I 100 per cent support thank you cards, both in theory and in practice. But also? Life, man. After your kid has a birthday party, you’ve got to get the cards, track down each guest’s mailing address, find stamps, and if you’re extra enough to let the child write the notes herself, oversee the project for days. (“How do you spell Makenzie? Oh no, I messed up. I’m going to start over.”) It is a process. I’ve noticed that many parents are now skipping physical thank you notes and sending mass “Thanks for coming!” messages, and I get that, but to me, it feels a little impersonal.
Here’s a way to let your kids be the thankers (it was their party, after all) and make things easier on yourself: Send thank you videos.
About 20 kids showed up at my daughter’s fifth birthday party at a local carousel. It was a fun day! When we got home, before the birthday girl could open any toy, I had her make a thank you video for each family that came. I grabbed my phone and pressed record as she she held each gift and said a simple spiel: “Hi Maya! Thank you for coming to my party. Thank you for the science kit. I love you!” I then texted the nine-second video to the parents. Done.
The birthday girl.
Guests soon started messaging me back. “OMG, the kids just watched this 10 times. That was so sweet!” one wrote. It got us chatting even more, which was a nice bonus. And after a long few weeks of planning, I was able to cross the final thing off my party to-do list that evening, and sink into my sofa and relax. Sometimes, modern technology can be pretty great.
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One response to “Send Thank You Videos After Your Kid’s Birthday Party ”
So far i’ve had my kids (4 and 2) opening presents as people give them and can thank them in person. Perhaps if you have enough guests to sink a battleship it doesn’t work well, but frankly my kids already have WAY too many things if we had so many people coming that that approach doesn’t work i think id have to enact a no presents policy or something (perhaps they would have to donate 1 old toy for each new toy received), we have disposed of or donated 5 garbage bags of toys this year after a huge clean out (been hoarding for 4 years) and we still have too many.