Keeping Your Child’s Next Party Stress Free

Planning a birthday party for a child can sometimes feel like a daunting task. For most sane people, the prospect of letting 50 kids ricochet around your home like so many pucks on an air hockey table, wreaking havoc on your clean carpet and terrorizing your pets just doesn’t sound that appealing. If you fall into that group, first of all, congrats on your sanity. Second of all, you don’t have to lose your mind at your child’s next party. Here are a few tips to minimize the stress without minimizing your child’s fun on their special day.

Short and Sweet

Don’t feel the need to drag the party out longer than a few hours at most. Depending on your child’s age, a two-hour party is absolutely acceptable and is probably about as long as their attention span can handle. If you’re child has reached the age of eight or older, three hours is fine but anything more than that and the kids will start to get bored and you’ll start to tense up.

A Few Good Friends

There is some sort of strange obligation that a lot of parents feel to invite the entire class to the party. This is not true in the least. Your child will probably have just as much fun with 5 or 6 of their closest friends as they will with the entire class. In fact, at bigger parties, the birthday boy or birthday girl will often feel obligated to talk to classmates they don’t usually interact with or get along with, and this can cut down on their fun.

Keep The Menu Simple

Children haven’t normally developed an extremely sophisticated palette so you can usually get away with (nay, be applauded for) providing pizza and hot dogs as the party’s main fare. Obviously for dessert you’ll want to serve some sort of cake and ice cream combo. You can set up a dessert station with slices of cake and a few half gallons of ice cream so the kids can handle serving themselves.

Wide Open Spaces

If you’re wondering how to avoid opening your house up to a group of hyperactive kiddoes, look for a change of venue. Neighborhood pools can be great options for parties, but if you decide to go this route, make sure all of the guests can swim; otherwise someone might feel left out. If a pool party isn’t an option, think about an open space where the kids can run around play games like kickball, freeze tag and soccer. Public parks are great options for stress free parties. Try to take the birthday boy or birthday girl’s opinion into consideration as much as possible. It is, after all, their party.

Teamwork

Don’t be afraid to invite a few friends to help chaperone the party. Not only is this a litmus test for true friendship, it will cut down on the stress dramatically. Most parents are more than willing to look after their kids at a party so if you’re friends with parents of any of the invitees, ask them to tag along.

     - Lisa

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Lisa is a guest blogger who writes about family issues, party planning and using Super Mario Bros party supplies to throw great themed birthday parties.