The 10th Birthday Celebration: The Last of the Little Kid Parties

If you have preschool-aged or early elementary-aged children, you might be in the throes of weekends filled with birthday parties. The whole class is often invited, and your children enjoy everything from arts and crafts to rock climbing. If you have more than one child, you are bound to be double-booked occasionally!

And the presents! Remember what you bought the birthday child in years past to avoid repeating a purchase. Then, of course, there’s the one day a year when it’s finally time to throw a party for your own kid.

In some ways, it felt like these years would last forever. In reality, it does not. We just hosted our last “kid” birthday party! My baby is ten!

I have two children. My son is 13, and my baby girl recently turned 10. When your daughter’s birthday is on Christmas, you must vow not to forget about the birthday or lump it in with the “holidays.” Especially when you are Jewish and really have very little excuse, but that’s exactly what happened when my daughter turned nine.

My daughter’s birthday most definitely got lumped in with the holidays. Of course, children survive without a birthday party, but please don’t blame me for feeling guilty. More likely than not, she would have had a party if her birthday did not fall on the biggest holiday of the year.

So, as this year rolled around, so did the realization that she would be ten. The “Big 1-0!” It’s a pretty big milestone when it comes to birthdays! On top of that, my son’s Bar Mitzvah was planned for a few weeks before my daughter’s big day. And, oh yeah, the aforementioned forgotten (or some might say “blown off”) birthday last year. My husband and I believed the girl was owed and deserved a celebration this year, as it would be her last “kid party.” This also meant we were about to host our last “kid party.”

We set a date for the end of January and started on the guest list. There are many sweet girls that are in my daughter’s grade for sure, but as the saying goes, this isn’t my first rodeo. With having a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old, I’ve seen things. You tend to know who had parties in the past year – and which ones your child wasn’t invited to.

“Mom! Mom! Did anyone RSVP?” started about ten minutes after the invite went out. Nowadays, everything is a bit stalkerish. As you can see, who viewed the invite and when they viewed it – down to the minute – you start to wonder why people are taking so long to RSVP. Everyone she very much wanted to celebrate with did RSVP positively. I predicted a couple of the declines, but it pleased my daughter to include them in the first place. We had a beautiful group of girls coming, and my girl was thrilled.

My daughter wanted to have her party in the house, as there were certain things she was interested in having for her celebration. Knowing that “this was it,” my husband and I agreed to host the party in our home. My husband, my daughter, and I planned:

Make Your Own Pizza: As any parent who throws a party knows, the food is part of the celebration most young kids don’t even care about. But as parents – you MUST feed them! We also made a huge pot of spaghetti.

Slime Shop: Yes, call me insane, but that’s the craze now, right? We protected our floor with a camping tarp, and each girl was given their own plastic bowl. As far as ingredients, we bought it ALL (minus the borax), and we let the girls go to town.

Photo Booth: My handy-dandy electronics computer lovin’ husband hung up a huge green sheet for a green screen, downloaded some app, chose some backgrounds with my daughter and voila! – photo booth. The girls took pictures on the beach, with unicorns, or on the moon. He may or may not be available for hire. In reality, this is probably all we needed. The girls had a blast!

All are topped off with an Emoji ice cream cake with crunchies and pin the horn on the unicorn. It doesn’t need to be glamorous – just a bunch of friends and a couple of activities. Granted, we went the messy route, but seeing your kid happy is best!

Throughout this party, I watched my daughter interact with her friends. What a big, beautiful girl she’s becoming! It’s hard to believe she’s ten. The little kid’s birthday party era is over for us. No more party bags with crappy tchotchkes and gooey candy. The favors this time were the photo booth pictures and a picture holder (and their slime!) When did that happen? 

I thought back to all these years of birthday parties. Even with all the planning and weekends booked with these 90 to 120-minute birthday parties, the “kid parties” may be the easiest of the celebrations. They could be simple (mostly) and inclusive, with laughs and smiles.

As our children age, the celebrations get smaller, and the invite list gets narrowed down. The birthday party will include grabbing a few friends for a sleepover or a movie. It becomes more meaningful in many respects, but there will also be uncertainty about who to celebrate with. Peer pressure about who is cool to invite. Or the disappointment when it’s evident that you aren’t invited to a celebration you thought you would be.

And sooner or later, they’ll want friends only. We’ll have a family dinner, but the “real” celebration will be for friends only! NOOO! It seems like it changes overnight, but it does offer such a learning opportunity – both for the child and the parent.

Simplicity, sincerity, and ingenuousness in young children are priceless. If only we could bottle that up.