What thirteen six-year-olds taught me

I have organised a lot of things in my professional life. Events for hundreds of people, team off-sites, company milestones. I like to think I am reasonably good at reading a room and understanding what a situation requires.

Thirteen six-year-olds at a birthday party have confirmed that I am not.

For context: I organised a teddy bear workshop for my daughter's birthday, a build-your-own stuffed animal activity that I thought was genuinely charming and age-appropriate and would be remembered fondly. And to be fair, that part went beautifully. They loved it. They each brought a bear to life and were delighted with themselves.

What happened after the bears was the thing.

The plan (and I say this now with the particular wince of someone who can see exactly where it went wrong) was for the workshop to be followed by dinner at a restaurant. Which required moving thirteen six-year-olds from Level 1 to Level 3 of a shopping centre.

The moment the bears were finished and the structured activity ended, the girls discovered that the shopping centre had multiple levels, escalators, machines they had not yet investigated, and absolutely no reason to stay together as a group. They ran, not walked, ran! In approximately thirteen different directions simultaneously, with the specific joyful abandon of people who have just sat still for an hour and have a great deal of stored energy to spend.

We made it to the restaurant. This felt, in the moment, like a significant achievement.

At the restaurant, they could not sit still. This was not naughtiness, this was physics. They had been structurally contained for sixty minutes and now they were in a room with chairs and a table and nowhere to run and they were six years old. We improvised colouring sheets, the colouring sheets bought us approximately four minutes.

The food arrived and was consumed in what I can only describe as a controlled emergency. They were starving, I had not accounted for the particular hunger of children who have been intensely focused on a creative activity. Everything disappeared, and then, with the food gone and the colouring sheets exhausted, they discovered the party bags.

Party bags that were supposed to go home with them.

They went through the party bags at the table. Before the cake, before the singing and before the party had technically finished.

The cake arrived and was eaten with great enthusiasm and very little ceremony. And then (because there was nothing left to eat, nothing left in the party bags, and no structured activity) they were simply done, finished and ready to leave. The party ended not with a plan but with the natural conclusion of thirteen six-year-olds simultaneously deciding they were ready to go.

I had planned a sophisticated experience. They needed a contained space, constant entertainment, a large amount of food, and the freedom to be exactly as energetic as six-year-olds actually are. These are not the same party.

Here is what I know now that I wish I had known before.

Six-year-olds do not need a sophisticated party. They need a contained space where running and jumping and general chaos are not a problem. They need someone entertaining them, not passively, not with a worksheet, but actively, every single minute, because the moment there is a gap in the programme they will find their own entertainment and it will not be the entertainment you planned.

They need more food than you think. Significantly more. Hungry six-year-olds are ungovernable and they will become hungry faster than you expect, especially if they have been doing something that requires concentration.

And they need the structure to run from start to finish without transitions, because transitions (moving from one place to another, from one activity to another, from the workshop to the restaurant) are the moments when everything becomes chaotic and you are no longer in control of anything.

The teddy bear workshop was wonderful, I would do it again. I would not follow it with dinner at a restaurant on Level 3 of a shopping centre with thirteen children who have just been sitting still for an hour.

They all went home with their bears, the bears are the thing they will remember. The rest of it is the thing their parents and I will remember with the specific, slightly shell-shocked warmth of adults who survived something together.

I have organised a lot of things in my professional life. I have significantly more respect now for the people who organise children's birthday parties for a living, what they are managing is harder than most of what I have managed.

Please just laugh with me this time, I'll be better prepared for the next one!

— Sabrina

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