David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published April 19, 2005

How can I compete with a 4-year-old's expectations?

My little girl turns 4 this weekend.

I know, I know. Usually after a parent mentions his child's birthday, he proceeds to yammer on and on about how his little girl is growing up so fast and that she's not his little baby anymore and that soon she'll be a teenager with an attitude, driver's license and glorious thoughts of out-of-state tuition.

If I had a spare moment to think about it, I suppose I might ponder those very same issues and reflect on how quickly Anna has grown, pausing just long enough to wipe a dramatic tear from my eye. Maybe I'll do that Sunday, the day after the big birthday party. For now, however, I don't have the time for that nonsense. There is a gaggle of children headed toward us, and we have presents to wrap, goody bags to compile, cupcakes to decorate, a piñata to fill, games to plan and a back yard to clean.

The dramatic single tear will have to wait.

It's not as though the birthday sneaked up on any of us. Anna has been talking about it, oh, probably for six months or so. When you're that young, Christmas and your birthday are THE big events on the calendar. Nothing else comes close.

In one sense, there feels like a lot of pressure on me and the wife. How can we possibly fashion a birthday celebration that will live up to six months' worth of hype? We simply don't have the time and resources to compete with a 3-year-old's imagination, do we? If we were to buy every toy she's told us she's wanted during the last six months, I'd have to sell one of my kidneys on eBay. If we were to play every game that she's mentioned in the last six months, the party would have to be a three-day festival, like Bonnaroo for preschoolers.

Not only is there a lot of hype involved, but I'm very aware that once parents start down the path of huge, extravagant birthdays, it can be difficult to reel them back to reality. It's only human nature to want "the next one" to be bigger, crazier, more fun, more memorable. Upping the ante on "the next one" doesn't apply to just kids' birthday parties. We adults can fall into that trap with cars, vacations, homes, TVs, you name it. If you must make "the next one" better, eventually it gets impractical or impossible. You hit the wall. Before you know it, you're one of those parents who gets a second mortgage to buy his little darling a $35,000 sports car for her Sweet 16. You can bet that I won't be that parent, and the only way Anna's getting a sports car for her birthday is if she nails the actual retail price (without going over) on Bob Barker's Showcase.

As our family gets closer to the par-tay, I think Anna is still young enough to accept the world as it's presented to her. Whatever happens at her birthday party, she'll think, "Oh, so this is what it's like to turn 4. This is great!" She's never turned 4 before, so she has very little frame of reference. My wife and I have told her that we can invite her little buddies to our house, play games, eat pizza, whack a piñata with a stick and open some presents. She's cool with that. For her, that's what turning 4 is all about. Memories from this fourth birthday will stand alongside her memories from her first, second and third birthdays, developing an overall sense of what having a birthday means.

I think it's like the three times she's been to the dentist. The first trip was fine, but the second visit was a total train wreck - she screamed, she cried, she was paralyzed by fear. It was as bad a dental visit as anyone could imagine. The third visit, however, was fabulous. She put aside her fear long enough to see the dental reality for what it was, and at the end of it she said, "Hey! That was easy!" In a matter of minutes, the dentist transformed from a sadistic ogre into a nice man who just wants to count and clean her teeth. Perception is reality, and her reality turned on a dime.

Like her visit to the dentist, I don't think she really knows what to expect from her birthday party. She's built it up in her mind to be THE social event of the season, but it will be what it will be.I suppose we could have invited the dentist to the birthday party, but that would have been pushing it. Besides, who wants to brush and floss in the middle of duck-duck-goose?

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.