Factor 3: The necessity of a theme

“When I was a kid, the theme of each of my birthday parties was...Birthday Party,” says Brian Sargent, father of two and local blogger (LookyDaddy.com). Nowadays, such a straightforward approach is prohibited. Most modern parents can’t celebrate the anniversary of their child’s appearance on earth without choosing an accompanying design motif. (Terrifyingly, I hear that parties celebrating “half-birthdays” are all the rage in Chicago.) After attending a year’s worth of ballerina parties, Wild West parties, and Birthday Shrek-taculars, it’s only natural you’d feel the need to ask, “What is my child’s party going to be about?” Especially since the answer, apparently, can’t be “My child.”

Throwing a theme party means building the entire event around the birthday child’s latest obsession. Who among us hasn’t been to the “prehistoric party,” where kids danced under giant foam fossils to Laurie Berkner’s “We Are the Dinosaurs” and then played those classic party games Hot Trilobite and Musical Tar Pits? It’s as if the party-throwing parents were acting on a secret desire to design a new attraction for Walt Disney World.

The idea behind all this planning—and the corresponding outlay of cash—is to differentiate this very special event from a regular old playdate. Themes can add an extra element of fun for kids, but they’re almost certain to create extra headache for you. The biggest danger lies in the fact that young children are incredibly fickle; you always run the risk of the birthday boy’s “favorite thing in the whole world” changing before the party rolls around. That unfortunate turn of events is exactly what happened to one Brooklyn dad who bought more than a hundred dollars’ worth of Elmo paraphernalia for his son’s third birthday, only to hear the boy announce at the party, “Elmo is for babies. I watch Justice League now.”