Children are never more fun and enjoyable than on their birthdays. We praise them and they accept the congratulations as if they are, in fact, responsible for an achievement. (In fact, congratulations belong to their parents.) But please have at it. Children need our birthday congratulations, because they need to learn that life itself is an achievement that must be accomplished.

On my 10th birthday, a telephone lineman at work happened to ask me how old I was. What luck to be asked this on my birthday.

He said, “Just think, you now have two digits in your age.” I sat on a tree stump for a long time thinking about the profundity of having two digits in my age. First, I was glad he hadn’t said “two numbers,” because I had learned to distinguish “number” from “digit,” and he pleased me by giving the opportunity to use what I had learned. However undeserved, I felt proud of my achievement.

It takes a while for kids to come to grips with the meaning and reality of age. When a boy told me he is six years, I said, “I bet next year you’ll be 7.” In amazement, he shot back, “How did you know?”

I phoned a birthday greeting to Spencer. How old will you be a year from now? “I don’t know yet.”

A 5-year-old girl boasted that on her next birthday, she will need two hands to show how old she is. I hoped by her sixth birthday she wouldn’t need her hands to tell.

A 3-year-old asked her 12-year-old vacation Bible school helper if she is a mother. A teacher? A teen-ager? Well, almost. With a sense of awe: “Are you 4-and-a-half?”

You can have fun with an 8-year-old by saying the child has only had one birthday. Puzzled by this, explain all the others were birthday anniversaries.

I have seen children struggle to understand how one born on February 28 does not miss six consecutive birthdays, with consequent diminished age.

And, of course, they ask grandparents if they had ever met Abraham Lincoln.

Birthdays are tremendously important to children. What they need most is not presents but the gift of our love and attention. They grow on these things until each birthday is an occasion to look back over the previous year and rejoice in many genuine achievements.

(My editor is going to fuss that I filed fewer words than usual and will need to fill the space. But I’ve said what I want to say, and this is the place to quit.)