In the past 5 years since we’ve adopted HJ, we’ve had our share of big birthday parties for her. Some of that has to do with missing her one-year birthday celebration in Korea, since she came home at 15 months. But other than that, I suspect it may also have a lot to do with my family’s tradition of going all out for every single birthday (and every other holiday come to think of it). This has been an adjustment not only for my husband, whose family was very low-key on birthday traditions, but also for HJ, who can get easily overstimulated and anxious in certain situations.

I’m not sure how much of it is her personality, and how much of it has to do with her sensory issues, but ever since she was about 18 months old, HJ has been receiving occupational therapy for sensory processing. This means that her nervous system is unable to regulate all the sensory stimuli in certain environments, resulting in her inability to calm down in situations where there are big crowds, loud sounds, bright lights, strong smells, or various textures. She is generally hyper-vigilant of everything going on around her, particularly in new or unfamiliar places. Some of it may also be heightened by her anxiety disorder.

The thing she probably likes least is being the center of attention, which means lots of pictures and singing happy birthday has led to some major meltdowns in the past. I still remember her 3 year old birthday party when she burst into tears when we brought out her cake and suddenly everyone was looking at her.

Well, over the years, HJ has made a lot of progress in learning to regulate herself, and just generally grown up. Still, I had to make sure in advance that she was ok with everyone singing happy birthday to her this year. She assured me she was. And that she wanted all her friends at her big swimming birthday party. But she made it clear that she did not want any pictures. So we had to respect her wishes, and my husband actually had to make a little announcement before the cake came out asking people not to take any pictures of HJ. I think my mom snuck a couple snapshots in from far away, but mostly, the birthday celebration went off without any major tears. So in my book that was a success. In the past, we might have tried to convince HJ to pose and take the pictures anyway, which generally just led to lots of unhappy birthday photos. I suppose we’ve simply learned to adjust our expectations over the years.

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We do have one picture from another family birthday party that we had at American Girl for both HJ and Lila (their birthdays are only one week apart), but as you can see, Lila (and the dolls) are the only ones that made it into the picture here as well!

How do your kids react to all the attention and hullabaloo of their birthday parties? It still amazes me how different each child is!