Mom Criticized After Insisting Her Daughter Change The Location Of Her Birthday Dinner To Accommodate Her Brother's Allergies
Her motive is understandable, but shouldn't her daughter be able to have the birthday she wants?
Prostock-studio / Shutterstock.com Birthdays put all kinds of pressure on parents to create the perfect celebration for their children each year.
But for one mom on Reddit, her dedication to creating the perfect family dinner for her daughter's birthday might have gone a bit too far, forgetting the real purpose of the day altogether.
The mom forced her daughter to change the location of her birthday dinner due to her brother's allergies.
Having a child with a life-threatening allergy is an incredibly stressful experience for parents. In fact, a 2016 study found such parents have both higher stress and higher rates of depression and anxiety than parents of kids without allergies.
So it's perhaps not hard to understand why this mom went a bit overboard when it came to her daughter's birthday dinner choice. Still, many readers felt like she took things entirely too far, especially since the brother was okay with the initial decision.
The mom forbade her daughter from picking a seafood restaurant for her birthday because of her brother's shellfish allergy.
"My daughter very recently had her 17th birthday," the mom wrote. "My husband and I told her to pick out a restaurant that she'd like us to take her to for her birthday."
"She chose a seafood restaurant that we'd never been to," she went on to say. "The vast majority of the dishes contained shellfish… There were only a couple of non-seafood dishes."
This was a problem since her son is "deathly allergic" to shellfish. He also doesn't like regular fish. "I didn't want to take him there because I knew that he wouldn't really enjoy his meal and I was worried about cross-contamination," she added.
Her son offered to stay home, but the mom would not relent. Now her daughter is hurt and angry.
Her son offered a perfect compromise — he would just stay home, order a pizza, and play video games while they went to the seafood restaurant. (What 15-year-old wouldn't rather do that anyway!)
Her husband also insisted that their daughter should be allowed to pick her own birthday dinner. But the mom was not having it and forced her daughter to pick a new place. For her, it all came down to one thing that is all too familiar to many parents.
"We can only afford to go out as a family every so often," she wrote. "When we splurge on a restaurant meal, I want BOTH of our children there."
After her daughter chose a different place they were able to do just that. "But she is still a little salty that she didn't get to have her first choice of restaurants." And nearly everyone the mother asked has told her she was wrong.
"But, again, we can only afford to go out every so often. Is it so wrong that I wanted to do it as a family?"
Photo: Mati Nitibhon / Shutterstock
The mom's feelings are understandable, but kids' birthday celebrations are actually developmentally important.
No one can fault this mom for wanting to have her family all together to celebrate. But many on Reddit weren't feeling all that sympathetic. "I get that you want to have a family meal," one user wrote, "but all you have done is tell your daughter that she is not worth individual celebration."
"This could have been a great opportunity for you and your husband to have individual time with your 17-year-old — a rare opportunity," they continued. "Instead, you squandered that, created unnecessary conflict, and possibly formed resentment between your daughter and her brother."
That may sound harsh, but psychology says the commenter is right. In a 2018 study, Lithuanian researchers called birthday celebrations one of the core "rituals" of human life.
Their survey of more than 300 university students showed that young people feel connected to and supported by the people in their lives when they celebrate their birthdays. They also found that birthday celebrations were important to emotional development and their bond with their parents.
In a way, this mom's approach is similar to the "glass children" phenomenon among families with a disabled or chronically ill child. The unaffected child ends up feeling "see-through" as their siblings' needs overshadow their own.
An allergy is nowhere near as serious, of course, and the mom's desire to have a cohesive family celebration is understandable. But when it comes to a birthday, it's probably best to let the birthday girl or boy have their choice, regardless of the consequences. It's their time to feel special, after all.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.