Edition: U.S. / Global

So Many Parties, So Little Time; It's the Madness of the Children's Birthday Celebration Season

Published: May 24, 1998

Birthday parties are normally festive experiences -- until you go to 50 of them. Every year.

It can be enough of an ordeal for parents to throw -- and pay for -- the ever more emulous birthday parties of their own children. But then they're over with until next year. What's really damaging to parental nerve endings is the obligation to chaperon their children to the ceaseless parties of their friends and classmates.

No one, it seems, is more sociable than a 5-year-old. The party invitations arrive in the mail with a circadian rhythm. Sometimes two parties a day -- or three. Sometimes four a week -- or five. Parents with two children can find themselves jangled escorts to a good three- or four-dozen parties a year, all of which seem to fall on weekends of ideal weather for escape, or the one afternoon when free Yankees tickets are available (and it's Bat Day).

The spring, and especially the high birth-rate month of May, resonate with parties -- here at Discovery Zone, there at Chelsea Piers, here at Great Adventure -- chaining parents to the miserable role of scavenging for gifts of Beanie Babies or alien figurines or whatever is the thing right now and then carrying out the personal chauffeur bit until their heads are splitting. Finally, they get their twittering children home, transmogrified by Coke and cake so that they are ricocheting off the walls. Forget sleep. Forget the weekend. Forget life.

''What is it like?'' asked Sunny Bates, who lives on the Upper West Side and has two daughters, Lola, 10, and Lucy, 7. ''It's a nightmare. The worst concentration I remember was last spring when there were four in one day -- one downtown, one on the Upper East Side and two on the Upper West Side. You find that you get confused about what is for who where.''

Ms. Bates, who runs an executive search firm, figures she escorts her children to at least 30 parties a year.

''They cluster up always on the most beautiful weekends,'' she said. She needs the budget of Delaware to cope with the presents. So she goes to bulk supply haunts like Price Club, buys a stockpile of things she likes and stashes them in a designated present closet in her apartment.

One thing is certain. If there is an invitation, the child must attend the party -- come rain, come tornado, come nuclear attack.

Even come snowstorm and no subway. Michael Seccareccia knew those rules. His daughter, Rose, had a party in December 1995, when she was 3. Mr. Seccareccia, a carpenter and artist, was then living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The party was on the West Side of Manhattan near 125th Street. It was snowing lightly when they set off to get Legos.

By the time they got to the subway stop, the snow was so thick they had difficulty seeing. They discovered that subway service had been suspended. Stroller in one hand, the present in the other, Rose on his back, Mr. Seccareccia set off for the next station. It was about a mile away. ''The wind was whipping,'' he recalled. ''The snow was really coming down.''

At the next station, it was the same story. Unblinking, they trudged a half-mile to another line. Trains were running. They had to change lines several times. They had left home about noon. They got to the party at 5:45. There were a few stragglers left. ''We were totally soaked,'' Mr. Seccareccia said. ''I was exhausted. Rose said she really had fun.''

Many parents, though, refuse to consent to every last party that comes along, or at least not without enforcing limitations. One suburban mother told of one such situation: ''The parents gave this sleep-over party for their 7-year-old son. They invited 20 boys. I said to myself, 'Twenty 7-year-old boys in one house; it will be a zoo.' So I told my son he could go for the evening but not sleep over. When I picked him up, there were kids running wild in every room. The house was destroyed. I didn't see the basement but I heard it was no longer habitable. There were children crying. The parents were in the kitchen cowering. My son was actually glad he was leaving.''

Liz Herlich lives in South Orange, N.J. She has a daughter, Lacey, 8, and a son, Zachary, 6. Her worst experience? ''I had two parties, one for each of the kids, starting a half-hour from each other and each was a 20-minute drive from the other,'' she said. ''So it became like a military maneuver. 'Get in the car. Got your presents? Brushed your teeth? You're getting dropped off first. Be ready.' It's like scheduling flights at the airport.''

She continued: ''There are so many things to worry about. I've arranged for other parents to pick up my daughter and then they forgot to do it. After the parties, the kids are so wired from all the candy and Coke. So you try to find a baby sitter and go out, or, failing that, you definitely have beer for dinner. Then there was the party where the birthday girl fell and cut her head open on a barbecue grill. She went to the hospital in an ambulance. She was all right, but it happened within a half-hour of the party starting and everyone had to come and get their kids. I don't think they even fed them.''

By now, certain rituals have become firmly associated with the party-ushering regimen.