TikTok Mom Rages About Heartbreaking Park Encounter Involving Birthday Cake

We’ve reached the point in 2023 where we’re fighting over cake. Hooray.

Popular TikToker Kat Stickler vented to her 10 million followers while recounting a situation at the park. It involves her 3-year-old crashing a birthday party, cake, and the mommy war no one needed.

Here goes.

“I’m going to mom shame,” warns Stickler. “The only people I’ve ever mom-shamed are myself and my own mother.”

Swell. But now, Stickler is making her mom-shaming list a party of three, and she wants to know what her followers think of her reasoning behind it.

“Am I entitled, or was this messed up?” she asks.

Go on.

“MK [her 3-year-old] and I were at the park in my neighborhood,” Stickler says. “It was us and this birthday group.”

Little MK invited herself to the party, and no one seemed to have an issue, at least according to Stickler. They played together for a half an hour.

“They’re making friends,” Stickler says. “It was nice. It was actually very cute.”

Sounds like it. But the not-so-sweet plot twist came when it was time to sing and eat cake.

“MK goes over. She’s one of the group right now,” Stickler says. “They’re welcoming her with open arms.”

Were they, though? Maybe. But an adult by the sandbox wasn’t. MK clearly wanted to eat cake. Stickler asked if it was OK, thinking it was just a little formality. But in her head, she thought, “Of course it’s OK.”

“It’s a massive cake," Sticker says. "There’s lots of leftover pieces.”

Well, there was one more leftover piece after this happened.

“The mother takes the plate away from MK and gets down to her level and says, ‘You cannot eat this cake, OK? This is not your birthday party. These are not your friends. Where’s your mother?’” Stickler says.

Stickler puts her hands over her mouth (Personally, my jaw dropped), and the video ends.

Entitled Mother or Just Messed Up?

The video has more than 53K comments, many of whom had the literal same reaction I did.

• “My jaw dropped,” one person writes.
  
• “Oh wow,” says another.
  

Some others were actually able to formulate full sentences.

“I can’t believe a parent would treat a child like that regardless! I’d be super happy to share cake with a new friend my kid has made,” someone else writes.

The friend line really did it for many TikTokers (and me, frankly).

• “The part that gets me is the 'These are not your friends' They’ve been playing for half an hour. To kids, that’s friendship,” one person writes.
  
• “The cake didn’t get me…’These are not your friends' is such a catty messed up thing to say to anyone, let alone a child,” says a TikToker.
  
• "’These are not your friends.’ What?! Who says that to a child?!” someone else adds.

Come On. Let the Kid Eat Cake

For starters, people can say anything on TikTok, and we don’t know the whole story (or at least the other side of it). But let’s take what Stickler said at face value. I’m not for mom shaming, but the other mother really should be ashamed in this case.

Of course, I’d understand if this was a private party with a limited amount of cake. Birthday parties can get pricey, and you want to ensure your kiddo’s friends get their cake. But it doesn’t appear that was the case, and it appeared the kids were all having a blast with their uninvited party guest-turned-new-friend.

Kids also don’t have to share if they don’t want to, and neither do parents. But Stickler asked. She thought it was just a formality, but let’s say it wasn’t, and the other mother really wanted little MK to keep her hands off the cake. She could have told Stickler and asked her to handle her own kid. If Stickler threw a fit instead of agreeing to disagree and respecting the other parent’s wishes, maybe I’d call Stickler the entitled one. But that’s not how it went down. An adult literally told a 3-year-old that those weren’t her friends?  

I don’t support this approach in any way, shape, or form. The worst part? I wonder if the birthday kid and their friends were watching. Children almost always absorb what trusted caregivers and adults (and anyone, really) are doing and saying. With all the bullying and mental health issues kids are dealing with, it’s so important to focus on teaching children to be kind. This mother was not kind.