
If there was one thing I could not stand as a child, it would be, believe it or not, birthday parties. Sure, for any neurodiverse person, they can be overwhelming with all those people and all that noise, but I hated birthday parties for a different reason – and not just they were usually for someone else.
That reason: The SINGING. Someone, usually (and hopefully) a parent, would light the candles and everyone would start singing that song that baffled copyright lawyers for decades: Happy Birthday to You and the birthday boy (or girl) blew out the candles. Thinking back, maybe I had good reasoning for hating birthdays. After all these were friends and family, not professional singers, which I will get into in a future post.
My fourth birthday was fairly low key with a family dinner at Cobb & Co with ice cream cake – I still have memories of that day. I was at home with my dad when my mother came in with a box of presents, including a “talking” teddy bear that could record short audio phrases. Despite my parents intention of getting the bear to help me become more verbal, the audio recording device (which could be accessed by a zipper on the bear’s bum) mysteriously went missing, resulting in the former talking bear becoming non-verbal. Verbal or not, that bear was well loved and I often would chew on its button nose.

My fifth birthday, however, was another story. In New Zealand, a child will typically start at primary (elementary) school on his or her fifth birthday after attending kindergarten (or “kindy”) for a year or so. I was no different – kindy was a place where kids could do things that kids do – play with building blocks, make arts and crafts, and eat play-dough. My two teachers, Margaret and Diane, realized I was a little bit different from the other kids. After injuring myself with a stapler (children were allowed to be curious around “dangerous” office supplies without constant supervision back then), one of the teachers got one of the hand puppets and through the puppet challenged me to build them a house with the building blocks while the other kids were away, an activity I did not partake in because the other kids were always playing with them. She was amazed at what I was able to build and actually instructed the other kids to leave it standing during clean-up time.
Unfortunately, the inevitable came to be. I was going to turn five whether I wanted to or not. I had seen what happened to those who came before me and I dreaded that day. At kindy, when someone turned five and was going to start school, it was a big deal – the birthday boy or girl would decorate a cardboard crown (similar to one you might get at Burger King) with stickers and the teacher would bring out a plastic cake with candles to blow out. Everyone would sing Happy Birthday, and we would never see that person at kindy again…and it was going to happen to me.
Naturally, I was terrified at that prospect and had a bit of a mental meltdown, but the teacher intervened. She got out a small tray and some play-dough and got me to make a small “cake” with five candles. With the talent that only a good kindergarten teacher could have, she was able to calm me down and by the end of the day, the other kids were singing to me, and I was okay with it.
At the age of six, I got to have a “regular” kid’s birthday – despite having just recently transferred to a new school, I picked out a few kids in my class to be my “friends” and we went out for a birthday lunch at our favourite family restaurant. We had a great time, and unusually for a neurodiverse kid, I even got invited to their parties too, though I was a little uncomfortable going to the party where everyone had to dress up as pirates – cosplay is fairly popular among neurodiverse adults these days, but playing dress-up was something I did not like as a kid. I was also not very good at choosing presents either, as often I thought of getting things that I would like, rather what my friends would have liked.
That sixth birthday party was my first, and ultimately ended up being my last too. From the age of seven onward, birthday parties stopped being a thing for me. I did go to a few friends’ parties, but did not have any more birthday parties of my own. I believe there were several reasons for this. My family moved many times, and every move meant changing schools. For a neurotypical kid, this is no big deal – they just make new friends, get invited to their parties, and move on. For me, that was not an option – as the socially awkward “new kid”, being accepted by the other kids was hard, and getting them to become friends is even harder. I became somewhat of an outcast at my school, and was getting picked on even by kids I did not know. No kid would even want to play with me, let alone invite me to their birthday party.
Looking back, that might have even been for the better. I still got to celebrate birthdays, but usually as something low-key with family. There was usually cake involved (including a Thomas the Tank Engine cake when I turned seven that I remember fondly), and of course presents. As as adult, I actually frequently find many parties to be quite boring, especially when there’s a lot of people (especially those I do not know), alcohol, and so much noise that it’s impossible to hold a conversation with the person next to you.