Simple birthday parties with clowns, and homemade cakes have become a thing of the past. Throwing your child a birthday party is becoming more elaborate, and way more stressful. We all want our children to be happy and content on their birthday. So we all go to great lengths trying to make sure they have fun, and have a birthday party they will never forget. We have elaborate party themed cakes made, go crazy picking a venue, plan meals for a large group of picky children, and so much more.

Some children may have their heart set on an outdoor party with bouncy houses and slides. This can prove to be a challenging task in itself, considering most days in London are cloudy or rainy. You have to plan your child’s whole birthday party around one specific day, and pray that it doesn’t decide to rain. Then you have to find the perfect birthday present for your child, and make gift bags for each child that attends the party. Gift bags are like the center pieces at weddings. You put a great deal of time and effort into them hoping people will bring them home and enjoy them, only to realize the guests barely noticed them.

Here are a few tips that may help you to reduce stress while you’re planning your child’s birthday party:

• RSVP

Make sure your invitations clearly state that you need the guests to RSVP. Planning a nice birthday party is stressful enough, you don’t want to do extra work and planning for children that may or may not show up.

• Planning Party Games

Even if you have a clown, a blow up house, or other types of entertainment, you should still plan a few good old fashion games to play with your child and their guests. You can plan a group hide and seek session, a three legged race, a treasure hunt, and any other creative game ideas you may come up with. This will help keep the children entertained, while giving you some time to stop and enjoy your child on his/her birthday.

• Party Food

Instead of planning a big elaborate meal for a bunch of children that can barely sit still, put out some finger foods. Make them fun for the kids and somewhat healthy. That eliminates having to plan seating arrangements for the meal, and saves you the frustration of getting a group of excited children to sit for a full meal.

• Duration of the Party

If you don’t specify an exact time the party ends, it can lead to confusion, chaos, and a whole slew of tired, cranky children. It helps keep things more organized, and cuts down on a lot of frustration. So make sure you specify the ending time of the party as well the starting time on the invitations.

The same amount of planning that goes into a wedding, now goes into planning your child’s birthday party, which means the same amount of stress goes into it as well. Most people are usually so busy planning the party, and making sure everything is perfect that they don’t get a chance to truly enjoy their child’s birthday with them. Our most important tip is: once the party starts, the planning stops! Your child will be all the happier if you are happy too!