Birthday party dilemma

rach3975

rach3975

New member
DD turns 5 in a few weeks, and she alternates between dreaming up ideas for her party and claiming she doesn't want one because she doesn't want to be the center of attention. Last year she didn't have fun at her party for exactly that reason. If we don't have one at all, I think she'll be upset. If we do have one, there's a decent chance she won't enjoy herself.

I think the best solution would be to do something small with just a few friends, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to do that. Most of the kids at her preschool invite the whole class, and she's been invited to several of their parties since school started. I don't think she'll be able to keep quiet about it if we do something small with just close friends, and I don't want it to become an issue with her other classmates. What would you do? Thanks!
 
I'd let her invite 4 friends since she is turning 5. So all together there will be 5 kids. I don't think that just because she's gone to other kids' birthday parties that means that you have to invite them all. It's her birthday and her celebration should be about what would make her happy. Figure out something you can do where she can just interact with her friends. It doesn't have to a traditional birthday party. A fun day out with friends where she can just fit in would probably make her more comfortable. Maybe mini golf, bowling, movies, painting/arts & crafts class - whatever she would enjoy. If you do it at home about an almost sleep over movie night where the girls come and have pizza, watch a movie, open gifts and then go home around bed time?

I think the key here is to tailor it to her and her interests and not worry about everyone else. If you usually invite your family too, do a separate family celebration and keep it low key.
 
Can you do a girl only party to minimize the number of people? I think at that age I did an Alice in Wonderland tea party. You could also do a "spa day" or theme it around Fancy Nancy or something?
 
Thanks for the suggestions! She doesn't have enough non-school friends to do it without them, but maybe it'll work if we only invite 2 or 3 of the school kids. She's been to too many of the boys' parties for me to feel like I can invite all the girls and no boys, but maybe I'll keep it super small and call it a birthday playdate. I think she'd love the crafts day or Fancy Nancy theme!
 
We didn't do friend parties until Keira was in first grade, I had a chance to get to know some of the parents so I just passed the invites to them. We did cousins until then.
 
Could you do something AT her preschool? Would they let you bring cupcakes and goodie bags for the class (I realize various schools have different rules about that kind of thing). Maybe if her party was in her class, then you could do something with just your family... like letting her choose a restaurant for dinner or something?
 
nesser1981 said:
We did cousins until then.
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I've always wished we had a big enough family for there to be lots of close-in-age cousins for my kids to be friends with! My kids' only first cousins are 2 years old and 6 months old and live 5 hours away. Even in the extended family there are only 3 more cousins, and the 2 close to DD's age live 10 hours away.


Libby Pritchett said:
Could you do something AT her preschool? Would they let you bring cupcakes and goodie bags for the class (I realize various schools have different rules about that kind of thing). Maybe if her party was in her class, then you could do something with just your family... like letting her choose a restaurant for dinner or something?
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We'll bring cupcakes for the kids at snack time, but that's all we're allowed to do. And we do let the birthday person chose an activity and restaurant for the family on their birthday plus do a cake and presents for just the immediate family, so she'll have that regardless of what we end up doing about the party.

The ironic thing with all of this is, DD is not usually a shy kid. She's the most extroverted by far of the 5 of us, LOL. In a small group or with people she's close to, she LOVES being the center of attention. But there's something about the pressure of having it be her party that is just rubbing her wrong. If we didn't do something party-like for her with other kids I think she'd be sad, but I'm definitely going to need to keep it small and non-intimidating.
 
My husband has a big family, we're lucky to have a few 3rd cousins on both sides of the family close to all of the kids ages. It makes it nice.
 
nesser1981 said:
My husband has a big family, we're lucky to have a few 3rd cousins on both sides of the family close to all of the kids ages. It makes it nice.
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That does sound nice! DH is an only child, and now that his parents have passed away he's not that close to his small extended family. Not to mention that we're in Virginia and they're in Arizona. My parents both grew up with lots of cousins, but most of them didn't have kids so my generation of the family is very small. It's only me, my 2 siblings (who got married 13 and 15 years after I did even though we're close in age), and 1 cousin who is the parent of the kids who live 10 hours away.
 
For Zach this year, we got the family together and went someplace special (T-Rex cafe, he loves loves loves Dinosaurs) as just the family... grandma, grandpa, uncle, Zach, and me... no pressure for friends, etc.
 
I'd make it more about the event than about her if she's so shy. Let her take a few friends to the movies, or 10 pin bowling, or to a fancy indoor playground or something. They'll be so focused on having fun, she won't feel like she's centre of attention.
 
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