How do you handle Kid birthdays & families?

[MommytoaSweetie]

DD will be 3 at the end of January, and we're excited to celebrate her birthday! We're trying to figure out what to do in terms of a "party," though. For her 1st and 2nd birthdays, we didn't do a "kid" party, we just had a kid-friendly party for our family (my sisters and their husbands, her one cousin at the time, and grandparents). We still did some games, but they were a mix of adult (trivia) and child (like pin the tail on the donkey - played by adults was funny ). Anyway, this year, DD has a few friends (2) and her cousin who she'd like to invite to a birthday party. I'll ask her for her opinion after I get a few ideas, but I was wondering what others have done in a similar situation (and how it's worked). Obviously, her family (aunts/uncles/grandparents) would still like to celebrate with her, but the question is the best way to do it all. Here are the ideas I've thought of...

-have a kid birthday party separately and the family birthdy party the next day (both on the same weekend)
-somehow incorporate them on the same day, but still have separate parties - like kid party before nap and family over for dinner?
-have them together? although I don't think we'd have space in our tiny house for all that

Anything better? Or has one way worked best for you? I know in another few years DD probably won't want to do much with her family, but for now, they are her favorite people in the world, and I want her to be able to celebrate with them (she has said that she does). I don't want to do anything crazy-big (and we haven't before)... she wants a Princess theme (at least for the kid-part), and I have a few game ideas, but we'll have just come back a week beforehand from our Christmas gift trip to WDW so we don't need extra stress. Thanks so much for any ideas!

 

[brymolmom]

It is a tough thing. At 3....personally, I wouldn't worry about a kid party yet. There is PLENTY of time for that later.

I have a 7 and 6 year old...And stuggle with this. I don't do 'real' kid parties every year. Honestly they're too expensive and I hate all the gifts...I mean - not that I hate them - I love the thought, etc. but I just don't think there's any need for a kid to get more than 4 - 5 gifts for their bdays and between dh and I, grandparents, aunts, etc. they get that many anyway. I just think another 5 - 8 gifts is overkill and way too much.

I have let each of them choose a place 'out' that they want for a party once or twice. Other than that they usually get the choice 'Do you want to invite a bunch of kids over to our house for your party or do you want to just bring your cousins to a place like bowling or to the museum. That way it's easy - if they choose the museum we just do that on a completely different day, no gifts, etc. - a lunch out with ice cream for dessert. If they want to invite a few school friends - I'll let them have them over to the house as part of our 'family' party but starting a couple hours sooner so that the adults aren't watching kid games and listening to screeching the whole time. Kids come about 1:00 - 2:00 - play for a couple hours, have cupcakes. Adults are invited around 4:00 and kids can be picked up between 4:00 and 4:30. That way - only one "party" day. Cheaper than out somewhere cuz it's at the house and they can invite a couple kids over.

Now that they're getting older I'll likely start letting them just choose 2 friends for a sleep over and just skip the whole daytime thing altogether soon.

 

[design_mom]

I agree with the PP. Unless your child is asking for a "friend party" I think I'd skip it for now.

My kids are 5 and 9. They take birthday treats to daycare/preschool/school on their birthdays to celebrate with their friends and we have a family party with grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins.

One year, my DS asked if he could invite his friends and we let him (one party). But I think he felt "torn" between his friends and his family for the whole party and said he didn't want to invite friends the next year.

If you feel you must invite friends, I suggest separate parties on separate days (or even separate weekends). My sister does separate parties. Once she had the parties on the same weekend, but my niece was really grouchy at the second one. I think it was just too much stimulation for her in one weekend -- she was worn out and ready for some downtime. Now she does the friend party the weekend BEFORE her DD's birthday, and the family party the weekend AFTER the birthday.

 

[Dizney4evr]

I have 2 kids, DD6 and DS4. For my DD, she had a school party for her 4th bday. For her 5th and 6th birthdays, she has a small family party and then she invites a special friend or two out to lunch and the movies for her friend party. For DS, he's just had family birthdays so far.

 

[KibbyCat]

Chuck-E-Cheese is perfect for a 3-year-old party, if there is one near you. You can book one of their party packages as long as you have at least 4 kids attending (which sounds like you would - birthday girl, cousin, 2 friends). Each kid gets pizza, a drink (which you can upgrade from a standard paper cup to a cute collectible refillable cup for 99 cents each), and tokens, plus bonus gifts for the birthday child. You can bring in your own cake/cupcakes or buy theirs. They assign you a host to help get the food/clean-up and it is all reasonably priced. You even get extra tokens if you book it online. If you don't want to do the "package" you can always just have a walk-in party and just buy everything separately. Plus, the friends' parents would be there to help watch their own kids.

If you want to do a separate family thing, do the kid party at lunch and have your family over to your place for dinner. I've done CEC parties several times, and they always go over well for kids, but not for family. Grandparents don't want to go to CEC because it's loud, the pizza's not great, etc. so we always do something with the family later in the evening (or have a kid party on a different day and a family party on the actual birthday).

If you want, PM me your email address and I'll forward you the CEC coupon I received in my email today. I'm on their mailing list and always get special deals.

 

[Rylee]

We have 5 children, ages 8 - 28. (<--- Not a typo. )

Ages 1 - 5, we always had a family party at home with Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, cousins.

Ages 6 - 10, we have kids parties with their friends/classmates... YMCA pool or sports parties, bowling, Chuck E. Cheese, mini golf, laser tag, etc., usually held on weekends. Then on their actual birthday, we have Grandparents over for dinner and cake.

Ages 10 - 15 - We still have Grandparents over for dinner and cake on their actual birthday. As for friends, the kids would choose 1, 2 or 3 of their closest friends for a sleepover, a day at a local amusement/water park or activity of their choice.

The girls had Sweet Sixteen parties, but after that, their friends might arrange for them to all meet at a restaurant, but we no longer had parties for their friends.

(Our boys are 8 & 11... do boys have Sweet Sixteen parties? )

 

[AirGoofy]

We did not do kid party until our DDs (7,5) were 5 years old. All the family came to the house, which made it just as miserable as the holidays. Of course, I have awful in-laws who refuse to even speak to me in my own house yet DW keeps inviting them, giving money, etc. There are real moochers. Yet, I digress. Then, at 5 years old, we did a kid party and a family party. Now, we only do 1 party, whether we have 20 kid friends or 2, we go somewhere where there is a large area so that everyone can gather and then go home. We have done birthdays (depending on time of year) at gymnastics, Chuck E Cheese, swimming pool, and the science museum. The kids have fun, lots of room for pictures, and in 2 hours, everyone goes home.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

I didn't start doing "kid" parties until the kids were 5 (turning 6) and in school. That was when they started wanting to invite friends. I decided to do a seperate party the older relatives (great grandparents) couldn't really handle being around such a large group of kids.

It has worked out great for me to have the kids come from 12:00 pm to 2:00. Then they go home and family arrives about 4:00 pm. That gives me time to get the house in order for the family to arrive. I get it all done on one day. We really don't have multiple days because the boys birthdays are so close to Christmas we have too many other activities going on.

I never plan an outing to chuckee cheese or anything only because with December birthdays we are likely to have a snowstorm and no one would be able to drive into town. (We live in a rural area)

 

[tricia]

We have 5 children, ages 8 - 28. (<--- Not a typo. )

Ages 1 - 5, we always had a family party at home with Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, cousins.

Ages 6 - 10, we have kids parties with their friends/classmates... YMCA pool or sports parties, bowling, Chuck E. Cheese, mini golf, laser tag, etc., usually held on weekends. Then on their actual birthday, we have Grandparents over for dinner and cake.

Ages 10 - 15 - We still have Grandparents over for dinner and cake on their actual birthday. As for friends, the kids would choose 1, 2 or 3 of their closest friends for a sleepover, a day at a local amusement/water park or activity of their choice.

The girls had Sweet Sixteen parties, but after that, their friends might arrange for them to all meet at a restaurant, but we no longer had parties for their friends.

(Our boys are 8 & 11... do boys have Sweet Sixteen parties? )

Yep, this sounds like us. My oldest DS is 12 1/2, and for his last 2 parties we have gone to the paintball field. This gets pretty expensive, so we paid for the kids entry and a bit of paint, but then their gift to him was their presence and they paid for more paint if they wanted.

 

[sk!mom]

We've tried this every possibe way over the years.

At 2,3,4 since my children would usually have only a couple of friends who were normally family friends, we always just had one big combined party of friends and family at our house. The games would be kid games and the adults enjoyed watching and visiting.

Once the kids hit school age and began to have parties with many friends, we tried different ways of seperating the celebrations. My favorite way to split it up is to have family for a meal on the actual birthday and then the friend party on a convienent (weekend) day. The absolute best is when the birthday falls on the weekend and we can have family over for brunch. The birthday child is excited to have people over to celebrate first thing in the morning, brunch is very inexpensive, and people tend to move on fairly quickly as they have things to do. We can then move on to preparing for the friend party in the afternoon/evening. If the birthday is a weekday, then we normally have family meet us at a restaurant for a birthday dinner.

 

[lecach]

Ages 1-3 we just did family parties for DS. But that included about 14 adults and no kids.

Age 4 he wanted a party with his cousins so we had a small sleepover party at the lake house. We also had dinner with a few relatives but not the entire group.

Age 5 he really wanted a party at home with his classmates from daycare. He had already been to several of their parties. So we invited the whole class (10 kids) and one other child. EVERYONE came and 3 brought siblings. We had 14 kids!! On his actual birthday DH, my Mom, DS and I went to a pizza restaurant with DS's best friend who has the same birthday and his parents.

For every birthday we've also taken in cupcakes to daycare and in some cases treat bags.

Not sure what we'll do next year when DS is in Kindergarten. It will NOT be at home again though .

 

[kkmcan]

Unless your child is asking for the kid party, I'd wait a couple of years. Once you start with big birthday parties it's hard not to have one every year. We did those between the ages of 4/5 and 8. Now we have a couple of friends over for a sleepover. We sometimes have grandparents over for cake and ice cream on a different day.

 

[MommytoaSweetie]

Thank you all SO much for all the different ways and ideas! DD is asking to have her friend and cousin come over and have "a princess party," (she went to the friend's similar party in the summer). We're thinking of having a small "princess tea party" or something (pretty much just a playdate with cake) for the 3 girls (and our youngest of course), and then having dinner at our house for the family that night. Hopefully that will work?