What kind of joke actually works for a child, and what should never go in one?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe joke has to be at the situation’s expense and never at hers. That rules out anything about how she looks, what she eats, how she compares with a brother, a sister or a classmate, and every variation on how much older she is getting, which is an adult worry dressed up as a punchline. What works instead is exaggerating her authority for the day, treating her preferences as law, and casting the grown-ups as the ridiculous ones. A child laughs hardest when she is in on the joke and an adult is the target. If a line would make her look small in front of the room, it is not funny, however funny it sounded in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The card is going to be read out loud in front of her friends. Does that change what you write?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt changes almost everything. A room full of eight-year-olds gives you roughly fifteen seconds before somebody drifts back to the snacks, so length is the first thing to cut. The second is anything private: a nickname only the family uses, a story about something she cried about, an inside reference her friends will make her explain. Written for an audience, a wish works best in the plural, because we hope gives the whole room something to agree with out loud. And write for the friends as much as for her, since at that age being funny in front of them is a gift in itself, while being touching in front of them is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do you write something funny for a ten or twelve-year-old without sounding like you are trying too hard?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nStart by deleting the pet names. Sweetheart, princess and our little one are touching for the adult writing them and mortifying for the person receiving them in front of friends. Next, delete any slang you picked up secondhand. She will recognize it instantly and it will land exactly as badly as you fear. What does work at this age is dryness: understatement, a straight face, a joke that credits her with being sharp enough to catch it. Treat her opinions as real opinions and her time as her own. Two good sentences beat eight enthusiastic ones, and the exclamation marks can mostly go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are two children in the family and only one birthday. How do you keep the other one from feeling left out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nKeep the card entirely hers and give the other child a job instead of a mention. The instinct is to work the sibling into the wording, along the lines of your brother helped pick this out, which quietly turns her card into a family bulletin. Comparisons are the real hazard, and even flattering ones land on two children at once: calling her the tidy one tells the other exactly what he is. Carrying the cake in, choosing the candles, being allowed to say happy birthday first \u2014 those give a sibling a part in the day without taking a line out of her card. Then make his card just as specific when his turn comes. Children audit this and they remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Does a funny wish still need an actual wish in it, or is the joke enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt needs one, and it belongs at the end. A joke on its own reads as a comment rather than a greeting, and children hear the difference immediately even if they could not name it. The shape that works is two or three silly sentences followed by one short plain one saying what you genuinely hope for her. That plain sentence is the part she keeps, and it does not have to be solemn: hope today is exactly your kind of day will do. Without it, a funny card is a performance aimed at the adults in the room. With it, the humour becomes the wrapping and the wish is the thing inside. If you are stuck, write the wish first and put the joke above it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A birthday message for a kid has one job the adult version never has: it must survive being read out loud in a kitchen full of people, at least one of whom is holding a cake. Health, success and prosperity mean nothing to a seven-year-old. She waits politely through those words the way she waits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":594,"featured_media":6091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3613],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6094,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6090\/revisions\/6094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6090"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=6090"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=6090"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmonton.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=6090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}