I didn't realize I was an old pro until the mother of one of my son's preschool classmates turned to me one day and said, "Help, Megan is turning four next month and she wants a birthday party. What am I going to do?"

"Relax," I told her. "The whole children's birthday party process can be just as easy or as complicated as you're willing to make it. Just remember a few simple rules for planning a children's birthday party."

BIRTHDAY PARTY RULE NUMBER 1: The birthday party is for the benefit of the birthday child and his or her friends.

Your primary goal is to make the birthday child feel special. A secondary goal is to ensure that everyone has a good time at the birthday party. The children will remember whether they had fun, not whether your house was spotless or whether you carried out your chosen birthday party theme down to the last tiny detail. As far as I'm concerned, a successful birthday party is one in which no one bursts into tears.

The first step in planning a birthday party is to sit down with your child and find out what type of birthday party he or she wants. Then determine if your budget, your creativity, and your energy can deliver that type of birthday party. If not, scale down. Don't worry that your preschooler is going to want clowns or ponies. You may be pleasantly surprised. For his first "friend" birthday party (i.e. not just the immediate family), my son wanted to go to the play place at a nearby fast food restaurant. When my daughter turned four, she wanted everything to be pink -- pink balloons, pink lemonade, pink cupcakes, and pink napkins. Both birthday parties were incredibly easy and inexpensive.

BIRTHDAY PARTY RULE NUMBER 2: Don't go it alone at the birthday party.

You can't be in two places at once. In birthday party terms, you can't play musical chairs, cut the cake, and direct traffic to the bathroom at the same time. Enlist one or more "big people" (adults or responsible older children) to help you at the birthday party. If your birthday kid is very young, chances are the parents of your guests will ask if they should stay for the duration of the birthday party. The answer is yes! They can help with games, pour the punch, and take care of minor boo-boos. Just be sure to reward them for their service when you pass out the birthday cake. If you don't expect any parents to stay, and you can't talk your best friend into helping, hire one of your regular baby-sitters to help you. It is well worth the investment in terms of stress reduction.

BIRTHDAY PARTY RULE NUMBER 3: Be sure there's plenty to do.

There is no destructive force greater than a crowd of preschoolers with nothing to do. You need to keep them occupied from the moment the first guest arrives at the birthday party until the last guest leaves. Lucky for you this is not as hard as it sounds. I put out some toys my kids are willing to share so the early arrivals can play while we wait for the others. A big hit one year was a pile of Chubs Stackables diaper wipe boxes that double as giant blocks, that the kids turned into a giant tower, then a wall, then a road. The key to success was that we had enough for everyone at the birthday party (this was when I had three kids in diapers, so we had a lot of blocks!).

When all the guests have arrived for the birthday party, I start the birthday games. For kids this age, I've found that the best types of games are cooperative, rather than competitive. For instance, instead of playing musical chairs, we play a game in which we take away a chair each round, but all of the kids stay in. The goal is to see how many kids can pile on the chairs when the music stops. Instead of working against each other, the kids help each other.