Preparing for your kid's Birthday Party

At most times, doesn't deciding about your kid's birthday party become such an overwhelming affair?

For our daughter's 3rd birthday party (she's growing up fast!), my wife and i butted our heads debating whether we should celebrate our daughter's birthday at one of these 'packaged' places - Chuck E Cheese's, or at a gym; versus our residence.

If it is at Chuck E Cheese then it becomes a hurried and somewhat detached affair, with people doing their own thing given its format. If its kept at home, then comes the part of specifically whom to invite. The guest list itself becomes a nightmare, apart from deciding about what the event should be like, games for the kids, the food, the goody bags etc. and the list goes on.

Sometimes I feel to hell with all of this, but then I think of my kid and what she wants done for her birthday and can never disappoint her (at age 3 they do become very expressive about their wants, dont they? :-) ).

As it usually happens in such debates, my wife won. So finally we have decided to have it at home. We hope the guest list is manageable enough in terms of the arrangements that need to be made. My wife right now is busy putting her mind towards picking some interesting games for the kids so they are occupied. But what about us poor adults?? Alcohol to keep us company? - maybe, maybe not!

But all kidding aside, it would be so stress free if there was some easy way to put together a fun event that both the kids and the adults enjoy, given that this is your kids' show.

I shall be updating here on what we eventually ended up doing for the party in terms of games, etc.

In the meanwhile I would love fellow readers to suggest a few games for kids and adults too. By the way, the theme we have chosen is Dora the explorer. So the cake is going to be white in color with Dora and Boots on it (see what I mean by specific wants right from this age?).

Ok, more later then.

Sriram

Back!

Good to be back after such a long time. Lots of things were going on, and got lazy as well with the blogging bit. But back at it now.

Sri

Is it really a Tantrum?

Krishnan raised an interesting question about what we adults refer to as a child’s tantrum in response to my earlier post, “Dealing with your child's stubborn tantrums”.

That set me thinking. I was curious and looked up the definition of ‘tantrum’. Tantrum is defined as a fit of bad temper. Now is it justified to call a child’s behavior of continuously crying to express her frustration or hunger a tantrum? I would tend not to agree. When children are not able to control themselves and resort to kicking, screaming, or pounding the floor, that may again be due to extreme frustration experienced by them because they have been denied something they want, and their parents aren’t responding to their actions either.

I came across this article titled “A Guide to Tantrums: Understanding, preventing and surviving them” by Claire McCarthy, M.D., Harvard Health Publications. Here is the link to the article http://health.msn.com/kids-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100211722&page=1.

Claire has written a very well balanced article on this subject that covers why children behave in this fashion, and how parents can help prevent or diffuse the same.

There is one paragraph I would like to quote that I believe is the essence to understanding everything: “The key to preventing or diffusing tantrums is to understand your child's tantrum triggers, and understand what it feels like to be little and out of control.” I think if we as parents really exercise patience in understanding this aspect, that’s half the solution.

In the case of our daughter after one time she was crying loudly for over 5 minutes when she didn’t get what she wanted, when she calmed down a bit I hugged her and explained to her in a very loving manner that I knew why she cried like this, but why we didn’t give her what she wanted.

To which she nodded her head as if she understood what I was talking about completely. We shall see, if not keep trying harder! :-)