Pro Tip: Childrens' Birthday Parties

We went to a birthday party for a 5 year-old yesterday. It was actually not too bad, for two main reasons:

2) the children big enough to play largely unattended were outside
1) enough interesting adults were there to speak to. I spent a good portion of the time speaking with an engineer and his wife whose youngest child is old enough to have children.

Pro Tip: Invite interesting people to your child's birthday party, even if they don't have small children. For the sake of the parents who bring the children and stay for the free food party.