The Exhausted Dad: Party under pressure

Our 6-year-old will never understand the anxiety his parents felt planning his birthday party.

Venue options were limited. The guest list had few guaranteed attendees. Worst of all, the birthday boy seemed to be expecting something akin to New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Summer birthdays pose challenges for families of kindergartners. You basically need to invite the entire class in the hopes that a few will attend, and yes, that means including that one kid who eats anything he finds on the ground, then somehow coerces your kid into doing the same.

Summer birthday parties just tend to be sparsely attended. Families take vacations, go camping, etc. Even worse, almost every weekend from June through August boasts an onslaught of conflicting events. Was there a kinder-division at Ironman this year?

Even worse, my son’s kindergarten class already touted a poor birthday-party-attendance-rate this year. My son went to three different birthday parties, all of which the entire class got invited, and for two of them he was the only classmate to show.

It should go without saying that I’m not inviting strange, grimy kids into my own house. No thanks. We don’t have the space for such nonsense, and I also don’t feel like mowing the backyard this week (or really any week this summer).

We settled on a park, and like a couple of suckers, my wife and I paid the city to “rent out” a sheltered picnic area near the playground. Almost nobody ever uses those things, but knowing our luck, we’d show up to the park to find three simultaneous family reunions, a political rally and a Renaissance Faire.

The playground establishes a basic activity for the party, as kindergartners are the only grade level where they’re still uniformly excited about slides and jungle gyms. Even if it rained, we weren’t planning another activity. My son wanted a pinata, but I’m not here to get smashed in the face by a 6-year-old blindly wielding a plastic baseball bat.

Food: Basic beats fancy. We ordered pizza — cheese and pepperoni. Little bags of chips. Juice boxes. Water bottles for adults. Cupcakes. You think I’m going to stand there cutting slices of cake? Ha. Never.

My son’s actual birthday happened a few days before the party, so he already opened his (amazing) presents from Mom and Dad. However, with a superhero/Lego-crazed kid like ours, you worry about what his response will be to his friend’s gifts. Will he already have that Spider-Man action figure? Will he moan and groan if he opens a bag to find an “educational” toy? Will he forget to say “thank you” or not pause long enough to “appreciate” each gift?

Well, he didn’t say “thank you” to anyone without my prompt. Fortunately, he said something better after each present: ‘OOHHHHH! THIS IS SO AWESOME!” or “I ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE!” That’s way better than a thank you in my opinion.

The X-factor of any kid party: Entertaining the birthday boy’s siblings, notably the 8-year-old sister with a major case of Fear of Missing Out. My wife, thankfully, nipped this one before it could become a problem. Out of fear for a low turnout, my wife reached out to the families of our other three kids’ best/good-enough friends. My FOMO girl’s gymnastics-loving classmate decided to attend, so the pair wandered into the grass for cartwheels and handstands for most of the party. Crisis averted!

In all, four of my son’s classmates showed up for the party. We beat the class record! Add a couple of grandparents, a few sibling friends, a friend from another class who stands near my son in the school pickup line, probably a few random kids who happened to be at the park that morning, and it turned out to be the exact size of the kindergarten birthday party I’m prepared to handle at this stage of my life.

It ended before it got too hot outside, and guests mercifully left promptly. Some haphazard cleanup, a quick stop for an iced coffee and home for some well-deserved rest.

Until the birthday boy asked for help freeing his new Iron Man figure from the packaging, then assistance with the new Lego set, then an explanation of that “educational” gift courtesy of that one kid who likes to eat stuff on the ground.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 6-12. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.