This weekend my husband and I threw a birthday slumber party for my 10-year-old son and five friends. We emerge tired and a bit wiser. For those who may be embarking on this perilous journey, we offer some of our newly acquired wisdom:
1- Limit the guest list. The fewer the better. Remember, boys this age weigh close to 100 pounds. How many of them do you want running and wrestling through your house? And they will run and wrestle. They can't help it. Best number of boys to invite: 1.
2 - Enlist as much adult assistance as possible. You need at least two adults on hand. You will be easily outnumbered and you never know when you might have an emergency. (We made it through with only two slightly bloody lips.) You need to have enough adults available so that someone can be free to drive a homesick kid home in the middle of the night. Yes. We did that.
3- If you take the boys somewhere, go in two cars. Again, in case of emergency, one adult can transport a child. At the very least, you can separate boys when necessary.
4- Protect the flanks. We took the boys to see Kung Fu Panda at the Regal Cinema in Bel Air. Six 10-year-olds on their way to a Kung Fu movie don't tend to move cautiously through a parking lot. They'd rather toss punches at each other and giggle. My husband led the pack, while my daughter and I herded the rear.
5 - Go early and be prepared. We chose the earlier 4:30 p.m. show expecting it wouldn't be too crowded -- and it wasn't. Just to be sure we'd all be able to get in, my husband went to pick up the tickets a few hours early.
6 - Distract and fib a little when necessary. I packed little Zip Loc bags of candy for the boys and smuggled them in my purse. Fearing they'd eat it all before the movie started and want more, I told them I couldn't pass it out until the lights went down. They seemed to buy that.
7 - If you take boys to a Kung Fu movie, (and feed them a Zip Loc bag of sugar while you're there) expect a lot of Kung Fu when you get them home.
8 - Plan a lot of little distractions. You'll need these for when the Kung Fu game starts to get too wild. We planned for dinner (Pizzas from Costco and enough different sodas that they could mix flavors), cake, opening gifts, playing video games and a movie to help them wind down. Our strategy was to leave them to their own devices as long as things were going smoothly. (They spent most of their time trying to catch the goldfish in my backyard pond. One boy could do it with his bare hands. Really quite impressive.) When their games got too rowdy, we'd introduce a new activity to redirect their attention.
9 - Stop feeding them sugar as early in the evening as possible. Just so you know, 9 p.m. is not early enough.
10 - Plan a movie to help them wind down. We dimmed the lights and popped in a Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD. The boys were amazed that I'd seen this movie when I was a kid. "It's that old?" they asked incredulously.
11 - If you let them eat popcorn in front of the TV, they will throw it at each other. The polite boys help you pick it up.
12 - Leave some lights on in the house when they sleep so they can find the bathroom, the telephone (if they want to call home) and you, if necessary, during the night.
13 - Plan an easy breakfast. I bought little boxes of cereal so they could pick their flavors (good idea). Then I got a little wild and decided to make pancakes (bad idea.) I was so delirious, I wrecked the first batch.
14 - Give parents an early pick-up time. We told them 10 a.m. and everyone came for their children at 10 on the dot. I figured they must know what it's like to throw a slumber party.
15- Take a nap.
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6 comments:
We did the same thing for my 8 year old son's birthday. We found that kids are dropped off on time if not earlier the night of the party and are picked up a little on the later side in the morning...go figure. The plan was to have the boys roast hotdogs on the campfire. Let's just say a lot of dogs were scorched or fed to our dog and the sticks became swords. Much to our suprise, they talked well into the wee hours of the night as well. In all I'd say with a day of rest following, it was fun for all ;)
That was quite ambitious. We used to limit it to five kids since that is all the sleeping bags we could fit in our basement.
Heh. Good job making it through with only a couple of busted lips! 10 boys on kung fu and soda are a real handful!!!
I was laughing out loud at this...probably because we had a 7 year old's party this weekend with some similar antics. I've got to print this out to remmeber when my son has a slumber party! Loved the post :)
Thanks for the post. After having two girls who are 6 and 9 now, we have a newborn boy. Always wondered what boy slumber parties are like!
I know it sweird for a 12 Year Old Boy to read things like this but i did and for my birthday i did this and my parents agreed that it was a sucess. A few hours before you get the kids piling in by the hundreds prepare a big camping tenet outside in your garden therefore we made minute noise to parents yet we all were fighting iinside the tent but no one heard a thing except the neighbours so I've kinda been avoiding them for a while .....
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