A Mom Told A Little Girl Who Joined Her Kid's Birthday Party At A Park 'These Are Not Your Friends' & Takes Cake Away From Her
Sure, she wasn't invited. But why take it to these lengths over a piece of cake?
TikTok A mom was shocked when her daughter was scolded for befriending a birthday party playgroup at a public park.
TikTok and YouTube influencer Kat Stickler was left totally perplexed by the situation that unfolded when her young daughter MK befriended a group of kids having a birthday party at a local park. "Am I entitled, or is this messed up?" she asked her followers.
After playing with the birthday party group, Stickler's daughter then went to join her new friends for birthday cake, only to be scolded and kicked out by another mom.
When Stickler and MK showed up at the park in their neighborhood, they found they were the only people there other than the birthday party group. As kids tend to do, MK simply joined the other kids.
"They're making friends. It was nice. It was actually very cute." But everything changed when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday." MK joined in with her new group of friends, who Stickler says were "welcoming her with open arms—or so I thought."
Photo: TikTok
Stickler saw MK going for some birthday cake so she quickly went over to the party to make sure that was okay, which she called "a formality" because "it's a massive cake, there's leftover pieces." And who would deny a kid a piece of cake, right?
Suffice to say, the birthday boy or girl's mom saw things very differently. "The mother takes the plate away from MK, and gets down to her level, says, you cannot eat this cake... These are not your friends."
Many people were shocked at the other mom's cruelty, but others thought Stickler was way out of line to let her daughter join the party.
Many couldn't help but wonder what kind of mom shuns a kid when she joins a birthday party. "'These aren’t your friends,' who says that to a child?!" one TikToker wrote. That line seemed almost unanimously to have been the most shocking part of the story—especially given that kids' perceptions of friendship are so different from us adults.
"The part that gets me is the 'these are not your friends," a woman commented. "They’ve been playing for a half an hour. To kids, that’s friendship."
Others said they would have denied the cake too, but only out of an abundance of caution. As one mom put it, "I wouldn’t give cake to a child I didn’t know. But I’d say something like let’s find and ask your mama first."
But others were just unmoved. "That wasn’t a party she was invited to so I would’ve grabbed my kid as soon as happy birthday started," one mom wrote. "It is a bit entitled." Several others agreed, saying that Stickler should have kept MK away from the party in the first place, despite the fact it was in a public park.
Photo: TikTok
One mom chalked the incident up to American culture, which prizes individuality and privacy over the community and togetherness humans are literally built for.
As any psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist or any other scientist who studies human behavior and civilization will tell you, we humans are inherently social animals who rely on connection and cooperation for our material and emotional survival. This is part of why nearly all human cultures are inherently communal, from the "cafe culture" of Europe to the collectivist societies of Asia.
But here in America, the individual is king—we fence off our backyards to keep our neighbors away and our entire economy and culture are based around the fulfillment of individual goals above all else, even when it actively harms us. One mom on TikTok, Blanca Perdomo, feels this perfectly explains bizarre incidents like refusing to share a piece of cake with a little kid on a playground and then insulting her to make sure she stays in her place.
Perdomo contrasted American individualism with her own Latino culture, in which she says, "We're inviting everybody [to the party]... even people we don't know." She went on to lambaste the mom for scolding Stickler and the people online who took her side.
"This mother, if she had any issues, she could have taken it up with Kat, not with the child," Perdomo said. "These are the same type of people that will complain that they don't have a community, they don't have a village, they don't have people helping them, but they are the same ones who are actively burning that godd-mn bridge."
They're also setting a pretty terrible example for other kids—that everyone should keep to themselves, friendship should have limits, everything you have should be hoarded at all times. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a society where everyone hates each other and outsiders are reflexively viewed with suspicion. We need only to look around the country we're living in nowadays to see how well that's apt to work out. Let the kid have the damn cake.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.