Birthday party
Last year, I wrote a post for DotMoms about my stress over my son’s birthday party — whether to invite the whole class, where to have it, what to do. (As it turned out, he got very sick the day of this party and we had to cancel.)
This year, given essentially the same set of facts, we decided to go the rec center route, and invite his whole class. Basically, we decided that we’d rather spend the money than the emotional energy worrying about whether we were doing the right thing. And I’m hopeful that next year, with D in elementary school, there will be less social pressure to invite the whole class.
After considering pirate and Buzz Lightyear themes, D asked for a Max and Ruby party (after reading Bunny Party). This was reflected in the invitations, the cakes (Max’s chocolate mud cake and Ruby’s raspberry fluff cupcakes), and the goody bags. The kids ran themselves crazy in the play room for an hour and then enjoyed the cake, balloons, and my husband’s juggling. We were a bit frazzled the whole time — the rec center schedules parties pretty tightly together, so we couldn’t prep the party room in advance — but I think the party was a success. Even if we didn’t have The Great Zucchini.
I’m wiped. Good night.
January 29th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
What, you mean you didnt feel like spending $300 for a gambling but apparently very very funny entertainer to come to your party?
I’m a DC childcare provider (fancy name for freelance babysitter) and I’ve only seen him once. I do recall the kids laughed very hard, but the price…oy.
Your party sounds good though;)
January 29th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Hey Elizabeth:
This means our kids must be almost exactly the same age. I had a b-day party for my 5 year old daughter this weekend too. We go the route of not inviting the whole class (that’s acceptable in our school, I believe), and having it at home. We invited a puppet show person (and I don’t mind the price). Is 300 really that unreasonable? I feel like I’m supporting personal performance. And I’d spend that much on ballet tickets, so what’s the big deal for an entertainer? I mean if we’re talking 300 ($3000) would be steep for me.
Our house is big, so what this entailed for us is ordering pizzas, and making goodie bags. We had the puppet person, but otherwise, the only activity was to let the kids run wild through the house. I think as they get older, this will get more complicated, but I think my daughter will probably like kind of crafty girly parties as she gets older (and that point, I suspect her friends will all be girls).
bj
January 30th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Having had a few birthday parties for my now-5-yr-old (birthday late october, so built-in halloween theme, thank goodness), we’ve gone a new route for my almost-2-yr-old: We leave town for her birthday. Last year we visited my sister in LA and had a cake at dinner; this year we’re going skiing with my cousins. I LOVE it – makes life so much more calm. Of course, she may start developing an opinion about this someday . . . and the grandparents aren’t too psyched . . . but I like it so much better than the late October madness, with all sorts of visiting aunts and grandparents and kids who are so hepped up on Halloween candy that they’re INSANE. And it also cuts down on the influx of plastic crap to my house, something I’m starting to REALLY crack down on.
January 30th, 2006 at 10:11 am
You know, this talk of anxiety about our children’s b-day parties made me think of some other conversations that I’ve been thinking about and talking about, that I offer up as possible blogging topics for you. Please don’t interpret that as a demand or even a request, but more of information of what at least one of your regular readers has been thinking about that you might be thinking about too.
Do we worry more than our parents? My parents live nearby, so this is a question that I can discuss with them. And it’s absolutely clear that my husband worries way more than my dad did. I worry about a broader range of things than my mom did, but perhaps not in more quantity over all.
What is the right relationshp between parents and teachers? I know an elementary school teacher, and we’ve recently been having conversations about the “parents who have too much time on their hands.” She defines those as ones who are worrying about kids who are doing fine, and spend a lot of time interacting with the teachers.
What about Judith Warner? I’ve been reading her columns since they started appearing in the NYTimes (is it behind the subscription lock? I can’t remember), and I am very impressed. I know people complained about her book. But I’ve been feeling that she’s been getting some topics (for example, a recent column on hirschman, which pointed out the demands on men of non-gender neutral model) right on.
bj
January 30th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Thanks for this. I feel like the 4-year-old party is the one that really starts to perplex the parents. The kids are socially aware enough to want parties, so you have the whole dilemma of who to invite.
Here in NYC we don’t have an apartment big enough to hold more than 3 or 4 kids. So it’s not a matter of whether or not to have a party here, it’s where else we can have it. We’ve been to way too many mediocre parties that cost the parents $500 just for site rent.
January 30th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Sounds fun. We’ve never invited all the kids in our daughter’s class to her birthday party–mostly because our house is not big enough. This year, we caught a real break when she decided to have her first-ever sleepover, and it was easy to limit it to just two other kids.
January 30th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Happy Birthday! I’m glad it went well.
We didn’t invite all the preschool kids but that’s the trend at this preschool. And I did have a night’s anxiety after the invitations went out, and had to get reassurance from the teacher that such a policy was okay.
I’m sure we’ll be renting venues sooner or later, so it’s good to hear that it can work. So far, our experiences have been a little uneven as the attendees.
January 30th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Our house isn’t as small as a NYC apartment, but it would be hard to have a party for more than 3 or 4 five-year-olds in it. Not impossible, but you’d have to plan activities to keep them busy every minute so that they didn’t run wild. The rec center made life much easier.
I don’t think you *have* to invite everyone in the class, but most people do. If we only invited people who had invited D to their parties, we’d be close enough to the whole class that it would be sort of awkward. And D’s enough of an extrovert that he considers almost everyone in the class “his friends.”
January 30th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
The party pressure is all about parents early on, but certainly influences the attitudes of children towards parties. My daughter is only 20 months and there was so much pressure to have a big 1 year party from family and friends. Granted, since we didn’t have a big Christening, everyone expected an invite to the birthday. What is unbelievable is a 1 year old having friend parties at gymboree along with family parties. Does a one-year-old really care? Children are losing their innocence extremely fast in our society; we are outdoing the fifties era is excess. The best party I ever attended as a child offered challenging team oriented games, which I eagerly awaited every year. My friend’s father had the most creative games, probably developed in the 1940s during his childhood, which included team competitions for prizes along with the tried and true individual ones like hot potato, musical chairs, etc. Recently I attended a christening that offered kids alot of activites (dj with entertainment and props, arts & crafts table, etc.), but the kids were the most excited and had the most fun with musical chairs. It proved to me that some classic games that require skill are more fun and memorable than expensive entertainment and lavish parties.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:34 pm
My elementary school had a rule — not enforced by anyone, but pretty much followed — that if you invited more than half the class (~20 people), you had to invite the entire class, and that you couldn’t invite all the girls but one (or all the boys but one). There was an enforced rule that you could not give out invitations at school unless you invited the entire class. A general rule is that if you were invited to X’s party in the past 1-2 months, you invited X back. This worked well for my sisters, too.
February 4th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
childrens’ birthdays, excess, and our own solutions
Buzzing over the blogs the past week has been discussion about the Great Zucchini. Specifically, there’s been a lot of talk about the Washington Post article that reveals an extravant underbelly to the world of children entertainment. I first heard…
April 1st, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I’m interested in opinions… My soon to be 6 yr old daughter wants a “ballet” party, we won a gift certificate for a couple of the local ballet students (high school and college) to come and show the girls a few moves etc., we’ve purchased most of the ballerina type invites and supplies; and now my husband thinks I need to change the theme and invite the boys in her kindergarten class. She has gone to a boy’s birthday party recently (it’ll be 1 month before hers). Her class of 15 has 10 boys and 5 girls. We’re planning on all the girls in her school class, a couple of girls from the other school kindergarten class, and a couple of her ballet class good friends. I think at 6 yrs old it’s okay to invite just the girls. I don’t have any experience on what is generally “accepted” in our area or school. What do you think?
April 21st, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I just had my son’s 5th Birthday party. I did the dirt cake theme, put it in a little plastic wheelbarrow, and used a small garden shovel to dig it out. I also put gummy worms inside and brought candy decorations that said Happy Birthday. I took frosting from a tube and wrote his name and put 5 candles in it and a #5 candle too. This went over well. Wasn’t too hard and not to expense either. Then the boys- 7 of them spent the night. The boys just had the run of the house until 9:00. Then they watched Curious George in their sleeping bags on the living room floor where they all crashed.