Birthday Party Planning

I find celebrating my children's birthdays challenging. I want to find a way to make the day feel special, to make the child feel as though their friends have helped celebrate, and to feel good about the values I am revealing and the choices I am making.

Many of Patrick's friends have a party somewhere other than the family home. It seems to me that this trend is supported by parents for several reasons. First, a party at home is a lot of work and a party somewhere else eases some of the work. Second, once a child has been to several parties at fancy places, they start asking for them for themselves. I prefer home parties for several reasons, but the big one is that they are more personal.

A party at home means a lot of cleaning - both to prepare and to reset afterwards. A party at home means planning activities, choosing a menu, and managing some number of children other than your own. A party at home means having space for the guests to play and being willing to incur damage in that place.

A party at home can be cheaper or more expensive than a party at another location. Some party places provide full service (activities, food, cake, loot bags). The cheaper places provide activities, pizza and juice, and a party room while parents bring cake and loot bags. Many party places have a highly structured schedule of activities, which may or may not include much time for the guests to play with each other.

There is an ease to "event" parties in that some of the work is replaced by financial outlay. But, I decided that I would host Patrick's party at our house. I am reluctant to create the habit of "event" parties because they do not support my underlying goal that birthdays be an emotional event rather than a commercial event. Patrick had a party at a farm last year and so I wanted the party at home this year. Last year, the house was swamped with the tools to care for three infants and could not practically be turned into a celebration of Patrick for a day. This year, with three toddlers, it was easier to make the day about Patrick and to stay at home.

I chose to make things easier at home by ordering pizza as the main food, serving fruit that the grocery store had prepped, and by hiring a babysitter to take the little kids to the park while the big kids played at our house. I also said "yes" to every mother who offered to stay for the party and help out.

I want Patrick's friends to feel good about coming to the house, so I wanted not to fall down on any of the items kids expect at birthday parties: food, cake, activities, and the parentally-dreaded loot bags. But, I also wanted to maintain a sense of casual fun. Patrick has friends from many venues: 2 schools, the neighborhood, and family friends. Many of his friends do not know each other well as the only time they come together is at Patrick's party, but some of them are in school together and see each other often. So, one of my challenges to myself was to provide activities that make the children who do not know each other comfortable. I knew this would mean a mix of in-the-moment introductions and suggestions, individual and group activities, and a dose of shared laughter.

When I spoke to Patrick about his party, he asked to have a Superhero party. Patrick only knows a few Superheroes: Spiderman, Batman, Superman and the Hulk. These would become the basis of the party theme. Patrick had recently been to a Spiderman party that he really enjoyed and clearly wanted to have a similar party for himself. I didn't want him to compare the parties directly, so I made it clear that there were some things that we couldn't do, but I did incorporate a few of the things he liked best about the other party.

Patrick's invite list included a mix of boys and girls, so I really wanted to include some female superheros in the party theme. Most of the prepacked party supplies for superhero parties are male or hard to get, so this proved to be a challenge. I found stickers of The Incredibles, so I could put Elastigirl and Violet on the invitations and decorations. I found images of some of the female characters from The X-Men World to add to the decorations. Otherwise, I focused on the heroes Patrick knows. But, I really felt that some female images were important, even if they were subtle.

I planned a few formal games (Pin the Supervillain on Spidey's web, Hot Potato, and a version of musical chairs involving standing on Batman's logo). I had small prizes for the winner of pin the villain on the web, superhero stickers between every layer of the hot potato, and temporary tattoos for people as they were eliminated from the musical chairs games. I also made spiderweb paddles for batting balloons around the room.

We have several climbing structures in and out of the house and lots of toys, so anytime the kids were all playing well with the house toys, I just let them play. When it seemed that someone was feeling left out or getting bored, I brought out the next group game. To keep the casual nature of the event, anyone who wanted not to play the formal game was given explicit permission to play with what interested them.

As a craft, I bought some masks to decorate and capes for the kids to wear and take home. I put crayons, markers, superhero stickers and self-adhesive jewels out to use as decorations. The masks and capes were a big hit and the kids were thrilled that they could take them home. Several parents thought the mask and cape would have been a sufficient party favour, which I will remember when planning for future parties. But, Patrick thinks of giving out loot bags as part of having a party, so I had also made loot bags.

The loot bags were pencil cases with fun patterns rather than disposable plastic bags with licensed characters on them. The loot itself had been chosen by Patrick with my guidance. I refuse to give out candy as part of loot bags and like the items to be things I would feel okay about Patrick getting. This year the bags had stickers, pencils and activity books plus a little parachute toy.

My final thing about loot bags is that Patrick gives them out. I do not give them out. I help Patrick make sure that everybody gets one, but it is his job to give out the bags and personally say "thank you for coming to my party" to each of his guests. To me, this is the valuable part of loot bags. It gives Patrick a chance to learn about saying goodbye to his guests nicely, to take himself away from the playtime and see people to the door. And, he also learns something about how good it feels to give things away when people appreciate the bag.

The party planning was a lot of work. The games took time to decide on and to make. Shopping for the materials for the craft took some ingenuity given my tight schedule and the trouble involved in taking 3 toddlers and a soon to be 5 year-old shopping. Cleaning the house was a challenge since the main play spaces are dominated by toddler play and needed to be converted to places for Kindergarten-aged kids. The party schedule was a little funky - food was later than expected since it took longer to get the pizza than we had planned for.

But, the kids had fun. One of the moms who stayed to help did a tremendous job of pointing out some things I hadn't thought of and getting a few extra things taken care of. In the end, this year we all felt good about Patrick's party. And that is what really matters.