Ten tips on how to survive a child's birthday

by Eva Dorothée SchmidPublished October 28, 2016Updated March 26, 2019

Most children celebrate their first child’s birthday at the age of three or four. This can be a real challenge for mothers – especially if the invited children stay alone. Ten tips on how to survive your child’s first child’s birthday.

1. Invitations

The child can decide who is invited. The age of the birthday child is a guideline for how many children are allowed to celebrate. At three years old allowed to so about three children are invited. If possible, make sure that there is not just a boy or girl with you. If the parents are still at the party, you can of course invite more children.

It is advisable to distribute the invitations three weeks in advance. If you want to make an invitation yourself with the birthday child, you will find two simple ideas in this post. What does it have to be on the invitation card? Most people write when the celebration begins – but you should also be informed when the celebration ends. You should ask for confirmation and give your telephone number or email address. It is also important to write on whether you are celebrating with or without parents.

2. Duration and time of the celebration

Three hours are completely sufficient, especially if the children were in kindergarten in the morning, they are completely exhausted in the afternoon. A quality The alternative is to celebrate on a Saturday or Sunday, perhaps even in the morning. Then you should clarify early on whether the children to be invited have time.

3. Get reinforcements

Looking after five four-year-olds alone is a real challenge and will definitely turn into stress. Get help! Either your husband takes time off or grandma comes for reinforcement or you ask another mother to help. This is also useful if a child does not want to stay without a mom.

4. Prepare games

The little guests often find the children’s room of the birthday child the most exciting and it may well be that the crowd of children can play there for a while on its own. Even if there is a garden with some play equipment, it is a sure-fire success. Free play in a new environment is often sufficient over long distances, especially for three or four year olds. However, it can always be that boredom arises or the mood threatens to change, then it is good if you have prepared one or the other game.

Eggs (with plastic eggs), pounding pot, throwing cans, sack hopping or a candy memory are well suited for old age (two identical candies are always placed under a paper or plastic cup). A treasure hunt is also good. And with a simple, small handicraft, the children can also spend a while – but it shouldn’t be too time-consuming.

The winners or participants can be rewarded with a little candy that can be put in their small bag.

5. Celebrate the apartment

If the child has a birthday in summer, you can of course celebrate outside. Some parents also rent a room for the children’s birthday party, but there is often no other option than to let the party go up in your own four walls. And you should do it as much as possible before the children’s birthday party! It is advisable to mark the toilet door with a balloon, for example, so that the children can find it quickly. If the horde should not go into certain rooms, then you can mark the permitted areas with crepe or barrier tape *. Everything that is valuable and fragile should be put away.

6. Receive children

At the beginning of the celebration, the children are often a bit shy. Introduce yourself to each guest and show them where the toilet is and where there is something to drink. Be sure to let the parents give you the cell phone number if something is. And as a precaution, ask if the child is allowed to eat anything or has any allergy.

Often not all guests come at the same time. To bridge the waiting time, the children can paint something. You can provide coloring pages and pens. Once everyone is there, you can start at the birthday table. Introduce the children who don’t know each other yet.

7. Eat & Drink

Children of this age are usually not so keen on cakes and experience has shown that they don’t eat very much of them. Save yourself the stress of baking an elaborate birthday cake. Mini muffins are often the better choice. And there are children who prefer to eat fruit or pretzels. It is therefore imperative to place a bowl next to cake, for example with grapes or blueberries – or to make a cake out of fruit. And maybe lye biscuits.

And towards the end something hearty is required – sausages, pasta salad, sandwiches, pretzels, peppers and cucumber – all of these things are often more popular than the obligatory birthday cake. Finger food is best – then you don’t need cutlery and the children can easily eat everything themselves.

As for drinks, keep in mind that not all children drink carbonated water. Therefore, also provide tap water, and juice spritzers are also a good choice. They like a lot of children – and parents definitely find them better than unhealthy soft drinks.

8. Unpack gifts

You can also make a small program item out of the presents – and another quarter of an hour is over. For this you take the gifts at the beginning when the guests come and then the children all sit in a circle and have their gift on their lap. Then one after the other may present his gift to the birthday child. So everyone can see what the birthday child got and experience live how he unwraps the presents.

So that no arguments arise, which gift is opened first, you can also write the name of all guests on a piece of paper and put it in a bowl. The birthday child then draws a name and the child standing on the slip of paper is allowed to hand over his gift. It continues until everyone Gifts are unpacked. Alternatively, you can regulate the sequence by turning the bottle.

9. Stay flexible

Preparing games and program items is a must – but if the children play well together, then simply do without one or the other game. Or on everyone. The main thing is that the children have fun and the atmosphere is good. That is all that matters and not the mother’s idea of a well-planned and well-designed birthday party.

If you plan to celebrate outdoors, you should definitely think about playing alternatives in the house in the event of rain.

10.Mitgebseltüten

Actually, I find it rather absurd and superfluous that the guests should be given presents on a birthday and not just the birthday child. Especially since there is often quite a (plastic) cheap junk in the giveaway bags that nobody actually needs and that is just lying around in the children’s room and filling the junk box. I don’t know how many flutes we have already accumulated, how many flummies and how many soap bubble cans… But obviously it is no longer possible in the 21st century without such a bag of party favors.

A sensible solution is to put sweets that the children win at games in the bags labeled with the name. Or the handicrafts that were made as part of the children’s birthday party. And then maybe a useful little thing. We celebrated my son’s 4th birthday outside in the garden, with a paddling pool. There was a small water syringe * for each child, which in the end could be packed in the small bag and taken home.

Other things that look good in such a bag (and hopefully haven’t been there a thousand times …): a pencil, a child’s tattoo, a balloon, a sachet with sunflower or cress seeds, a pixi book, a color tablet for the bathtub, children’s plasters, Bath spray animal, if there are only girls among the guests: a hair clip. It is important that the same is in every giveaway bag, otherwise there will be tears quickly! And of course the birthday child wants one too.

The parents of the guest children can look forward to receiving a photo or two of their offspring by email after the celebration. Or if you upload the photos somewhere password-protected so that the parents can view them and possibly download them.

Do you have any tips or experiences about children’s birthday? How did you survive your child’s first celebration? I look forward to your comments!