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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

I could absolutely forget my kid's birthdays. Even though I love them dearly. It's just a round around the sun and culturally made important. Idk what else was going on but building something in the yard together with your parent sounds like fun to me.

Or, this was sarcasm?

Anyway I don't like birthdays myself. I don't like getting presents, I don't like giving them. If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??

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> Why this weird ritual??

It's a once a year reminder that people are happy that you exist.

Sometimes children can feel like maybe their existence makes their parents lives worse, so it is important for them to be reassured that that is not the case (even if it is).

It's also just a fun thing to do. For some kids it's one of the few times per year they're allowed to go wild with sweets, so it's something they look forward to.

> If you want something just buy it.

Kids also often do not yet manage their own finances, so they don't have the freedom to just buy the things they want.

Never forget to see the world from the viewpoint of your children, too. Birthdays are very important to them, because they grow up in a culture, and neither they nor you can avoid that. By being dismissive about what is important to them, you confuse and alienate them. My parents were very dismissive about school, and that made my whole school time a bad experience for me.

Well luckily my wife is always on the ball. But I tell them I love them almost everyday. I really hope they will forgive me my chaotic mind. If a child has to get all their sense of value from a single day a year something's very wrong. I get all your points, it's important but not that important.

You're going to die alone and unloved if you're not careful.

If one of your kids said, hey, it’s ok, I love you and your chaotic mind, can you please buy me a card if or when you remember - and it pops into your mind after 10 or 20 or 100 days, or even 5 years later - would you buy them a card or not?

> If you want something just buy it. Why this weird ritual??

Or make it, as was my case growing up, when my parents couldn't afford what I wanted anyway.

Money isn't an issue now, so gifts are definitely annoying. I'm not going to wait a month to maybe get the correct drill bit/appliance/etc. I'll just get the correct one now, and play a game or go into town with me on/near-ish my birthday

For what it’s worth, once I figured out I could say something like “I’m going to buy this, would you like to call it my birthday present?” At pretty much well any point in the year, I found that the people around me really appreciated the chance to show care AND see me using something I like which they got for me.

Out of interest, why did you say “could forget” and not “did forget,” and why did you feel the need to reply to me if hypothetical?

Because we have never forgotten our kid's birthdays, but I have forgotten my own (ok I was older), and Inhave forgotten wedding anniversaries. I depend heavily on my phone for remembering these days. And, I'll be honest I am very curious about the responses I'd get, I do genuinely think the importance put on this one day is weird and was/am hoping someone would articulate in a rational way why we do. Sorry, I know it comes across as being a dick. But sometimes that's what internet identities can be for, right?

I think it just irks me that everybody thinks it's so bad this boy's birthday was forgotten, while not knowing anything about it. I have friends that take their kids to out-of-school care at 7:00, pick them up again 18:00 all week, so they can put them to bed and that's it. But hey, they have a nice birthday right? Lot of presents! We have always made it a point to have someone at home (early on it was also the grand parents), someone to pick them up from school, no day-care, we have a drink with them ask them about their day, help them go to friends etc. But heavens forbid if I'd forget a birthday (which honestly could happen without my partner here, although with smartphones nowadays it'd indeed be a big oversight.)

Thanks for taking me in the spirit I intended; I wrote more aggressively than I’d intended, on reflection.

You’re not a dick and you weren’t being a dick, I totally agree about writing on the internet - it’s tricky to feel and to tell, and I imagine I must be insufferable at times.

I can see your point now and I think we might agree on more than either of us first thought. I can see how much you care for your family in every word you’ve written, and I’d be a bit surprised if one of your kids was at home, told you it’s their birthday, and your reaction would be to laugh about it, and then carry on with your day as normal with no further reaction or acknowledgement of it.

So - Ii’s not about remembering, or about the card or presents or cake: it’s what you do with the information in front of you. From the sounds of it you’re demonstrating your care brilliantly every day.

(I have the same type of brain wiring you’ve described, incidentally. My extremely accepting wife would ask me to buy her some flowers, nothing showy, just something to brighten up the house and remind her of me. And I’d hear that as “she wants me to remember to buy her flowers sometime” and file it away. And several years later we figured out that gap in our communications and nowadays, when it’s important enough to her that she asks me to buy her flowers - I buy the flowers. Turns out that that was all it took to demonstrate that I care.)

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