Children’s Party Dos and Don’ts: A Guide for Parents

DO

• Find the time to organize the party yourself. Get help from family or friends if you need it, because a children’s party is a job for at least two people. Parents know that it takes time to throw a children’s party, which has given rise to the trend for hired party planners. But such events lack the personal touch and cost a fortune. A good children’s party should not cost much: it is your love and imagination that will win the day with your child, not your money.
• Let your child participate in the planning. Learning to plan is part of growing up and who better than your child to tell you what children like.
• Think twice before hosting an activity party, like rock climbing, at your local gym/sports facility.. The cost per person can be very high and you will often find children who are not interested in the activity. So what do you do with them for the next hour?
• Have a theme and stick to it from invitations, to children’s clothing, to decorations, to fun and games to jelly and ice cream. You need to create a unified experience, whether it’s superheroes, outer space, dinosaurs, or cartoon characters. A themed party will definitely streamline your planning and give you ideas for activities, while running a series of games offline is inviting chaos. Being a parent is hard enough.
• Keep your child’s interests in mind when choosing your topic. Horses, rockets, cartoons, soccer… Let yourself be guided by your interests.
• Spend time thinking about birthday invitations.. Consider the invitation the first activity of the party and build anticipation and excitement. Invitations with a gift are a good idea. An invitation to a pirate party with an eyepatch, or an invitation to a football party with a football chocolate. Balloons with hidden invites always win.
• dress for the part. Where is the magic when the master of pirate games is dressed in jeans and a t-shirt? Or worse still, in a shirt and tie?
• leave with a bang. A good idea at the beginning, when everyone is together, is to reinforce the theme with something visual and incorporate a small gift. For example, pirates get a pirate medallion, cowboys get neck scarves. Then move on to something energetic like a relay race, an obstacle course, followed by something creative and relaxing, then something active, and so on. In this way, you can moderate energy levels during the party.
• Let kids eat a small snack early on to keep energy levels up.
• Keep your party short, but active. Two hours is fine. If you keep it short, the children’s experience will be richer and they will enjoy it much more than if you drag things out. After all, your son has a reputation to uphold, and having parents throw a good party is important, stupid.
• Plan for quick changes in activity and focus. Kids will love it if there’s always something new to do, so plan a selection of activities. Jumping from one to another is the key to success. As a guide, plan one activity for every 15 minutes of party time, and have two or three as a backup.
• May prizes and surprises continue to arrive, and give children a goal for doing the activity. For example, ‘the first to find five chocolate eggs gets…’
• Aim for kids to leave wishing the party never ended. The ending is all about show business and dynamism. Have the stack of coats and goodie bags ready before this final activity, then fill the final minutes with entertainment. You could launch helium balloons or run a silly race. Do whatever makes the kids leave with a smile on their faces, and leave one on yours.
• Stay relaxed and have fun. Yes, you have to make everything run smoothly, but make sure you enjoy it. You are hosting a birthday party, not a business conference.

WHOSE

• Let your child pressure you into participating in an overly complicated or expensive event at a local restaurant complex, with all kinds of fees charging special animators. Your son is a consultant, you are the father. Organize the party at home, leaving space, where you can control it, and perhaps have an entertainer if you think it is necessary. Remember that you You can create enough fun and excitement in your own backyard with careful planning and lots of energy throughout the day.
• Greet guests arriving at your child’s dinosaur-themed party by walking out the front door dressed as Godzilla, roaring like a formula one car. If he does, things are likely to get off to a tearful start when some of the more nervous guests fail to see the funny side of this six-foot terror coming down the garden path.
• Forget writing your plan. Know where you are going and what is next. As any teacher will tell you (its author has ten years of teaching experience), once a child loses trust in the gamemaster, lack of cooperation and trouble is never far away.
• Forget adding a little fancy. If your theme is pirates and treasure, develop the story. You have been shipwrecked, but all is not lost because you have found a clue to the location of the magical coconut. Find the coconut, throw it off the perch and…
• Forgetting to leave enough time for the jello and ice cream.. Twenty minutes should be fine.
• Try to reinvent the wheel. Tried and tested board games like relay and scavenger hunts are so popular because they they work. You can always incorporate more new ideas around you, but have the tried and tested activities as a central part of your plan. They will save the day.
• Don’t listen to anyone who tells you silly rules about how many children should attend. for a 5 year old, how many for a 6 year old. Ask your child who they want to invite and go from there, keeping things manageable. Make sure no one important is left out because of a recent argument between kids, and make sure you don’t have a room full of strangers.
• Forget asking parents of guests to RSVP/answer before a certain date then follow up with a phone call.
• Panic. Expect the unexpected because it will happen and you will just have to adapt. Such is the lot of parents.

Well, that’s your lot. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know. Good luck with the party!