“Are you mental?”, “Fuck that.” and “Good luck.”, these were the main responses I got when I told people that we were hosting a sixth birthday party at our house with eight six-year-old boys.
In case you are thinking of doing the same; here’s what I learned:
- Your child will forget that there is a limit to the invited/agreed number of children and start randomly inviting other children in their class at school.
- Going to a concert the same week as the birthday party is pretty knackering and not advisable.
- A kids birthday party is not a one-person job. Call in as many reinforcements as you can. It helps if some of them have an eye for health and safety.
- Keep your phone close by on the morning of the event. You will get lots of last minute messages while you are making cheese sandwiches and chopping lots of cucumber slices.
- Don’t bother with cucumber slices. Literally nobody will eat them.
- You will purchase enough food to feed a small army. It will hardly get touched. You will eat cold pizza slices for the following fortnight.
- The time it takes to set up the party is approximately double the duration of the party itself.
- At the age of six, you have entered the era of ‘parents can drop off’. May God have mercy on our souls.
- The kids who get dropped off will tell you that they are allowed things that they aren’t. Like lemonade.
- Purchasing a pre-made pass the parcel is an actual thing. And it’s genius. (And I wish I’d thought of it as a business idea.)
- In case of younger sibling attendees, make sure you have enough supplies to add more layers on to the pass the parcel at the last minute.
- Be clear with other adults involved in administering the pass the parcel game that the birthday child receives the large gift at the end of the game. Do not take it for granted that this is common knowledge, because apparently it’s not. And, despite my best efforts, it turns out that this cannot be communicated to other adults, (especially husbands) while the game is in progress, through the power of death stares alone.
- Even if you hide the toy swords and guns, the six year olds will find them. A ten-minute limit lessens the chance of anyone losing an eye.
- There will be older siblings. Have the Wifi password handy.
- A one-person trampoline is not big enough for eight six-year olds, even though they are only small.
- Pets (and possibly neighbours) will evacuate the area.
- Paper party bags are totally rubbish and the handles rip almost as soon as the kids touch them.
- Brace yourself for tears of some sort, at some point. I was naively aiming for no tears at all, but this is actually impossible. Especially when mummy comes to pick them up. Relief tears are a thing, and kids are only brave until they’re not.
- The time it takes to clear up from the party is approximately double the duration of the party itself.
- A bottle of Champagne and a takeaway is a pretty good way to celebrate hosting a six year old’s birthday party with zero visits to hospital and (almost) no tears.
All in all, the kids had a brilliant time, the 2 hours flew by very quickly, and there were no disasters.
The trouble with this is, we’ll be expected to repeat the same thing next year!
Any tips for kids birthday parties? Love to hear them.
Juggle Struggle blog 