As a parent, one of your most important tasks is making sure every one of your child’s birthdays is magical. However, that doesn’t mean that you have to turn your life upside down to bring together a birthday party for your kids. Some parents do just that, going to insane lengths to try to create an epic birthday party that tops what all the other parents did for their children’s parties. You need to find a balance. Make sure your child’s birthday party is special, but don’t go overboard. Use the following guide to plan a wonderful birthday party for your child.
Trim the Guest List
You don’t need to invite the whole neighborhood, your child’s classmates and all your family to a simple kids’ birthday party. The first step in keeping your kid’s birthday party reasonable is to keep the guest list small. It really shouldn’t be much more than your child’s friends. If you want to make things easy on yourself, you should try to keep the number of guests to ten or fewer.
Give Them What They Want
The last thing you want to do is to disappoint kids who come to the party. That will make them cranky, which could lead to a bad scene if they are upset enough. To prevent this, you need to do your research to find out what the kids will expect. This isn’t hard. All you need to do is ask your child, and you will be hearing every detail of your child’s expectations for the birthday party before you know it. If you give the kids what they want, it will make them happier and your life a lot easier.
Have a Backup Plan
You can never have enough entertainment options at a children’s birthday party. It is not enough to have just one kind of entertainment for the party. You need a backup plan, and then you need a backup plan for the backup plan. Put together multiple options so you can be sure that the kid will stay entertained throughout the party. Plan both indoor and outdoor activities in case the weather forces you inside. Make it a good mix of activities so that you have the best chance of entertaining each child who attends the party.
Tell Your Kid Not to Brag
One of the biggest mistakes your child can make is to brag about the party at school. This could end up offending some of the children who were not invited, which could lead to serious friction at school for your child. One thing you need to do to keep this from becoming an issue is to send the party invitations directly to the homes of the guests rather than having your child hand them out at school.
Tell the Parents to Enjoy the Free Babysitting
It is important to encourage the parents of the kids attending the party to drop their children off at the party and pick them up later. The last thing you want is to have to entertain kids and their parents too. You halve your party planning workload when you know that you only need to focus on children’s entertainment. Most parents will jump all over this, but you may have some helicopter moms who are reluctant to leave their children’s side. If any of the parents balk at leaving their child, try to sell them on the idea by pointing out that the situation basically offers them free babysitting that they would be wise to take advantage of.
Plan on Extra Guests Showing Up
Even when you keep the guest list small, you will often find that more kids than you expected show up at the party. Your child might invite a friend who wasn’t on the list, and some kids might show up after they invite themselves. The neighborhood kids are a good bet to do this especially if you are having the party outside. You should make sure to have extra food and goodies bags to pass out to any extra guests who show up.
Hand the Sugar out at the End
Make sure you pass those goodies bags out as parting gifts when the kids leave. The last thing you want is for the kids to raid the bags and eat a bunch of sugar at the start of the party. Hand out the goodies bags and serve the birthday cake towards the end of the party so you can avoid having to handle a bunch of hyper kids who are all hopped up on sugar. Let their parents deal with them instead.
If you follow these tips, you will find that planning your child’s birthday party is a piece of cake. Speaking of which, never forget that ice cream cake is always a home run at a kids’ birthday party. Don’t let planning the party seem like a chore. Relax and have fun with it. Just make sure to give the kids what they ask for and have lots of backup plans, and the birthday party will be a blast for your child and all the guests.
