Your children’s birthday parties – love them or hate them?

In your head, you have this idyllic idea of a group of beautifully behaved, smartly dressed little darlings all enjoying pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey all going home with a smile and a piece of cake.

Then there is the reality.  Sugar-crazed, red-faced, sweaty little devils who are easily bored, rampaging  around the party venue reeking havoc and leaving you with a feeling of general exhaustion and  never wanting to do it again.

That is without the cost of it all.  It can be really surprising how the cost of paying for the party, party bags and the food can seriously mount up and of course most children still expect a large present to go with it. This makes for a big financial drain year in year out and worse if you have more than one child.

L has already made a few plans for this year’s event and it has got me thinking about the whole party thing again.  Kids today do seem to expect to have a party every year.  That is entirely our fault of course by setting the precedent.  I only ever had one party as a child and that was perfectly normal then.  It was my seventh birthday and I had the most brilliant time.  I can still remember it now.  How many of our children’s parties will be remembered like that when they have so many?

When O was small,it was the norm to have a party every year.  Usually it was a play barn type affair which cut out a lot of the parental stress but also emptied the purse.  When I say it was the norm, all of his ‘friends’ at nursery and then school had parties every year; one of them even had two (the mother felt that a year was too long so she let him have two birthdays!!). O was my first child and life as a first time mother often felt a bit like treading water and so I went with the flow and we did play barn parties, bouncy castle parties and then probably a few more play barn parties.  

One year, O’s dad decided that we would have a ‘traditional’ party.  He is quite creative and he made all of these traditional games with the idea that the children would do a round robin of the games with a few bigger games along the way. It was a really lovely idea and he made some wonderful games but I did have my doubts about how it would all work. How difficult could a group of twenty six year olds be?  Yes twenty six year olds.  Entertaining was the word. There were six adults and could we control these kids? No we could not.  The lovely traditional games had all been played with and got bored of within about twenty minutes, leaving us with and hour and forty minutes of rampaging children.  

When R came along and was of the party having age, I said that enough was enough and that whilst I didn’t want to be the world’s meanest mother and deprive him of having parties, I was not and I repeat was not, going to have parties every year. With L only nineteen months younger, that gave me double the incentive. Yet we still seem to have had more than our fair share of parties over the last few years.

Children’s parties are a huge business these days and those parents who lack time or inspiration can pay oodles of cash for a variety of different people/animals/things to entertain their little ones.  A mum I chat to at swimming was looking into the possibility of having a donkey party for her daughter where a chap would bring three donkeys to their garden for a couple of hours.  The cost?  A mere £290.  £290!! I know that it is a lovely idea and all but £290!! I did  have to say that I thought that was a ridiculous amount.  She was still thinking about it when I last spoke to her but was also toying with the idea of having a pamper party and getting someone to come in and do hair and make up with the girls instead which was still quite expensive but not as much as having three donkeys trampling the garden.

I do wonder if we are in serious danger of losing the point of birthday parties.  We want to make our children happy and to bring them together with a few friends and maybe family to celebrate their special day. It shouldn’t have to cost the earth or be stressful for everyone involved and I genuinely don’t think that there has to be a party every year.

There will certainly never be any donkey parties in this house, but in recent years I have tried to be more creative; gone are the play barn parties in favour of  discos, Lego parties, climbing parties and sports parties in the garden. The boys went to a treasure hunt party last year and it is still ranked as their favourite party.  Such a simple idea and the kids loved it, although you would have to have reasonable weather.  Another friend hired the local village hall and had a Nerf gun party.  She hardly spent a lot and again the kids had the best time.

As time has gone on, I have realised that parties  don’t have to cost the earth and you can ensure that your child has a great birthday celebration with a bit of imagination and not too much money.  Last summer, we had a sport themed party for L’s seventh birthday and it was one of the best parties that we have ever had.  A few friends came to the house, we did races and games in the garden, a bit of food and everyone went home with a medal, a few sweets and most importantly a smile.  The wonders of the Internet with blogs and sites like Pinterest give us amazing access to ideas and with a bit of time and effort, you really can achieve memorable inexpensive parties.

L’s party for this year is in the early ideas stage, but I am determined that I am going to do it on a budget and hopefully it will be lovely.  Maybe if I am really lucky I will even get everyone to respond to the invitations too .. but that is a whole different blog post.