I have written a lot in this blog about my stress over birthday parties. There is a lot of pressure in this lovely borough of ours to throw elaborate parties, to include every kid she’s ever met, to have activities that will Blow Their Minds. I’m not sure why this is. Are we all suffering from working parent guilt? Are we convinced that for memories to be made they must be epic in scale? Do we feel, because of our tiny living situations, forced into the destination birthday party? Did someone start this trend and now we’re all afraid to stop? We don’t want to be the first parent to say, sorry dude, there is no bungee jump at your Extreme theme birthday? Well, I’m taking one for the parenting team. I have jumped off the bandwagon, and man, do I feel better.
For my girl’s 5th birthday, I figured it out. Not without some screw-ups, but we’ll get to that later. My big lesson was this: make them do the work. I kept everything on a small scale and delegated as much as I could to the children themselves. My girl decided, at the last minute, that she wanted a Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog themed party. This was a simple change, since there has been no theme in the first place. The party was basic: a drop-off event for seven kids (including mine) at our apartment. The schedule went like this: drop-off with free play until all guests arrived, read the Pigeon book, treasure hunt, hide-and-seek, wind-up car race, cupcake decorating, eat hot dogs and pizza, eat cupcakes, dance party, go home.
Here is how I made them do the work. Since our house is a cluttered mess I wrapped the treasures for the hunt in tinfoil, so no one picked up any errant toy thinking it was a treasure. When my daughter requested the theme we just printed pictures of hot dogs and taped them to the treasures. The kicker? The treasures were just the contents of their goodie bags, so they packed their own goodie bags. One goodie was a wind-up car, which we raced in heats down our hallway. Then, once we reviewed our house rules (no one in the laundry/mechanicals room, no one hiding behind the giant deathtrap mirror in our bedroom), we played four rounds of hide-and-seek. I joined in while my husband frosted cupcakes I had made the night before. Let me tell you, these kids can hide. It was hands down the best part of the party. And, as games go, a great choice to keep the noise and running down to a minimum. Then the kids sat around our kitchen table with bowls of decorations at the center and they decorated their own cupcakes (are you seeing the true theme, my Communist Worker Bee theme?). And only one kid ate directly from the bowl of sprinkles. After the sugar amuse bouche, came the pizza and hotdogs. And here is my failure.
Due to the last minute theme change, I neglected to tell parents that the menu had changed to include hotdogs. Do you see where this is going? I didn’t. I had a fleeting thought to check in with parents at drop-off, but you can imagine how that went. And so the children happily scarfed their dogs. Even those two children who had, yup, been vegetarians their whole lives. Party host fail! Luckily, their parents were extremely understanding. But I felt terrible. My guilt was alleviated by the sheer awesomeness of the rest of the party. Gastrointestinal distress aside, even the vegetarians had a wonderful time. Cupcakes were eaten, children danced. When, in the last five minutes the activities ran out and the natives became restless, a quick game of Red Light Green Light got everyone focused. It was a great day, most importantly, for my girl. And my fear of birthday parties has been official vanquished. It only took five years.