Your kids' best and worst parties!

[Echobelly]

For a bit of a laugh, what are the best and worst parties you've thrown for your kids?

DD's best one was probably bath-bomb making when she was 8 or 9 - roaring success and lots of fun. We also had a good one for her 4th where we booked some people who did music with little kids, partly because one of them used to be in Sigue Sigue Sputnik - they were great and really marshalled a room of 30 overexcited kids!

Her 10th b'day sleepover was fun for her but a bit of a 'mare for me! Thank god not all the girls invited could come - 5 was more than enough. And one close friend suffers from a condition were even tiny amounts of gluten makes her very sick so I was exhausted from constantly washing my hands and making sure not a crumb of gluten got near her food - OTOH was glad I did it as it helped her recover from being a bit traumatised by a difficult school trip and , with a few late tearful calls home, she stayed all night.

Son is August b'day so parties are difficult - the worst was going bowling when they were 6 - I underestimated just how bad 6 year old boys are with turn taking! And we spent half the time trying to stop two of them playing tag around the bowling alley. A themed party shared with a classmate the year before with costumed entertainers worked rather better.

Both kids had Laser Tag parties which were great partly because no tidying up involved, thank God!

We've only had 3 so far and they've been fairly low key but fun. We had fun making garden potions this year as a party activity. I'm sure we will have some interesting (and stressful) ones in future!

I think most of my kid’s parties have been pretty good.
Ds’s best was probably the football one for his 6th organised by local football centre. They did absolutely everything-games, food, cake, party bags, prizes... the coach/host was fantastic and everyone had a great time for literally zero stress for me! I don’t remember it being crazy money either.
DD’s best was her sleepover for her 10th. A lovely group of girls came, we walked them to a pizza place for tea, played on the playground for a bit and then they played games and watched a film and slept In the living when they got back. I did have to go down at about 1am and tell them to go to sleep but it was all good fun.

Worst. DS- had the animal man for his 7th (who dd had had once v successfully) come to the house. Ds loved the animals but most of his friends were quite unruly and weren’t really into it. It was ok but I was quite frazzled by the end!

Dd worst: this year with no party

Best party was a Moana themed one for dd1's 6th birthday. We taped circles of yellow felt on to the floor of the villagr Hall with an i flat able palme tree on each to be islands and gave the dc an inflatable dinghy to push each other round in. Then dp dressed up as Te Ka and chased them round. Served fruit kebabs and mocktails with little umbrellas in.

The worst one was a recent Zoom party, it was just really difficult to keep everyone engaged.

Best DS 7th, had six friends they were each given a plain t.shirt to paint with fabric pens. They also painted a stone each. I gave them all a pizza base and they all put their own toppings on.

Worst DS 6th I did an all class party at the local leisure centre. Soft play, then party games and a birthday tea. DH and I did all the food, party bags and entertainment for 24 classmates. Nothing awful happened but was exhausting.

Worst one was in a sports centre, simply because I realised I had left the birthday cake at home and had to send DH back for it at last minute - he was not impressed!

My personal favourite was a very, very talented and amusing magician, DD was 6 and the kids were entranced. There is nothing like seeing 28 little faces all smiling and thrilled, and he was brilliant at drawing some of the quiet ones into the fun. I can't wait to book him for my son when he is old enough and do it all again!

I absolutely love birthday parties, even though I often get stressed out by them.

Watch the Motherland party episode 😁

Best, any at home .Playing ,food and games.
Worst,skateboarding party for both children who are 3 years a part. It was wild! Most of the children weren't skaters (why didn't I think of this?). The ramps suddenly seemed huge. Children sitting down in the way on ramps, lots of falling off and a broken wrist for one of the guests . Was so glad when we got to the end. The children would say it was the best party !

Worst. Class parties in village halls. Millions of children to coordinate, activities, endless food, party bags, refreshments for parents all under the pressure to be inclusive.

Worst:soft play. The noise gave me a headache

Best: pitching a tent in the garden for a sleep over, having very limited numbers (closest friends only), building a fire and coordinating campfire cooking and marsh mellows. Glass of wine and a couple of hours of chatting with the parents (my good friends) when they drop off.

Best: cookery party. Ds baked a stunning birthday cake with his friends. Dragons head with sweets for scales and breathing fire (well placed candles). Slightly wonky. They were 11 so little help required. Just instructions from a book. Gave the kids the cash to buy all ingredients they needed

Best:pizza and film party. Kids made their own pizza and then I cooked it and served while watching Harry Potter film. Kids all in sleeping bags with cushions and blankets all over the floor. Dark room. Watched second Harry Potter film with birthday cake and popcorn.

Best: picnic and paddle in a stream with family friends.

We don't do big party birthdays so can't comment but one of the best mine enjoyed (parents were there too) was a family who lived in the back of a park and the grandfather took all of the children to the park (parents looking on) and did old fashioned party games. The children absolutely loved it, there was no cost involved for the host and it brought back so much nostalgia for the parents.
The worst was an eco friendly "Mama" who considers herself to be a mother earth type. She had hand sewn all of the decorations which were very low key for 6 year olds but the party food was broccoli.soup and home made bread sticks. The mum was so incredibly smug about it but the kids all had looks. Not an ounce of sugar or sweet in sight.

Best- small parties at home or just taking a few friends for a day out.

Haven't had any bad experiences yet, but I still remember a party I was invited to by a new mum friend, she had spent an absolute fortune on a princess party including grown women dressed as princess entertainers. My 2 tom boy toddlers were unimpressed by the pink sparkly tat and absolutely terrified of the 'princesses'. I didn't know any of the other mums. I spent the whole time smiling inanely whilst my kids refused to join in and leapt on my lap crying every time a princess came near them.

Best was a day at the farm for DS's 6th birthday. All the kids loved it.

Worst was this year during lockdown.

Beat ever party - dd3’s ninth. My parents have a flat overlooking a tidal paddling pool. We checked the weather forecast, and tide times, bought each child a bucket and fishing net, chucked a small beach canoe and a couple of inflatables in the pool, and let the kids loose. My mum brought down plates of chips and ice creams. People walking past all told us it looked like the best party ever.

Some parents had chosen to stay, but others has asked if we would be happy for them to drop and run. In the event everyone stayed so we had loads of older and younger siblings - and we had enough ice creams for all.

Worst - dd1’s fifth. She’d just started school, so we did a whole class party in our home. Everybody had dropped and run, so we had 29 children running amok, with just dh and myself marshalling them. But when the parents turned up we had them playing sleeping lions, so the whole class were quietly snoozing in the front room . Dh was so traumatised by the whole thing that he had a nightmare that night, leading to him sleep running around the house, shrieking “we’ve lost a child!”

Best - probably the party with the mobile zoo. Ds1 loved it, especially the tarantula. The guy who runs it was brilliant and uses the money from it to look after a lot of rescued exotic pets.
He also did a zoom for my church's kids club and introduced them to more of the animals he can't take on the mobile zoo. Quietest zoom they'd ever done, kids were entranced.
Worst? Well I suppose having to cancel ds2's party due to lockdown was bad, but then I no longer had to dress up as the pirate from SpongeBob so that's a positive. We made rainbow cupcakes and he seemed happy.
Oh and there was ds1's age 5 party where one kid got into a room in the church hall which should have been locked, got out some toys and then started a fight over them. Also the mysterious sanitary towel (unused) that appeared in the middle of the floor. Was an odd one, that one.

I think first class parties when they're 5 are often the worst as you don't know the drill and it just seems like total anarchy!

It didn’t just seem like total anarchy. It WAS total anarchy. And I spent my teenage years organising parties for children.

Best- DD’s 7th, we hired an entertainer to come to our house and make picture frames with her and 6 friends. We took a group photo at the start, my DDad hung out upstairs by the printer patiently printing and trimming photos to the right size, and they all got to take home their photo in the frame they’d made. The entertainer was terrific and definitely knew her stuff, kept the children all really excited and having fun while managing not to quite tip them over into hyper and out of control

Oh and DH took DS out for lunch and to the park, so he was out of the way the whole time. That worked well

Worst- DD’s 3rd, I was knackered from having just given birth to DS! Fortunately my NCT group all basically took over and stuffed party bags/cut cake/did what needed doing, thank god for good friends!

WORST:
The time I had a sleep over for 8 six year old girls.
There was crying, screaming, papping, falling out, making up and a lot of noise.

BEST
paintballing party for 8 twelve year old boys followed by mcdonalds.
They all said it was the best day of their lives.

Best: bought a load of unstuffed teddy bears and a huge bag of stuffing from amazon. They were no - sew and came with the little heart to put inside and make a wish. Then a teddy bears picnic in the garden. No party bags needed as they had the bear to take home. I bought 10 tiny plain white t shirts and fabric pens so they could decorate and dress them for an activity. It went well.

Worst: soft play, nothing went wrong it just was boring a bit crap 😂
Cost a small fortune too.

Last year we did a small hall party for DD's 5th borthday. She has ASD and gets overwhelmed by parties so had stuck to inviting 8 kids only. I had filled the hall with balloons and had set up three creative stations with card making, colouring key rings and magnets etc. Some of the kids and parents were probably expecting an entertainer or something but they did seem to enjoy themselves and DD had fun. I found it very stressful though, doing all the food, decorations and setting up and organising the creative crafty stuff had me reaching for the wine after!

This year we had DD's two cousins over for a tiny slime party. They had a great time just messing about with the slime. It wasn't as messy as I had expected and it kept them busy for ages. They then had some party food followed by a game of pass the parcel followed by more slime play. Great party and no stress! And a fraction of the cost of the hall party too.

Out best actually started as a bit of a disaster. I think it was DS's 8th birthday and we had booked a soft play sort of thing and invited about 10 friends. It was about 11miles away and in January.
Anyway we had really bad snow the day before and the morning of the party so we had to cancel - roads were closed etc.
My mum has the keys for the local school hall as she opens up/locks up for events etc so we went to the local shop and got a load of hotdogs and rolls and told everyone to come to the school field with their sledges/siblings etc and to wrap up warm. The kids had an absolute blast playing in the snow and we got them all to help building a massive snowman. If anyone got too cold they came into the school hall for a warm before heading back out to play.

We gave them hotdogs and birthday cake for afters and it was a really great day. They all still talk about it now and it cost me less than £10

We did a build a bear party with t-shirt decorating and the girls did the entire lot in about 10 minutes and then rampage. And DD had helped herself to the invite pad and I had no idea how many kids were going to turn up so had to buy so many bears on the off chance the entire world showed up.

And we had one soft play party when one child threw up all over my feet and their parent couldn't get there for ages which meant DH had to deal with all the kids and parents while I babysat the puker with bits of vomit stuck between my toes and the wetness seeped up my trousers towards my knees.

And there was the one were the parents hired an entertainer who looked like Ken Dodd and whose whole act was basically Jimmy Savile and Paul Daniels and this was only about 5 years ago. The jokes were bordering on racist/sexist and the kids were only 4. It was horrifying. No one was laughing.

I miss those days...
The best was daughters 4th birthday which was a ‘Party in the Park’ in the plantation area of a large park. I just told everyone to turn up with their own picnics and I did arts and crafts and face painting. It was so relaxing for everyone and the kids just got to run around and burn off energy.

The worst...my attempt at a cool party in our home for when my daughter turned 14. Music, smoke machines and strobe/disco lights aswell as food. About 2 hours in and they all (including daughter) wanted to head off to the local youth club. Off they went and I just carried on dancing...by myself 🤣

Daughter's 3rd was tricky - she has a mid-June birthday and on her 2nd we had to move a picnic in the park to our garden because it was so hot (and also turned out to be Euro finals - we're not sport watchers) so we had to offer a telly option!

Anyway, had a plan for ball pool, a few games in our 2-bed flat.

The weather was basically like it's been in London the last two days. Freezing cold, windy, pouring rain. In the end we dismantled our bed and stuck it in the kids' tiny bedroom, ate in the front room and did games/ball pool in our bedroom. Worked surprisingly well in the end.

Also, I was 7 months pregnant with DS at that party!

Best party - DS2's 2nd, lockdown birthday, no pressure to invite anyone, we made a little buffet and enjoyed the hot weather. Not really had any bad ones, probably got those to come now eldest is in school...