A Children’s Party, Minus the Migraine

One of the secrets to a successful birthday party for kids is minimizing their sugar intake. It’s common knowledge that a gathering of pint-sized mischief makers has potential for chaos on par with one of those Hollywood natural disaster flicks. Add to the process some processed sugar and you’ll be saying to yourself “Armageddon outta here!”

The excitement of the pending festivities already had the kids emotionally charged, and you want to give them soda? Are you crazy?! That’s like pouring Coke into a bag of pop rocks, baby. You need to come up with some alternative beverages, first of all, because the average 12 ounce can of soda contains about 40 grams of refined sugar. Think about it; you can actually feel the sugar on your tongue when you drink grape or orange soda usually spotted at childrens’ birthday parties. People get these generic soft drinks to save some money, but save yourself the headache and get some Juicy Juice instead. “Juicy Juice is 100 percent real juice” and that reduces your chances of having some 6-year-old throw a tantrum and a few projectiles at an unsuspecting partygoer’s head by 50 percent. (I’m 90 percent sure of that.)

Before we get to the cake, let’s consider some pie – pizza pie. Pizza, along with being a consistent kid favorite, is also an affordable and relatively healthy pre-birthday cake primer. There’s an ulterior motive behind giving the tykes a couple slices of pizza before that piece of the main drawing card: pizza is filling. The mozzarella cheese makes for full bellies and, if you wait a little while between serving the pizza and serving the cake, the wee ones will not want as much cake as they otherwise would have. So, let them eat cake, but after the pizza has settled in their little stomachs for a bit, they suddenly won’t be crying for the biggest piece. With kids, their eyes are often bigger than their stomachs, but some cheesy dough should remedy that Bulging Eyes Syndrome.

Idle minds are potent grounds for potential mayhem when we’re talking about kids from ages 3 to 8, and all but one of the partygoers aren’t The Birthday Boy/Girl, so we’d better occupy their minds with something other than the fact that somebody else is getting all these really cool birthday presents and they’re not. I recommend a birthday present Scavenger Hunt. Hide the presents all over the yard/house etc., and with each gift attach a clue to finding the next one; escalating in difficulty as the Hunt goes on. Start off with something small and unexciting (socks or some other staple kids tend to roll their eyes at), then incrementally move up to bigger and better gifts, ending with a grand finale like a new bike in the garage. This kind of thing will make everybody feel a part of the festivities – no child left behind.

We’ve already established that one of the main reasons most childrens’ birthday parties start with hyper-activated bedlam and end with a whiny, cranky crash. Oh, Sugar. Oh, Honey Honey; where’s my Ritalin, Girl? So, don’t give in at this point and give them a goodie bag filled with pixie sticks and candy corn, or anything else the FDA refuses to acknowledge as mind-altering drugs. I know what you’re thinking: ‘once the party’s over, they’re their own parents’ problem, not mine.’ Very nice! And maybe they’ll have a little payback on their mind when it’s their turn to host one of these shindigs. Maybe they’ll send your child home spinning and speaking incoherently like the Tasmanian Devil or that chick from The Exorcist.

Which reminds me: unless you want a crowd of kids launching vomit-comets, avoid those cheap, grocery store birthday cakes consisting of like 80 percent gross, granular frosting and 20 percent actual cake. Cool Whip Lite tastes almost exactly the same as regular Cool Whip, so if you or one of the other parents decides to go the homemade route, that could be the icing on the cake.

So these are my not so secret secrets to a successful childrens’ birthday party. Basically, keep their fertile minds occupied with some kind of engaging activity, and don’t turn them into Sugar Rush Limbo. And enjoy the little balloon-atics!