Help! My Children Have the Same Birthday!

My girl's birthdays are two days apart. One solution that has worked for a few years is to have the parties on the same day, but at different times. So one party was from 11-1 and the other was from 2-4. That way each can have friends come to their party, and family can come to both to see them open presents and blow out candles. We even did a quick theme/decoration change in the middle! When my daughter was one, we had her party first so she could open her presents and dig in the cake and then we served regular party food afterwards and for the second party.

My sister and I have always shared a family party. We are now 34 and 29 and still share a family party of sorts. Friend parties were kept separate b/c of the age difference. We've always enjoyed sharing a birthday. She was my "big" present for my 5th bday!

At four years old, I bet your daughter might have some ideas. Ask for her input in helping to plan for the one year old's birthday. I'm sure that will make her feel like a big helper. Also, each year will probably be different as they get older. I'm sure they will always have fun each year.

Good morning, A.,
After raising 8 kids & several nieces & nephews, I would recommend you celebrate your 4-year-old's birthday on her "special" day. It is more important to her as she is old enough to really enjoy & anticipate it. For most of our life we have celebrated "double birthdays" (even triple)with no problem. My husband's birthday and our youngest son's birthday are a day apart and my mother's birthday is 3 days later. We usually have a sheet cake, so we can have all 3 names on it. We called this bash the "Triple Whango Bango Birthday" and always had a lot of fun with it, often inviting friends & relatives for an open house or a barbecue. We never spent a lot of money, but we always had a great time.
As your children get older and have different friends from school, it is more important to have separate celebrations to include their friends and maybe still have the family celebration too.
Whatever you decide, never forget that you are making memories with your family, and as long as it is done with love and everyone is included, it will be special.
Good luck! and have fun with it.

My daughters' birthdays are 4 days apart. One will turn 4 and the other 7 this year. We celebrate their birthdays separately as a family, but until this year, we have always combined their parties. This year and probably from now on, they'll have separate parties, which won't be elaborate.

Since it's your son's 1st birthday, I would recommend buying a couple of special 1st birthday items, such as a birthday hat, cake decoration, etc, and make a big deal of it for pictures and memories. You could slip it in during the middle of your daughter's party, if you want to (we did that with ours, since her 4th and baby's 1st were celebrated mostly with adult friends and neighbors and a bounce house). After this year, I would say continue combining the family tradition of celebrating, since the fact is, they share the date, but maybe separate parties when they want that. Overall, just enjoy! Most of our birthday parties have been at home with just a bounce house, and the kids love it.

I have a twin brother and we generally celebrated our birthdays together- unless we were doing slumber parties and then for obvious reasons these were held on separate weekends. I don't know how my parents balanced it, bless their hearts, but I never felt less special for not having my own birthday. Now that I am older I cannot imagine not having him to spend our birthdays together. We are almost 40 and still get together for our big day. I would tell you this will form a bond with your children that will last a lifetime if you are lucky! Good luck.

Two of my four kids have the same birthday,too. But they are 10 years apart, one a boy and one a girl, so it's not really the same. They are 21 and 31 now and they think it's great. Well...that wasn't very helpful was it?

Hi A.,

My kids' birthdays are March 22 and March 25. Daughter is 4. Son is 2.
First I have to say that while I LOVE birthdays and make a big deal out of them, I don't think the parents should go bankrupt throwing parties. So we keep our celebrations simple and silly.

I had one party in March for both kids. I made them separate cakes. My daughter loved telling everyone that even though her brother's birthday is close to hers, she is 2 years older. Your daughter will probably also love to point that out to party-goers. I hope to have a couple more years of having only one party. When she gets old enough to really complain about sharing a birthday party, I'll let my daughter have her own. Right now she loves being a big sister, and loved "helping" my son open his presents and explain to him how they work and that she used to have one just like that when she was a baby.

I wouldn't make too big a deal out of it. Your kids will pick up on that. Keep the breakfast celebration as it is. Maybe once a year you make two dinners for the family. Emphasize what a special day you have as a *family* to have 2 children born that day.

Most of all, enjoy!

Peace,
M.
www.yogapotential.com

Oh my gosh! I have 5 children and my only daughter and my 2 year old son are born on the exact same day 3 years apart. I love it b/c they will always share a special day amid such a large family. I have no specific ideas to give you but look forward to reading some of the responses you get. Take care!

Definitely get your 4-year-old's input & help planning the celebration...turning 1 is very special, but honestly won't be remembered by the birthday baby! Going forward, it's going to depend a lot on the personalities of the children...the age difference will be much more pronounced once they are in school and have different sets of friends, so you'll probably have separate parties. However, something special that you can do with them together with family would be dinner at home (prepare both children's favorites) and one cake with two different flavored sides (one side white, one side chocolate.)

I think for your son's first birthday, he should have his own party/cake. A first birthday is so special that is probably shouldn't be shared with anyone. Other than that, I honestly don't have a clue on how to keep their birthdays special for each of them even though they are on the same day.

Hope this helps.

My son was 2 the day my daughter was born. They just turned 14 and 16! This year, since your son is so young, the birthday is really for you, not him. So I would definitely make your daughter's day special and then let her help in making her brother's day special since he won't care anyway! We had 1 party for both of ours until they were 5 or 6 since they were so close in age and had mostly the same friends. My son and daughter have never had any problem sharing there special day. A bit of friendly rivalry at times, but they don't feel slighted.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but my b-day was also my grandparents' anniversary, and our family usually celebrated them together. I don't really think that's a good idea. Yes, I had my own b-day parties with friends, but it would be great if you could split up family parties, with one on one day and one on another. If you cannot do that, try different cakes (I didn't like the dual-salutation cake thing) and activities. Good luck :)

Well, this isn't exactly the same situation but it's similar. My step-son's birthday is on Christmas Day. Talk about competition!

We've always celebrated birthdays with family at dinner, letting the birthday child pick the dinner and type/theme of cake. This worked well for us because we celebrate Christmas in the morning. Perhaps you could split the day so they each have their own special party time.

Another tradition we have is the "Birthday Fairy" paying a visit during the night, leaving ballons and 3 small gifts to ward of the "birthday gimmies" for the majority of the day. We did this with each of our 6 kids up through their 12th birthdays.

Parties with friends were on the most convenient weekend. Our kids never had a problem with this, probably because it added another party!

We asked my stepson if he'd prefer celebrating his birthday on a different day, or even a different month but he preferred sticking to his own day. :-)

Costs add up quickly when you're celebrating birthdays together (and a birthday with Christmas). We always save throughout the year so we can spend as much on the Christmas birthday boy as we spend on all the other kids' birthdays and still afford family gifts at holiday time.

Happy Birthdays!

I have twins, a boy and girl, who will be 6 in December, with very different ideas about what they want for birthday parties, as you can imagine. However, it's also very expensive to throw 2 parties for them.
What we have done in the past is, on their actual birthday, we have a family birthday party. grandparents, cousins, etc come and we celebrate with presents and cake.
On a weekend before or after their birthday, we have a party for their friends. I order a cake that I half the theme my daughter chooses and half the theme my son chooses (last year, for example we had Disney Pixar Cars and Cinderella! Half the cake was strawberry, half chocolate) We rented a jump house and they each got to invite 5 friends. The kids all had a ball.
I think as the kids get older, this approach may not work. I picture having birthday parties at home on opposite weekends with slumber parties... or something. In our situation we also have to work around Christmas and all it's celebrations and parties when scheduling.
BUT
I think the important thing is to make their birthday fun, and to acknowledge their differences in your plans. We had decorations up for both themes and the kids didn't seem to mind at all.

I actually grew up in this situation. My youngest brother and I were born on the same day - eight years apart. Other than the fact that I was really hoping for a sister as my birthday present the year he was born (I already had two brothers), I can't recall it ever being a problem for each of us.

We did not do big friend parties every year - my Mom always subscribed to the rule of one friend invited per year that you are old. When we did have parties with friends they were usually pretty simple and they were always separate. It didn't really matter to us if the party wasn't on our actual bday.

As for the family celebration, that was always in the evening at home. My brother and I both had input on the menu for the night and my mom made a cake for each of us.

My parents were incredibly frugal, but I never felt cheated when it came to birthdays and they always managed to throw some kind of celebration.

Best of luck with your kids. I think it's really cool to share my day with my brother We'll be 36 and 28 next month, and I am sad that he lives in California now and we won't be together this year. One plus for the extended family - it's one less date that they have to remember...

You could make special birthday plates for them... For all 3 kids. You can make go to one of the make your own pottery places. And make it special for each of them.

Hi! I'm almost in the same boat - my oldest was born June 19th and youngest was 3 years later on June 20th (with another in between in July - yep, summers are very busy for us!) What we've done thus far is have the oldest's "party" the weekend before their birthdays and the youngest's the weekend after. It's a little bit of a pain as the grandparents have to come in for two weekends (one RVs and just brings up the rig for the week in between and the other lives 1.25 hours away & just makes the drive) but we want them each to feel special. I would continue your tradition of waking up to a special breakfast on their actual day - you might have to cook two completely different breakfasts but it's only once a year. And we always have a cake or cookie cake the night of their birthdays & open just our gifts that day (any other gifts are opened on the weeked "parties" - we also haven't done friend parties until age 5 and up). Hope this makes sense - thus far it's worked out just fine.