There are many traps that parents fall into when planning their child’s birthday party. Here's a light touch on these age-old and often painfully obvious dilemmas, and some creative solutions designed to help you enjoy their birthday party days!

Come One Come All
You are so proud of your incredibly cute and clever handmade invitations that you send one to every child you know! While the more the merrier is ideal for adult parties, children’s parties are another matter. Invite only as many children you feel you can handle. The rule of thumb is to invite as many guests as your child is old, and remember once they eat cake, five children can easily feel like five hundred!

Make a Clean Sweep
Protect yourself, your guests, and your sanity by containing the party to a specific area. Then kid-proof it. Before the party, put all breakables, treasured possessions, and small knick-knacks in a cardboard box and store them in another part of the house. This gives you one less thing to worry about, and it gives the children freedom to PARTY!

On the Safe Side
If your guest list includes young children, check your outlet covers, and scour the area for loose change and other small items that can be swallowed. Also, watch out for the balloons. While they are definitely a festive touch, bits and pieces can cause choking.

Too Little
Not planning enough party activities for your little guests can spell disaster. While it is difficult to determine how long it will take a rambunctious group of revelers to play pin the tail on the donkey, it is better to be safe than sorry. Have an extra game or two planned lest you run up against the most feared party guest of all, the unoccupied five year old!

Too Much
Having too much for the children to do can be just as harrowing as having too little. When planning for the party, engage the birthday boy or girl in a little pre-party run of the activities you have planned. This will give you an idea of how much time to allow for each activity, and if these activities are suited to the age and attention span of your guests. Again, this is hard to gauge, but being prepared is preferable to being run ragged!

Just Right
Like the number of guests to invite, the length of children’s birthday parties has a rule of thumb. For school age children, a two to three hour party is appropriate. For toddlers and pre-school children, however, a one-hour party is best. For younger children, you may also want to consider concluding the festivities with a wind-down activity or story time.

Pre-Gifting
Birthday presents, like Pandora’s Box, are full of suspense, excitement, and create chaos when opened. To avoid the mayhem, you might consider opening gifts in private or making a game of it. Altering childhood favorites, such as Duck, Duck, Goose, can turn gift opening into an official party activity. Have all the guests sit in a circle with their gifts in their laps, and you choose the goose. Then instead of running around the circle, the goose is given the opportunity to ceremoniously present the birthday child with his or her gift. This game will make the birthday boy or girl feel like royalty, and your guests feel fully appreciated.

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About the Author
Karen Gardner is an award winning freelance writer, and has written for a variety of local, regional, national and online publications.