I’ve been learning a lot from my almost 5-year-old lately. This year his birthday party choices are either to do a small home birthday party with 3-4 friends or a huge jumping party at the local inflatable gym. It seems that my busy schedule has helped our decision be the latter, since if you pay someone enough, they will do the party for you. Not that Wyatt is complaining. The only caveat is that since he’s inviting close to 20 friends and cousins, we are asking for no gifts, but for a donation to a charitable organization. I wish I would have taped the look of horror that crossed Wyatt’s face when we first discussed it. My feelings tipped back and forth from, “Are we forcing this on him? Is that OK? Is he too young to understand why we’re doing this?” to, “Wouldn’t he have so much fun opening gifts? Should I just clean out his room and let him have a boat-load of gifts?” 
Wyatt answered the questions himself. He’s been really interested in Haiti. In fact, geography is his current obsession, so we regularly discuss current events at his level and look for places on the map. He’s really concerned about the people of Haiti. He helped me look up the website to donate some funds and wanted to make sure that we were not going to hand deliver it ourselves. I talked to him about some possible uses for the money and that there are children there who don’t have parents and need all the things parents can provide. After a few minutes he came to me and said that he thought it would be OK to share his room and his toys with a boy (not a girl) from Haiti. Specifically, he said, “He can have my Lightnin’ McQueen blow up bed and then when Jesus makes his parents alive again, he can go back to live with them.”
He might not understand the intricacies yet, but his little heart is in the right place. I think his birthday party will be just fine...
