can't go to the park right now, but maybe we can have a playdate at my house and drink some wine. And maybe the other moms are just as shy about reaching out to me as I am about reaching out to them. (And can I just say how awesome Facebook and e-mail are for those of us who are insecure about face-to-face or phone invitations?)

So, in the next few weeks, I'm going to try to schedule every outing with every person where we once vaguely said, "We should get together," but have never really followed up on it. It's going to take awhile to get through the list, because you can only schedule so many gatherings at a time. But already I've scheduled a playdate for people I haven't seen in awhile, and gotten invited to a moms' dinner.

I'm going to forgive and forget, in the hopes that other people afford the same courtesies to me. I'm going to just snap out of it. "It" being my whole dumb, stupid, immature insecurity about making friends. Because, really, when you start to think that everybody in the world hates you, the common denominator is you. And you are the only person you can change.

So I'm going to make some changes.

And I can just hear my mom saying, "Thank the Lord, I finally got through to her."