How to Simplify your Child’s Birthday Party

I am absolutely horrendous at birthday parties. I try, really I do, but throwing elaborate birthday parties just doesn’t come easily to me. I get stressed out and overwhelmed and no one ends up having any fun.

The solution to this was so obvious once I took a second to stop running around like a crazy person trying to plan the perfect party — Simplify.

There’s nothing wrong with a simple party and I’ve found that my kids have just as much, if not more so because I’m not being a raving lunatic.

Win-win.

My 5 year old had never had a “real” birthday party before (unlike his oldest brother who has had an elaborate birthday party almost every year since he turned 3) so when his birthday started sneaking up on us, we knew it was time to get serious and throw him a real party complete with friends and party games.

I put my commitment to simplify birthdays to the test and got to work planning a low-stress birthday party. The result? We had a very happy birthday party and in the end still had a relatively unstressed mom so everyone was happy.

Here’s our tips for holding a successful and simple birthday party:

1. Make Small Things Exciting – I really wanted to make an effort to make the entire day special for my newly 5 year old. I remember growing up how exciting it was just to wake up in the morning on your birthday and I didn’t want him to have to wait all day for the excitement to start. Small things can make kids feel really special. We started out by making pancakes for breakfast (easy pancakes from a mix, not anything that would win me a chef of the year award). My son got 5 pancakes because he was 5 without any pressure to have to eat the whole stack if he didn’t want to. He loved having a huge stack of pancakes stuck in front of him and we took the opportunity to stick candles in the whole thing and sing “Happy Birthday” while we were at it.

2. Have a Simple Theme – Themes have the potential to cause a birthday party to get elaborately out of hand very quickly. They can also simplify things as long as you set some limits. Don’t aim for a Pinterest worthy birthday party unless you really enjoy that sort of thing. 5 Year olds really don’t care. Choose a simple theme your child likes (not one that necessarily photographs well) and choose a few simple decorations that complement the theme. A basic theme also makes gift buying easier because you can get several things that are related to the theme and they can serve as party games at the same time.

We were lucky enough to get to try out the Mattel’s new Batman Power Attack toy line so gifts were simple and even though I planned a few easy games, the kids mostly wanted to play with the toys once they were unwrapped.

My little Batman fan has a renewed interested in his favorite super hero and even my 6 and 9 year old have been having a blast playing with the Batman Power Attack Total Destruction Batmobile.

3. Let Go of Your Expectations – I’m big on planning but sometimes it’s better just to go with the flow. Despite my plans to simplify, I started with the lofty goal of making elaborate cupcakes from scratch. They would have been absolutely delicious. Everyone would have raved about them. I could have held my head high as a party planning master. Then I burned the cupcakes. #fail

I could have let that ruin my day but instead my husband ran out to the grocery store and we had store bought cupcakes with little super hero rings on them to match our Batman theme and my son was thrilled. So I let go of it and moved on and we all enjoyed the party despite the lack of homemade cupcakes.

4. Simplify the Goody Bags – I don’t know about you but one of the most stressful things about planning a party is making the goody bags. No matter how frugal I try to be, they end up costing way too much, especially when you consider the fact that they are just filled with cheap little toys. We used some pre-made goody bags from Hallmark this time around and it was just about as easy as you can get. I didn’t have to run to a million stores trying to find little toys that fit the theme and the kids loved them. If you can’t find something pre-made or easy to put together, I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with foregoing the goody bag. I know it drives me a little nuts when my kids come home from a party with extra toys so the parents will probably thank you.

5. Simplify the Games – I used to plan games that would keep kids busy for the entire party. By the end, I was always exhausted. This time we put together a few simple games but the kids were having so much fun playing with all the birthday toys that they didn’t even do most of them. My son’s favorite was our makeshift pin the tale on the donkey game. We blew up a picture of the Batmobile, stuck it to foam board and called it pin the wheel on the Batmobile. Huge hit!

6. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate – No one likes a stressed out mom. And mom is going to be stressed out if she has to do everything. Make things easy on yourself and delegate. If you don’t worry about things being done perfectly you’ll find you’ll have a lot more helpers. I put my 9 year old to work wrapping presents and didn’t care one bit whether or not there were lumps in the wrapping paper. It saved me from having to do the job and my 5 year old had just as much fun opening them.

I’m totally sold on having simpler birthday parties. The kids just enjoyed playing with their friends and it was a chance for the adults to visit without having to supervise dozens of games and calm down overstimulated kids. It’s been a few weeks since our party and my 5 year old is still talking about how much fun it was so that, in my book, is a success.

 

Disclosure: I was provided with a kit to host a Batman Power Attack birthday party by Mom Select, however all opinions are my own.