What's wrong with a home-made cake, a few games, a teddy bears' picnic-- and donate all that saved money to a children's fund?

Have we lost our humanity?

This is a party for the mommy so that she can show all the other mommies and daddies what a really great rich mommy she is. In about 3 or 4 years as the little princess begins to understand her privileged circumstances, she will begin lording her wealth over other children who have bad mommies and daddies who do not make a spectacle of themselves spending obscene amounts on birthday parties.

Let' say your child is in a snooty private school full of rich people. You are almost required to have a party on par with the others, just to fit in.

I know these people.
Luckily my daughter goes to a sort-of hippy private school where the parents dinner is pot luck.

'If I go to another paint-a-ceramic-bowl or stuff-a-bear party, I'll shoot myself,'"

Gee, did it ever occur to you that the party isn't about YOU and what YOU might like? The kids probably really like the ceramic painting and bear making, even if they have been to more than one. Perhaps "doing anything for my kids" should include suffering through what an adult might consider a few boring parties.

Well, "money" meets and intermarries with "money" for the most part. I would assume that anyone who could even contemplate a $5000 party for a preschooler (or any person of any age, for that matter) already has more money than they know what to do with and are not worried about ever running out of it...and they assume their children will also remain very wealthy throughout their lives. (or else the parent in question is a braindead consumerist with no grip on reality who has never learned to cope with peer pressure.)

But, if these kids slide down the slippery slope that so many people in my own (Gen X) generation are barreling down right now...then gawd help them. How do you aspire to anything if you have already had a multi thousand dollar bash by age 4? I can't afford to do a lot of things my parents did for me and that I would like to do for my own child because of the cost of living for basics. But I am glad I did not have such extravagances growing up. It helped me cope with reality, making do, entertaining myself simply and all of that. These folks should seriously consider how they want their children to cope later in life.

This is a joke, right?

This kind of "look how much money I have" makes me sick to my stomach. And if you think blind extravagance will cover up the fact that you dislike your children, think again. This will come back to bite you in the ass.

But so many others on here have already said it far better than I.

Being a parent myself, I truly understand the desire to throw a great party for your child or children, particularly that first one when motherhood is new to you. People generally pay for what they can afford, so I don't begrudge them for fulfilling their wish to create an event they can remember for the rest of their lives.

HOWEVER, I think a nicer gift for an older child is for the wealthy parent to have him or her choose a charity and give a donation to it, ie., a food bank in a country where the children are malnourished, and then to have a modest party where the kid helps in baking the cake. This gift of learning to share,being empathetic and being connected with the rest of humanity will be one of those gifts that carry through life.

And these spoiled rotten brats will grow up to be spoiled rotten bratty adults. I already see it in the high school I work at and these kids come from lower middle/working poor families. They come to school with outfits that equal several hundred dollars a piece, have all the latest electronic gadgets, and drive nicer cars than I have. It's not just happening in the upper middle class by any means. I have heard of the money to be spent on prom night...good grief, we are almost talking wedding costs.

This story reminds me of a local young gal who wrote into the paper all offended that many of the people that came to her lavish wedding (that her parents paid for) didn't give at least $100 each for a wedding present. It's the ME generation all over again.

If this article is truthful, and I think it is, then I would say that it is further evidence of the existence of Two Americas.
I would posit that it is a self-evident truth that when someone can and wants to spend $5,000 for a birthday party for a three year old, then that person is one of the super-rich.

Is this birthday party an example of Bush's idea of how the tax cuts for the wealthiest among us will stimulate the economy? Myself, I would rather see the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, than see them create jobs at a fondue restaurant with extremely lavish parties.

It looks to me like Bush's economic policies have stimulated the growth of the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, but not the economy as a whole. In fact, the economy as a whole is in the state it is in largely because of Bush's neo-con philosophy.

Generation Y (is that why?), will just keep getting worse and worse with this type of materialism. The entitlement generation of great self esteem! And, if they don't have enough money to afford a $5,000 birthday party, they can be made to feel like crap about it by MTV and CNN. This is a sick story. The media should ignore these asshole parents. This includes you, Huffington Post.

I think the ridiculous lengths that some parents go to on birthday parties, sweet 16s, and proms is the reason that there is a generation of kids growing up with an overblown sense of entitlement. They're obnoxious and pushy, and many of them are so spoiled and lacking in moral guidance that you see them featured on "Girls Gone Wild - Spring Break" videos. I'm sure daddy is happy that he's paying 10s of thousands of dollars every year on college tuition and dorm fees, so his sweetheart can get drunk and show her tits in public. These parents are the same ones that never spank their children or tell them no because it might "hurt their self esteem", and demand that all competitive sports their kids engage in stop keeping score. They need to wake up - what they're producing is a generation of stupid spoiled brats that won't end up contributing diddly squat to society once they come of age. They'll just be the new neocons, running our country further into the ground than their Reagan/Bush-worshipping parents and grandparents did. What's wrong with a cake and pin the tail on the donkey, for crying out loud?