Birthday Party Bloopers and Lessons Learned 

Sometimes at work, projects don’t go well. When that happens, we have a postmortem meeting. We discuss what went wrong and how to improve the process next time. Someone types the notes, documenting the discussion, and emails them around. Everyone feels better and, we hope, learns something.

Until my daughter Katie’s fourth birthday party, I’d never needed a postmortem for a personal event. But after hosting her entire preschool class, my wife and I realized we’d blundered badly. Anticipating years of future parties for Katie and her sister, we wanted to understand our mistakes. So, from the trenches, here are our party bloopers and lessons learned:

Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee
When the doorbell rang, Katie ran to answer it. I followed. (I was the greeter while my wife finished prepping for the party.) Katie had waited weeks for this. We’d hyped her birthday endlessly.

Katie half-heartedly greeted her guests and immediately began poking at the gifts they held—and not in a cute, innocent way. Instead, she was probing the way a dog noses a butcher’s bag. My sweet little girl disappeared as the birthday monster reared its spoiled head.

I reproached her, but the bell rang again. For the next 10 minutes, I was the doorman. My wife was in the kitchen, and where was Katie? Snooping through gift bags and shaking boxes.

Lesson Learned
Anticipation is nice; hysteria isn’t. By party day Katie was over-stimulated before anyone had even arrived. We should have had two greeters at the door. I couldn’t settle the first guests because I was welcoming more. And this left no one to watch our dangerously excited child.

Open sesame
After all the guests had arrived, I tried to pull Katie from her snooping, but she wouldn’t budge. While rifling through the presents, she had uncovered one of her most coveted gifts: a fancy new Barbie.

My wife and I take pride in our consistent parenting approach and don’t yield to whining or crying. But a roomful of people awaited us. As I tried to pry Katie’s surprisingly strong fingers from the box, she got teary and pleaded, “Daddy, please let me open it.”

To avoid a fight, I caved in. Big mistake. She joined the party, but was more interested in playing with and protecting her new toy than anything else. Katie’s let’s-all-play attitude is one of her virtues. But clearly, as she and Barbie huddled in the corner, virtue had vanished.

Lesson Learned
Make presents disappear immediately. Lock them in a bedroom, put them in the basement, hide them in your bomb shelter. Do whatever it takes.

Free-range kids
We’d loaded our living room with between-game activities for the kids. And we’d moved furniture so they could romp. They loved it, so we let them burn off steam for a while.

Then we decided to start organized games. First up: duck-duck-goose. Katie said they played it in school, so I assumed it’d be a hit.

A few of the kids shuffled over. We sat on the floor—four players, including me. Our sad little group couldn’t even form a circle. I told them to forget it. They happily returned to the chaos.

Lesson Learned
Don’t ask, “Who wants to play?” Say instead, “Now we’re going to play.” If you let kids choose between organized games or running around like maniacs, maniacs will win every time. Free play is great, but not at the expense of organized games.

Game gaffe
My wife yelled, “Who wants to play pin the horn on the unicorn?” When she added “for prizes,” the kids lined up. We had previously decided it would be less confusing to let everyone play and pass the bowl of prizes afterward.

The first kid placed the horn on the unicorn’s face, then he turned around eagerly for his prize. We told him he did a good job, but prizes would wait. He went from excitement to dejection, turned, and left. This became a trend. Once the kids realized prizes were postponed, many dropped out of playing.

After the game, we tried to reward the participants. But we’d forgotten who had played and who hadn’t. Chaos ensued. Ironically, our efforts to avoid confusion had fostered it.

Lesson Learned
Keep kids interested. If we had given prizes immediately, it would have created buzz. Since the kids didn’t see a payoff, the activity fizzled.

Presents of mind
After pizza and cake, we were ready for presents. We piled a mountain of gifts in front of Katie. As she held up each newly unwrapped treasure, she beamed with pleasure and gushed multiple thank-yous.

Then one gift caught her fancy and she wanted to play with it. I evaluated the odds of opening the toy—imprisoned by dozens of small, gray wires—quickly. I said we had to open the others. She ran away, screaming, “I want to open this ooonnneee.” She went to her room and slammed the door. Ouch!

Lesson Learned
Too many kids + too many presents = too much stimulation. The age-old advice that the number of guests at a birthday party should equal your child’s age, plus one, is solid.

Plumbing the depths
My wife ran over and whispered, “You have to go to the bathroom.”

Huh?

As I approached our downstairs bathroom, I saw a little boy wringing his hands, with an odd, guilty look on his face.

The water in the toilet was millimeters from the top. At the bottom of the bowl sat a basketball-sized wad of tissue. I remained calm; a nervous child was watching. I said, “No problem. I just have to get a plunger.”

I crossed the living room slowly. Once out of sight, I ran upstairs, grabbed a plunger, and darted back down. In the living room, I again slowed, trying to keep the plunger out of view to avoid concern or disgust.

I didn’t see my little friend. Had he rejoined the party?

Then I heard a flush.

Like a soldier storming an enemy encampment, I ran to the bathroom, plunger across my chest like a rifle. I rounded the corner in time to see the boy jump back, avoiding a deluge. He fled, tears in his eyes.

Lesson Learned
No matter how much we planned, regardless of everything we anticipated, we could never have foreseen the porcelain Niagara Falls. Expect the unexpected. Just react quickly and calmly. You can’t control it all. 

Frozen in time
The two-hour party felt like a lifetime. Finally everyone left. My wife and I were spent. Our house was in ruins, toys everywhere, pizza splattered in horrifying places.

Katie—who had reappeared briefly—had returned to her room and collapsed in her bed, asleep with her loot.

We’d hosted 24 people (13 kids, 10 parents, one sibling). That’s too many. It had overwhelmed the birthday girl and left my wife and me too frazzled to be effective.

Don’t misunderstand: the kids had a great time. But it wasn’t the structured fun you want in a birthday party. Instead it was more like the fun kids have when an inexperienced substitute teacher runs a class.

Lesson Learned
If there are so many guests your child has a meltdown, it’s not worth it. Know your own limits—and your child’s—and remember that less is almost always more.
 

Thomas Gada is a freelance writer and dad from Rockaway, New Jersey who continues to learn life’s lessons.

November 2009