According to Hallmark’s Birthday Trends and Statistics web page, most of us are born in August with the second most popular month for birthdays being July; so chances are over these upcoming summer months you are going to find yourself either hosting or going to a birthday party for, or with, your son or daughter. When you are with your child, you may be parenting alone. But even with varied access or custody rights on the part of the other parent of your child or their extended family – when birthday time for that child nears – a lot of people want to help share in that celebration. There is only one real birth day, so how do you best go about navigating those 24 hours and ensuring that your child has a good time?

For me, both of my sons arrived in the summer months and their father was absent from their lives for a while but sent gifts, and so I tried to be as positive about that as possible and it seemed to ‘work.’ However, because most of our extended family is also out of town I think there may have been a little more normalcy about it for them, i.e. “People that love us don’t always live near us.” Now that their dad is much more involved and present in their lives and lives in town, we are in the process of working out a new birthday approach. Yet, is two birthdays too much for little ones? Can there really be two ‘big bangs’? We worry about one stealing the other’s birthday thunder yet don’t want to get caught in a ‘gift-off’ of sorts or a sneaky contest to see who can get the most repetitively noisy gift sent back to the other parent’s house. (How could I not look at the drums and wonder if they’d sent them home on purpose?)

I talked to a couple of single parents about how they go about navigating their children’s birthdays for some advice and found a varied range of approaches, mostly reflecting the diverse way we all live now. A lot of the approach seems to depend not only on how the relationship between the parents of the child are but also their location and the location of extended family and their relationship with the child and their parents.

Chandra Hughes, a single parent of one boy, who lives and works in Calgary, was kind enough to share her experiences with me in regard to her son’s birthdays. She explained that the first birthday that came along after she and the father of her son had separated was, “Pretty rough. He wanted him, and I wanted him; and we had to sort out the family-thing too.”

In the end, Hughes had her son for his actual birthday but he spent the following ‘birthday weekend’ with his father which resulted in him having two birthdays, and that didn’t feel right to Hughes or her ex-partner. “The year after that, I wanted to do more for him, even if his father and I weren’t getting along, it seemed confusing for my son. So, we decided to pick a weekend date and invite our extended family members, even if they weren’t happy about the arrangement. It is my son’s day, not theirs.” Hughes also explains that as the years, and her son’s birthdays have passed, the tension related to the get-togethers had dissipated.

Petrina Hough, a registered psychologist working in Calgary agrees, at least in part, with Hughes approach, as she explains, “If you and your ex-partner have a civil relationship and are on good terms and can host a joint celebration, then that’s great. But if you can’t get on, it’s just going to create more tension in the child’s life.” Hough also makes the following valid point, “A child’s birthday mightn’t be the best occasion for you to test your relationship with their other parent.”

So let’s say you agree on a ‘communal’ get-together to celebrate, should you agree on gifts beforehand to diffuse the chance of any potential competition or bad feeling? Or is it up to the individual to choose the gift they want to give to their child? Hughes finds that agreeing on gifts with her spouse helps a lot and then they take turns taking him to the store to pick items out that they’ve both agreed on and adds that, “I’m glad that we’ve figured these things out,” as she’s heard stories from single parents she knows where birthday planning doesn’t always pan out so amicably.

Hough appreciates that creating a relationship, like Hughes’, where both you and the other parent or even both extended families can communicate and agree on gifts and the details surrounding special occasions in your child’s life, like birthdays, can be difficult. Talking is a good place to start and can help everyone to avoid something as tension-charged as gift competition or something as simple as duplicate gifts.

When time is split between parents or two homes and their relative summer vacation plans, there can be a time crunch when it comes to your child being able to go to their friend’s birthday party. What should you do if the other parent had big plans for their upcoming time with the child you share, but your child really wants to go to a friend’s party? The conclusion seems to be that it really depends on the situation, and even then mostly upon the relationship between your child and the friend and yourself and your ex-partner. Hughes explained that she would try to come to some sort of arrangement with the father of her child, adding, “If it was a close friend, I would try to explain to his farther how important it was to our son to go to the party and try to explain his feelings. I would also try and work out a way so that he still gets ‘daddy time’.” Hough agrees, “All of this is really dependent upon how well you can communicate with the child’s other parent. What is crucial is that you explain that you are trying to communicate your child’s needs or desires, and confirm that you are not trying to take away their time with their child.”

Hughes has found that facilitating a joint family birthday celebration has eased over time and explains that, “For me, it’s not about the presents, it’s about my son being in a room full of people that love him and every year has been a little easier. As they see that we’ve grown and made a new relationship, they’ve gone along with that.” Hough recommends that you try to keep your lines of communication open with your child’s other parent so that the navigating of birthdays and other special days may improve over time, but she says, “Don’t beat yourself up over it, just enjoy the birthday the best way that you can with your child.” For me, maybe next year we’ll have grown enough to be ready to try the joint celebration. However, for now there is a lot to be said for the children enjoying the extra attention, gifts and, no doubt, cake that two birthdays can bring. Hough concurs, “Even children from families with two parents enjoy having a second or even third celebration with other family members or friends.”

Another interesting stat from the Hallmark website reads that, “For Americans (let’s read that North Americans for sake of argument), birthdays are the number one reason to party.” So with that in mind, it is supposed to be fun afterall. I think I’m going to follow Hough’s advice for now and celebrate the best way we can, by having a party, or two.