It’s not really about the theme

On wholeheartedly encouraging my toddler to exercise her free-will

It was my daughter’s third birthday this week.

We hosted a party at home, like we have every year. I know that the clean-up is easier at a soft-play, I know that there’s less prep in a village hall, I know that a park picnic would be cheaper.

But I love hosting. I enjoy inviting people into my home, making the space welcoming. I like to pick out the music, hang some fairy lights, curate a menu for all the people I love. I don’t do it so often any more, but in the summer, to mark another year of my daughter’s life, another year of my motherhood, I get to bask in a backyard full of conversation and laughter and paper plates, and my girl gets a glimpse at the carefree woman her mother used to be.

This year is the first time she’s been old enough to understand the concept of a party or a birthday. So I asked her if she’d like a theme: bunnies, perhaps, or how about a nice strawberry party? She requested a bat party. In June.

The CAKE, though.

And so, I went online. Ordered a bat stamper and some bat balloons from Etsy, found an old Halloween dress on eBay, borrowed a bag of paper bats from a friend’s seasonal decor collection, carefully followed instructions I found on Pinterest to bake a winged cake, and threw her a bat party.

When it came time to blow the candles, I joked that I had peaked as a mother. That nothing else I achieve in motherhood will reach this pinnacle of care and creativity.

(And let’s be honest, that part may well be true: a crafter I am not)

But it also got me thinking about why I let the three-year-old have a bat-themed party in the midst of a summer heatwave. It isn’t the obvious choice. It wasn’t the simplest or most convenient theme to fulfil. I did get some odd looks when I mentioned it to people.

I’ve found, though, that letting a toddler exercise their free will about things that don’t really matter is the best parenting hack in this season. Want to wear your wellies to the supermarket? Sure thing. Paddling pool at 8am? As long as we don’t have to be anywhere, let’s do it. Bat-themed birthday party in June? I’ll open up Pinterest right here, right now.

The paper bats, kindly lent by a friend

Because maybe I’m overthinking it, but it’s not really about the bat party, is it?

It’s about modelling self-expression, showing her that it's not only okay but wonderful when she’s her whole self, even if it's not what's expected of her. That I (and a whole garden full of her favourite people) will love her even more because of her beautiful, weird personality—not in spite of it.

And maybe it’s about more than that. Maybe it’s about teaching my daughter that she has agency, and showing her that I will enthusiastically support her choices (even if they wouldn’t have been my first choice). She probably won’t even remember this party, but the way I treat her now is forming the blueprint for the way she will expect to be treated later.

Bat party, no bat party, it’s kinda whatever. What I want is for my daughter to know, with all these tiny ‘kinda whatever’ moments, that when she’s older and she wants to tell me something big or scary or very much not ‘whatever,’ I will believe her and support her wholeheartedly.

Maybe it isn’t that deep, and I'm just retconning my reasoning because the body really does keep the score, and I get (even more) emotional at this time of year. My body remembers the exalting brutality of birth, it remembers her delicate heart beating against my skin in those first hours and days, it remembers making her and feeding her, and being her entire world. My body misses that tiny baby, even as I love this feisty, funny, weird little girl she's growing into.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe she's my daughter, and all I want is to see her smile and make her feel loved, so if a handful of paper bats, a Halloween dress from eBay and a minor mental breakdown over a bat cake is all it takes, I count myself incredibly lucky.

My feisty, funny, weird little girl