What's the worst kids party you've been to

[T181]

Please give me some examples of the worst kids party you've been to?? Im hosting one on Sunday for 25 children and actually am so worried about it I need some real life stories to calm my nerves

The only really bad one my DS went to was entirely due to lack of supervision. It was a drop-off laser tag party and we arrived to pick him up at the end to find him in tears on the floor of the foyer with three other kids pushing and shoving him and not letting him get back up (the birthday boy's older cousin, who didn't know anyone else there, had apparently started it, showing off). The 'supervising' parents were round the corner having a drink and had no idea what was going on. They also had no idea that one of the other kids, who's partially sighted, had taken a wrong turn coming out of the toilets and had ended up on his own in the street outside.

DS went to a magic party once at our friends' house and I got a text from the mum half-way through saying 'The magician's a fascist...' - I'm wondering now whether he was the same one from Crystal8559's experience!!

One of mine.
I prepared a picnic, which included individual trifles.
Twelve 11 year old boys were dropped off and while I was doing the last min prep one of them made one huge party popper out of lots of little ones and started a small fire in the shed.
We herded them to a local beauty spot, where they could build bivouacs and play army games in the woods and streams
As soon as we stopped they leaped out of the cars and shot off in all directions and I spent a frantic hour calling them.I was beside myself.
Eventually I found them all huddled together in a den they had made reading a porn mag they had found in the undergrowth.
It was calm weather until I laid the food out , a breeze lifted debris and coated the trifles. Recently we had scattered a relatives ashes and I shrieked ’Don’t eat Uncle Harry’ and whipped the trifles away.
The rest of the party was fine, the games, the ‘awards’ etc...
Next day my son casually told me one of his friends had been in detention for stuffing porn down the shower drains....Please god, I pleaded, keep my name out of this....

@kitchenceilingwaterleak how bloody awful, your poor girl. The party mum sounds like a horrific human being, who treats a child like that? I hope your DD is ok and knows not all her friends mums are that shit

I burst out laughing at this..

The worst parties I have attended are the ones my sister in law has for her daughters birthdays - these are not their actual parties (which have usually already happened with their friends from school). These parties are for SILs friends (and us) to come and bring lavish gifts to her daughters - there's never any entertainment for the children, it's winter but she insists on the parties being outdoors so we can have a BBQ (it's frequently raining) as she doesn't want lots of people in her house making mess! They are miserable, cold, wet and boring parties where the food invariably is not enough for the number of guests (best one was a pack of 6 sausages for 18 guests!) and ends up only being cooked after about 4 hours due to BIL and SIL having a massive public argument about the BBQ. All other kids parties I have been to are great and my children are always delighted with any party so I'm sure yours will be great 😀

6 sausage between 18 guests?! You'd need very sharp elbows 😁

The one my Dd went to where they had a clown.

My Dd was a little wary of clowns.
If I had known they were having a clown I think she would have chosen not to go.
However Ds who was 2-3 years old at the time has a real fear of clowns. (He still has He is an adult)

I walked in with Ds at towards the end of the party and Ds spotted the clown and was hysterical with fear.
I have never known him to be so traumatised before or since and I had to take him outside to calm him down and had to get someone to get dd and bring her to the car after the party. Ds couldn’t be left for a moment.
He was having nightmares about this clown for at least a week.

The host didn’t know about people being fearful of clowns and apparently there were other children who were scared of the clown

Worst party I went to was at a friends house.
Everyone had brought a present and the party was being given a jam butty and then told to play in the street until your mum collects you.

When I was at kindergarten the class was invited to a party at my classmates house. It turns out the family were millionaires. There were white carpets throughout and everyone had to take their shoes off. There was a buffet of Indian food (the family were Indian) however lots of kids including me had never eaten Indian food before and didn’t have the pallet for it. The birthday girl wasn’t even there as she had to go to the airport as her grandparents were flying in. So there was a room full of 4 year olds, with loads of food that no one wanted to eat and no birthday girl. I think there was an entertainer but even as a 4 year old I remember him not being very good. Looking back I think he might have been someone’s dad telling bad jokes.

My worst one was the party for 4 year olds with a Mad Hatter magician with a 60yo Alice in Wonderland assistant, in costume complete with blue Alice band atop her blue rinse perm. He kicked out at a child who crept forward from the circle, as 4yos do, and berated another for not knowing that it was the dormouse in his teapot (when asked what he thought was in there the child said, quite reasonably , "Tea").
Same party served egg and onion (Spanish variety, not milder spring onion) sandwiches and wondered they got left or spat out.
The disco in the back room of a pub would have been OK had the music not been banging house, the kids not been 5, and the room still full of a fug stale fag smoke from the night before. It was post-smoking ban too.

When I was about 7ish I was invited to a classmate’s birthday party, and although there were some normal party games and the classic early 1980s party tea, the birthday girl’s parents approached the whole occasion as an opportunity to try and convert us all to their very specific and mildly cultish branch of borderline fundamentalist Christianity.

We all had to start off being led in rapturous prayer by the girl’s dad, and I also have vivid memories of a colouring/craft activity involving making posters about how only Jesus could save us. Before the food there was another lengthy prayer of thanks (because everyone knows it’s really good of Jesus to bless us with the gift of Iced Gems, butterfly cakes and Twiglets). The pass the parcel prize was a children’s Bible and the other games featured prizes of really weird, oddly printed little books about the size of a Mr Men book only they were all religious morality tales in which the characters were all American animals. In the party bag along with the cake and plastic stuff was a card with a Bible verse on it inviting us to go along to the Sunday school run by family’s mad church.

60yo Alice in Wonderland assistant, in costume complete with blue Alice band atop her blue rinse perm
I shouldn't laugh, really, but 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I went to 9ne for 30 kids where they fed the adults but the kids had a cupcake each!!! All the kids were whinging and hungry.

Another was a 2 year old party with an entertainer that terrified all the kids

A first birthday party at teatime with no food

That has sent a shiver down my spine....truly shocking. Poor child and family

I really hope so @AliceMcK , we’ve just been to a laser tag party and the kids had an amazing time. I’m in panic mode now.😭

This is equally awful yet fascinating. At least it must have taken the pressure off everyone else eh?

IME kids never eat much at parties, what you've got will be fine! They can have a sandwich when they get home at lunchtime. We always hosted whole class parties at home (well, running riot in the garden) and each year I did less and less food. They barely touch sandwiches or healthy fruit kebabs etc so it's not worth the effort.....

You've got the party bags, which is key (best have a few spare for younger siblings) and they'll have a ball on the soft play for the whole two hours! Your problem will be getting them to come off it to sing Happy Birthday!

It'll be fine - hopefully most of the parents will leave you to it and you can just drink coffee and not stress too much!

@Katya213 please don’t worry, 7 year olds will love all that stuff. The truth is it’s all wasted a bit on under 6’s because they’re still learning the ropes. Plus don’t forget they missed out on a lot of this stuff over the past couple of years so it’s unlikely it’s been done to death from their perspective and 7 is still very much a child.

I bet even the most ‘mature and cool’ 7yo wouldn’t be able to resist it.

My own circa 1992

My mum insisted I invited a girl from my class. I didn't like her but my mum was very good friends with her mum and would have been embarrassed if she wasn't invited. I protested for days but my mum wouldn't relent. Now I'm an adult, I can totally see my mum's point view.

anyway, at the party I had an epic meltdown and screamed at this poor girl that I hated her. I still remember her sobbing face as I screamed and shouted at her. I feel utterly ashamed. What a little cow I was.

This is really horrible. I'm so sorry that happened to your DD. Who brings kids up to be so cruel? 😞

Dd is 15 now and we have moved away from the area where the party was held. She still won't eat cheese though- the kids made their own pizza for tea tonight and dd's was sans cheese.

Apparently I was the same with eggs when I was a baby. I still hate anything that tastes like egg or has the texture of cooked egg regardless of what it is so she's probably inherited it from me!

One of the most annoying things when you're running about like a blue arsed fly trying to do all the Party Stuff is when random spare Parents are floating about expectantly with empty cups.

If you want tea, make it yourself!

What a brilliant thread - hilarious and deeply moving in equal measure. We've had plenty of experience of parties over the years (DS is 18 today), but nothing that compares with the highs and lows posted here.

I don't remember any bad childrens' parties from my own childhood or my children's, but if it helps I had a few things go wrong at parties I held and the sky didn't fall in. On DD1's third birthday I had a simple party at home. The photos show small girls in the garden crowding into old cardboard boxes and soaking one another with water, but they don't show my then husband lying in bed with bellyache. I thought he was malingering at first, but I took him to hospital after everyone had gone home and he had his appendix removed the next day. At one of DD2's parties in a sports centre two of the other (rather posh) mums had a fight and then they both came to me separately to slag off the other mum. And at another of DD2's parties in a children's farm I dropped the lovingly home made birthday cake upside down on the floor of the barn in front of everyone when I took it out of its box.