Help With Your Birthday Message

November 30, 2018Jenn Goddu Leave a comment

Want to stand out from the others saying “Happy Birthday” or, if really creative, “Hope you have a Happy Birthday” on someone’s social media? You could add a birthday bitmoji! I personally prefer the unicorn one:

If you don’t have that app, the Internet has your back. You can easily grab a birthday gif or meme from google. This is a fun one…

Then there’s the need to draw attention to ourselves on our birthdays. But what is the perfect thing to say when posting our selfies?

Seventeen magazine weighed in recently with a list of “35 Birthday Instagram Captions Perfect To Celebrate Your Big Day.” Some of my faves from the list included:

“Surround yourself with people who are more excited for your birthday than you are.”
“It’s not the years that count, it’s the memories you make over these years.”
“Hold on to your inner child as you grow older.”
“Live your life and forget your age.”
“This is my year of dreams coming true.”
“Birthdays are good for me. The more I have, the longer I live.”
“Of course, I don’t know how to act my age. I’ve never been this age before!”

To me, some of Seventeen’s suggestions work better as a social media post you’d share with someone celebrating their birthday:

“It’s your birthday you don’t have to do nothin’.” – Destiny’s Child, ‘Birthday’
“Birthdays are nature’s way of telling you to eat more cake.” — Jo Brand
“Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.” — Walt Disney
“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.” — Dr. Seuss

Still need some ideas? Try some birthday jokes. The ones I found on this site are pretty awful, but they sent me to this video with some funny ones:

The No. 1 Tip for Birthday Social Media

April 14, 2017Jenn Goddu Leave a comment

Don’t text your Mom.

Or, more specifically, don’t only text your Mom. You can text her, sure. But this should not be the only means of communication with the woman who gave birth to you on her special day.

Image: Foter.com

C’mon folks. I don’t care what age you are. It is simply not cool to only text YOUR MOTHER. Yeah, I know, all caps in a blog. That’s how serious I am about this!

And it’s not just because I am now a Mom, and I would probably lose my mind if I only got a text from my son (when he was old enough to have a phone that is). If he is not physically in my presence on the day of my birth he better be calling me on the phone to sing to me. If he knows what’s good for him that is. (Yes, husband, you can save this blog to remind him of this later).

Be Nice to Mom on Her Birthday

This blog came about after I saw a woman write a newspaper advice columnist for input on “What should I do about my adult children’s birthdays?” She points out that her own birthday was acknowledged only by a text this year. “I was very hurt,” she writes.

She mentions that her birthday is Jan. 1 and that “their father’s birthday is later in the year, and they will buy him a gift plus a card.” To me it seems she is trying to give them a little leeway since her birthday is near the holidays. But the columnist, Annie, is correct in saying to “Birthday Blues,” “Shame on your children. The least they could have done was send a card.”

The columnist goes on to note the children are taking Mom for granted.

Do you want your Mom to feel as if you are taking her for granted? On her birthday? Do you?!

Send a card. Send flowers. Buy a gift. Go visit. Take her to lunch. Use your phone to voice call her. Skype. FaceTime.

Remember, your Mama raised you better than to only text your Mother on her birthday. If you love the woman (and here I acknowledge some families have difficult relationships that might, perhaps, justify a mere text), show it by saying “Happy Birthday” in the voice your Mama gave you!

Social Media Birthday Bash

September 11, 2015Jenn Goddu Leave a comment

Maybe you’ve seen a shared request on social media asking you to help a birthday someone to receive a landslide of likes or retweets or birthday cards or other greetings.

One woman recently went to Facebook to ask people in Roanake, Va. to come celebrate her son’s birthday at a local park with a water balloon fight. “I thought maybe a few people on my friends list would bring their kids,“ the nine-year-old’s mom wrote. “Instead it has reached people from all over the world.”

Photo credit: Steve Wilhelm / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Yahoo Parenting took the opportunity to interview some experts about whether this approach was a good idea. Yep, let’s just consider Yahoo Parenting the birthday buzzkill from now on.

One expert suggested the birthday could make the child feel alienated. Another suggested the mom wasn’t empowering her son. Both agreed labeling the child as someone who needs help making friends was not a wise move.

There were also concerns about the singular focus on the birthday and one of the experts suggested instead this should have been embraced as a special family day.

Photo credit: garrellmillhouse / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Now, my seven-year-old will be the first to tell you I am no parenting expert, but I wonder why facilitating your son having a crazy wild water balloon party and giving him the opportunity to meet with all kinds of new people (who might become friends) is a bad thing. At least this Mom’s turn to social media involved actual human interaction rather than those pleas that ask for messages or tweets or likes and represent nothing more than a bunch of strangers pushing a button on social media.

Me, I’m going to applaud this Mom for taking initiative. She helped her home-schooled son get out there for an opportunity to interact with more kids and gave him a party he won’t soon forget.