Erin and Ben Napier Throw Sweet Birthday Party for Daughter: ‘So Grown’
By Movieguide® Contributor
HGTV stars Erin and Ben Napier just threw a sweet birthday party for their daughter Helen.
“Helen is turning 6, and mom and dad threw a fun party on the playground 🎈 🎂 can’t believe our oldest baby is so G R O W N,” Erin posted on Instagram.
The post featured a photo of the cheetah-themed party, complete with cheetah balloons, gift bags and cupcakes. A party isn’t complete without snacks, and Erin shared that they were having chicken nuggets, Pringles and veggies.
In addition to Helen, the Napiers share daughter, Mae, 2. Erin praised Helen in a Halloween post for being a good big sister.
“Big sis showed her the ropes and held her hand every step of the way and my heart busted, y’all,” Erin wrote on her social media.
In 2023, Erin revealed why she and Ben keep their daughters’ faces off social media.
“When my daughter Helen, who’s now 5, was very young, I posted a picture of her, and someone criticized the way she looked,” Erin wrote for TODAY.com. “It made me see red. It made my blood boil. And it seems like the criticism always comes from other women. It feels like betrayal when a fellow mother has the gall to criticize your child or your parenting.”
While Erin and Ben don’t want their girls to be disconnected from the world, they “intend to teach them is that you can live the most incredible life, and you can do and see and be anything in the world, if you are not tethered to something fake.”
“This is us teaching our children: You deserve more,” Erin continued. “And you are capable of a whole lot more if you can skip social media and cell phones until you’re older. Until you’re ready, you’ll have your growing group of Osprey friends who are having the same low-tech adolescence.”
Osprey is the Napiers’ nonprofit that supports and connects families who want to keep their kids off social media.
Movieguide® previously reported:
In an Instagram post initiating the new organization, Erin Napier wrote, “My friends parenting smart phone-free middle schoolers have had a brutal experience of seeing their child left out, even though research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug.”
She continued, “This made me think: my kindergartener doesn’t expect to drive a car before she’s old enough. She doesn’t expect to own a house of her own before she’s old enough. If we build a culture in our home and school now where she doesn’t expect access to the entire world in her pocket until she’s much older, we can set her up for success. When the time comes, a simple phone that can just call and text will be great: in the same way she’ll ride a bicycle before she drives a car.”
“Forming a circle of families and friends who are in this together when your kids are little, linking arms and doing what it takes to give your kids the gift of a social media free adolescence is the only way we change the culture,” she concluded. “For the TWENTY THOUSAND parents who’ve already joined the Osprey newsletter after my post last month, we have a vision and a plan to give our kids support that starts now and takes them through high school graduation. Let’s make old school the new way.”
