The 7 Worst Things About Kids' Birthday Parties
As a parent, I have a love-hate relationship with both throwing and attending birthday parties for children. Lately, it is more of the latter. I still do both, and am just coming off of hosting my youngest daughter's first birthday party, but begrudgingly so, if I'm being honest.
I even tried not to have one for her. We were just going to do a family luncheon. But lo and behold, between Pinterest and Etsy and looking back guiltily at my older's first birthday pictures, we had a full-blown fiesta.
Birthday parties are undeniably adorable, and I really do love the idea of celebrating each and every one of our little friends, but they are also SUCH a pain — again, both throwing and attending them. Yes, I realize that I'm guilty of causing this pain, too!
For instance, there are always multiple ones on the same day, causing you to judge whose to attend or worse, attempt to attend them all, depleting your entire weekend. There are venues that are so overused you see the name on the invitation and just can't even. There are the logistics that go into hosting that lead to sleepless nights for me. And that is just the tip of the iceberg…
1.Handling the never-ending planning.
It may just be a 3rd birthday, but it's really a mini-wedding. It needs a theme, colors, invitation, food, cake, entertainment, decor, favors … and there isn't even an open bar.
2. Figuring out where to draw "THE INVITATION LINE."
When your kids are small, they really don't have any friends. So you invite yours and their kids. They eventually have their own friends — but you still have yours and their kids, too. And they have a random kid they love at the playground, and just three kids from their class that they like, and 82 young cousins … WHO GETS TO COME?!
3. Picking appropriate presents.
I hate choosing them, and I spend way too much time trying to figure out if it's the right thing for that particular child. I always end up feeling like I spent too much or too little, and know that it goes largely unappreciated in the midst of getting 25 presents at the same time. Sigh.
4. Dealing with the endless repetition.
Every party is the same! You get to a venue, the kids go nuts, they hopefully calm down enough to do some sort of organized activity, they eat, someone (usually my daughter) has a tantrum during happy birthday, they eat cake and leave. Over and over and over.
5. Having your kids eat insane amounts of sugar.
Juice, cake, and candy, oh my! Combine these three triggers with the fact that she just spent hours bouncing in an inflatable castle and is exhausted, and it's a recipe for an explosion that BOOM, undoubtedly occurs as soon as we say it's time to leave.
6. Receiving favors you just don't want.
I appreciate getting something useful like a small book, sidewalk chalk, or personalized water bottle or even bucket. But I hate the cheap crap from the dollar bins at Party City that ends up at the bottom of our toy bin (at best) or in my younger daughter's mouth (at worst).
7. The fact that they'll never remember it!
Either A) they're too young to remember that they even attended this event, or B) they're old enough to have been to so many that they all jumble together in their mind. You think your event was so memorable? Sorry. Think again.
At the end of the day, all of this is worth dealing with for all of your friends, because on your child's day, you forget all the drama as soon as you see the smile on your kiddo's face as they tell you this was the BEST DAY EVER. And you sigh, because it was, and you only have 364 days to plan the next one.
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