Mother's heartbreak as all friends cancel on 4-year-old's birthday party
A Melbourne mother who was devastated that her 4-year-old son was going to be celebrating his birthday alone has been given an incredible surprise by a group of local parents.
One hour before her four-year-old son Taenon was supposed to celebrate his first proper birthday party, Rachelle Briannan was crying in her room, heartbroken that nobody would be there to sing ‘happy birthday’ to him.
She had invited 12 children to the party but by Sunday morning, the day of the party, all of their parents had either cancelled or had not reply to her messages.
“My son just turned 4 and this is the first time he’s really understood the whole party with his friends thing. My heart is literally broken for him,” she wrote in a post to the mother’s support group, Midnight Mums.
“I’m so hurt and angry. What the hell can I do to make this up to him?”
“Like I made him this huge superhero cake and there’s going to be no one to even sing happy birthday to him,” she said.
The heartfelt Facebook post clearly resonated with many parents. Just an hour later, a group of up to 30 young children arrived at a McDonald’s restaurant in Eltham with their mums and dads to celebrate Taenon’s birthday.
And local businesses joined in the effort to make it a special day, with one shop donating helium balloons with the number ‘4’ and the local SES arriving with their trucks for the children to explore.
Midnight Mums posted the emotional success story to their page, adding how the support groups community had “rallied together online with hundreds of birthday messages for Taenon flooding our newsfeeds”.
Many social media users, some a little tearful, commented on how reading the post had made their day. “This makes my heart so happy,” Jessie Fakos wrote, while Ellen Cutajar said it had restored her faith in people.
“It’s beautiful that a bunch of strangers would do this,” she wrote.
Blogger Constance Hall wrote,“Rachelle was and still is speechless”.
News break – May 2
