Children love parties. The poor adults who have to arrange them, run them, try and rescue them when everything goes wrong, and finally collapse in a little ball after everyone has gone home, don’t. And little wonder. Running a children’s party ought to be a full time occupation – not something done part time by unwilling volunteers. Fortunately for those volunteers, there are some people out there who actually make their living from running and entertaining at kid’s parties: party organisers like the wonderfully named UK outfit Froggle, whose kids entertainer packages alone have probably saved half the nation’s parents from a party-induced breakdown.Here’s how Froggle, and the other unsung heroes that do the same job up and down the country, save so many poor harassed parents from mental rack and ruin. They come in, they take over as much or as little of the party organisation and running as the parents require, and they let the parents themselves take a back seat. That means there’s more time for the parents to do the really useful stuff, like keeping an eye out for skinned knees and incipient tantrums, while the kids’ entertainer and his or her colleagues concentrate on all the things that usually distract Mum and Dad from doing the necessary. As a result, that necessary becomes far less stressful than it used to be – because Mum and Dad are no longer trying to keep their eyes peeled whilst also entertaining everyone, they find the actual keeping their eyes peeled part a lot less of a strain than it used to be.There’s a very specific advantage to hiring an entertainer for a children’s party. Unlike Mum, or Dad, or even an older sibling or family friend, no part attendee is likely to know the kids entertainer in question. And that means two things. One, the entertainer never suffers from that loss of illusion that Mum or Dad will inevitably feel when one of the guests shouts out “hey – that’s Johnny’s mum!” And two, the entertainer is usually afforded more respect than Mum or Dad would have been. He or she is treated with the better behaved reserve children always put on for strangers – because, with strangers, they don’t know where the boundaries are. The result? A kids’ entertainer actually entertains more, because the children don’t recognise him, or her, and so the illusion isn’t spoiled – and, again because the guy or gal under the makeup is a stranger, the kids behave better too. Which means everyone goes home happy for a change.
A decent kids’ entertainer knows exactly how to keep children interested, when and how to excite them and, most importantly of all, when to calm them down. In the hands of an expert, all the guests at the party will have safely expended the fury of all their pent up excitement long before the end of the party – meaning that they’re easy to get home and relatively tantrum free.There may, possibly, be other ways of controlling a kid’s party – but why bother? Simply hire a decent kids’ entertainer, sit back, relax, and prepare to actually enjoy a child’s birthday for a change. You never know – you might like it.