If you've got kids between the ages of, say, 4 and 12, my guess is that you've been to roughly 50 birthday parties in the last couple of years. Anyone else feel like parties are becoming akin to cold-war-era nuclear proliferation?
This week, my six-year-old got invited to a movie-night sleepover party where the parent promised not to let the kids stay up past midnight.
Midnight?!?! For a seven-year-old's birthday? We put our girl down by 7:30. If she's up till 9, she's junk the whole next day. Midnight? Yeah, I'd be expecting a complete and total trainwreck for about a week.
And I'm sure they'll be pumping sugar into them, but in my experience seven-year-olds after about 8 p.m. are a pain in the butt, whiney, loud, with emotions on a hair trigger. I'm not sure I can imagine a less fun time than hanging around with 10 seven-year-olds at 11 p.m. Nightmare.
Maybe we just put our kids down way earlier than everyone else? Has no one read
Healthy Sleep, Happy Child?
Our daughter has also been to roller-skating parties (again, she's six - I was terrified of a broken elbow the entire time. Not one of the kids could skate), parties at places like Joker's (full of video games and dirty ball pits), and a party at a professional establishment that hosts cooking parties. At all of these, the hosts were running around like crazy people and probably laid out way too much cash.
Why? These kids are six and seven years old! They'd be perfectly happy running around the backyard with a ball or swinging on the backyard swingset or playing hide and seek or tag. They don't need thousand-dollar parties that evaporate into thin air as soon as the day is done. They don't need elaborate planning and purchasing. (Have you tried Mentos in Coke bottles? Super fun - but it doesn't last very long.) They don't even need presents, most of them.
We started a tradition of asking kids to bring a few dollars for our local library in lieu of a present a few years ago and our daughter has never missed the presents and the library has added dozens of books, each one now bearing a little card in front with our daughter's name on it. She was thrilled the first time she saw it.
Do these people ask their kids what they want to do for fun? Do they ask their kids if they even want more plastic toys that light up and make noise and that will break and run out of batteries and probably never be used more than twice? Shouldn't the fun of the party be the friends and family you don't get to hang out with enough? Shouldn't we be trying to make lasting memories with things that will have an impact on their lives for years to come?
Remember the time dad played tag with you and all your friends and he couldn't catch anyone? Remember the time mom sprayed you all with the hose and everybody ran around like crazy laughing their heads off? Remember that time your sister snorted juice out of her nose because you dropped your birthday cake in your lap? How can we create more fun experiences with the people we love?
People, I know you want to give your kids a great time and prove how much you care about them by making their birthdays the biggest deal they can possibly be, but, please, put down your weapons of mass party construction and simplify your lives. The kids will have more fun that way, because you'll be having more fun that way.