Good Enough Mom: Birthday Party Survival Guide

Every year our kids get a choice between having a special day out with mom and dad or having a birthday party. I love our special days out. The birthday parties. . . .not so much. I mean, I love making my kid happy and seeing him/her have fun with friends, but that's about it. No one is going to be pinning my Minecraft desserts or clever American Girl decorations on Pinterest, mainly because I have no idea how to make those things actually happen.

I suspect I'm not alone in this; despite what I see in parenting magazines and on Pinterest, most moms I know don't host thematic birthday parties with handmade decorations, healthy homemade snacks and parent supervised games. If you are one of those moms, you can stop reading and go write a business plan for the kids' party business that you should start immediately.

If you are not one of those moms, read on:

Prior to the party:

• Find a venue. The easiest way to handle this is to ask your kid where s/he wants the party and use that one. Unless your kid wants it at your house. Then ask for his/her second choice, because unless your house is huge and has a big yard (and good weather at party time), you'll regret it.  If budget is a concern, look for a smaller local business rather than  a chain of bouncy places. Video game stores, candy stores, cooking schools, karate schools, dance schools, movie theaters and sports places can all be fun places to have parties. If it's winter, pick a place where kids can run around a bit. In the spring and summer, a local playground can work, especially if you pay a couple of energetic teenagers to play with the kids. 
• Use Evite. It will keep track of responses and allow you to send out reminders. Plus you can personalize the invitation (for free) in about 5 minutes. No stress, no organization and no need for stamps. 
• Nail down the details. Ideally, the venue can provide the food, paper goods and goody bags. If not, drag the birthday kid to the party supply store and let him/her pick out the paper goods and the goody bag stuff. Then, organize it together once you get home - at least the day before the actual party. As for food, order pizza and a cake and worry no more. 

At the party:

• Arrive early. Especially if you have to bring goody bags or cake, you'll want to arrive 10 minutes early so you can be all set up before guests start arriving. 
• Greet each kid by name. I substitute taught for a while and I quickly discovered that kids behave better if you know their names. If that means the birthday kid has to whisper each classmate's name into your ear as they arrive, so be it. 
• Set the parents free. Once kids are in kindergarten, they don't all need their parents hovering over them at the party. Plus, if all the parents are there, you'll have to make small talk with them. And chances are you'll have more kids misbehaving if mom or dad is there. Weird, but true. 
• Manage, don't hover. If you've picked a place that's used to having kids' birthday parties, you probably won't even need to manage. Let the party helpers encourage the shy kids and keep kids behaving appropriately. But if some guest is very unhappy, or very inappropriate, feel free to intervene. 

After the party:

• Record who gifts are from. If your kid is out of preschool, s/he can write thank you notes. Or thank you emails. Your job is just to make a list that s/he can use. 
• Have a drink. Being around a group of over-excited children is exhausting; I was less tired teaching a class of 25 first graders for an entire day than I am after one of my kids' birthday parties. 

Trophies For (Almost) Everyone

There is a line, which has probably been stepped on by so many parents that we can't see it anymore, between lying to children and being needlessly harsh to children. I've read  a bunch of articles and blog posts lately lamenting the fact that every kid gets a trophy now. Of course, I've also read a lot of articles and blog posts talking about all the negative effects of the pressure high stakes testing and travel sports put on children.

The trophies above belong to Lovebug. They cover swimming, soccer and baseball. Lovebug has never won a championship in any of those sports. In baseball one year, I don't even think they even kept score. I can hear all the anti-trophy people bristling from here. But the thing is, Lovebug knows he didn't win a championship in any of the sports. He knows he wasn't the best on his soccer team. He knows he didn't win too many races in swimming. He thinks he got those trophies because he showed up at the practices and the games and tried his best every damn time.

And I refuse to see a problem with that. Showing up and working hard is going to get him way farther in life than thinking only the kids lucky enough to be on the winning team (because at the rec level in kindergarten, first and second grade, there's a lot of luck involved) get trophies. I believe that trophies should reward the qualities we want to instill in our kids - hard work, perseverance, teamwork, handling defeat and even winning gracefully.

That also explains why I don't think every kid should get a trophy.

Last summer, Lovebug and Ironflower joined our local pool's swim team. It's not competitive in the way that the year-round swim teams are, but meets are held in other towns and practices are every day (not that you had to go to them every day).

Lovebug fell in love with it, and Ironflower fell in love with the fact that a lot of her friends were on the team. We went to most practices and we went to all the meets. The meets, by the way, involved ribbons for first, second, third and participation. I have no idea where the participation ribbons are, but each kid has their (admittedly few) place ribbons hanging in his/her room. Kids know when they haven't done well and it's insulting to any kid over 5 to think otherwise.

Anyway, at the end of the season there was a potluck dinner and trophies were awarded. For everyone who had worked hard all season, etc., etc. I was cool with this, until a couple of trophies were presented to kids I did not recognize. By blatantly eavesdropping, I was able to learn that the kids had never gone to practice and had only gone to one meet. I was appalled.

Those kids got trophies because their parents had paid for them to be on the team. They did not work hard, show up for practice or even win a bunch of races.

Trophies should be for everyone. Except the kids who don't work for them.

Good Enough Mom: Snow Day Solutions

Welcome to my new recurring theme: "Good Enough Mom". Trying to be the perfect mom - whatever that looks like to you - is a recipe for crazy. Or an addiction to prescriptions drugs. So I though I'd share some suggestions on being "good enough". If you'd like to share some parenting hacks of your own, email me at triplezmom at gmail dot com. 

I always say that if it has to be winter, I want it to snow. So, if all these storms are my fault, I apologize. But things look so much prettier this way. Plus, even though I'm no longer teaching, I still love a snow day. According to most of my social media, I'm one of the few stay/work at home parents who feels this way.

But how you can resist a world that looks like this?

So much better than that polar vortex crap we were having. Though, you know, summer would really be the best solution of all.

I'm pretty sure that my love for snow days remains, despite 3 (very loud) children and a very small house, because of a few things:

• Laissez-faire parenting. Anyone who knows me knows that I would make a terrible cruise director ("You're on a huge ship with pools, casinos, spas, movies, shows and alcohol and you can't find anything to do? What's wrong with you?). I believe it's my job to help my kids entertain themselves, not to entertain them. They're good at playing and they actually enjoy it. That helps a lot.
• Special projects. When the playing turns into fighting, it's time to let them do something that they don't usually get to do. We don't paint a lot because it always seems to end in disaster, but I'll let them do it on a snow day. Or we'll do a toothpick project. Or have a picnic lunch in the living room. Anything that is out of the ordinary should help. Now that my kids are older and so busy, many snow days they're just happy to be able to play and not have homework and dance and practice.
• Too much screen time. The trick to assuaging the guilt over letting them have too much screen time is to make them "earn it" somehow. Lots of reading, or writing stories, or creating or room cleaning can mean extra screen time. Especially if you work from home and actually have to hear yourself think at some point.
• Active time. This is when you can use the power of video games for good; let them play extra, but only if they do a very active game like Just Dance. If the weather is not horrifying, you can always send them out to make a snow man or something, but the thrill of snow may be wearing off by now. If your kids are too little to go out by themselves (and you hate the cold like I do) or be bribed by video games, then make them an obstacle course. Ironflower and Lovebug still talk about them wistfully and have even set one up for their little brother. I used to use their play tunnel, a bunch of stools and a bunch of couch cushions for them to crawl, climb and jump over in the living room. Family dance parties can also be good entertainment. 
• Booze. Make sure you stock up on your relaxant of choice before the storm. Then, when the piercing screams/arguments/whines start getting to you, you have something to look forward to.