Bored Birthday
A few weeks ago, I took my kids to a birthday party for one of my five year old son C’s friends. It was at a nice gym of all places and one my kids were familiar with. My 7 year old daughter E wanted to tag along, so I asked the family if I could bring her and they said yes. I was hoping for a good afternoon and some tired kids afterwards.
When it was time to go, we got out of the door and arrived on time. There were about 15 kids already in the room and they didn’t know what to do because the inflatable bounce houses were still being set up. I told C to run around the tables and off they went. E followed along and soon, most of the kids were running around the table in circles having the best time.
I envied them having so much fun doing something so simple. They unfortunately got bored of it after a while and asked what to do. I said to figure it out and they went to play hide and seek the best they could given the space (and lack of hiding places!). They still had fun, but they unfortunately got bored of it after a while and asked what to do. See a trend?
I told E and C to be patient and they were hanging off of me trying to do their best to be patient. A few moments longer and it was time to go to the bounce houses (thank goodness!). My kids ran off together and I was expecting a long period of peace as the 30+ kids were all running around. There were 4 separate bounce houses and one with an obstacle course. It looked awesome.
Contrast to the enthusiasm for running around the table, E and C got bored with the bounce houses quickly and wanted something else to do. I told them to try and go through each one faster and faster. Practice their skills and stamina. They entertained me for all of 5 minutes and came back to me bored. I ended up grabbing a few basketballs and playing with them. We dribbled, stole each others’ balls, and shot around on a mini basketball hoop.
They had a lot of fun, but I wanted E and C to go play with their friends. It’s not often you are surrounded by so many friends at a fun place like this. They went off to play with their friends and came back a few minutes later saying they were bored and wanted to play with me. I gave in and we eventually just played together the rest of the time before dinner (which is always pizza!).
The birthday party kids all had pizza, which was a huge surprise. I ended up eating a few slices since there was so much left over and they grabbed their goodie bags before leaving. When they got home, my wife asked them how the birthday party went. I thought they were going to say it was kind of boring and they played with me. Instead they said they had so much fun! I guess it doesn’t take too much to entertain kids and just trying to play with them (even though I wanted them to play with their friends) gave them a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon.
