My daughter celebrated her 13th birthday over the weekend with a gala party that included almost every single person in her class at our house for cake, dancing and a game of truth or dare, the latter held in a dark room only lit by our laser disco light.
Truth or dare? Um… I had some reservations about the game, for sure, particularly since 13 is the age at which girls start to get very interested in boys (even if the boys don’t really reciprocate yet). Fortunately I was able to easily screen the truths and dares because my daughter and her BFF emailed everything to me to format and print so they could cut it all up.
For the most part, quite innocuous, like these:
As you can see, each was cut up in the form of a fortune cookie. The girls were smart, though: they decorated two mason jars, then put all the truths in one and all the dares in the other. This was the truth jar:
The dots on the outside of the jar were glow in the dark paint, but it didn’t work much at all, which they found disappointing. Still, the Truth or Dare game worked great, though I did silently remove a couple of entries they found online from extensive Google searches. Things like “go into a dark closet and kiss someone for five minutes” or “have your crush sit on your lap for five minutes”. Perhaps appropriate for 16yo parties (though I’m in denial about that sort of thing) but certainly not so good for a group of 13 year olds.
Not sure how to play, mom or dad? It’s easy: each person gets to pick a “truth” or a “dare” and has to do whatever it says. If it’s cluck like a chicken, sing a song, or tell all about your first kiss, ya make your choice and you’re committed to whatever the slip of paper says. Definitely some risk involved!
The party went well and the Truth or Dare went very well too, with my girl reporting that everyone played, there were no great surprises and that when someone had to kiss someone else, it was on the cheek so it wasn’t a big deal. Beforehand they all apparently agreed “let’s have this be drama free”, which must have happened because I heard no screams of laughter or tears. I also didn’t see any kids off by themselves because they didn’t want to play, something I really did expect to see.
The next morning there was a big bowl of truths and dares, rather an interesting art piece on the table:
Since they went through a lot of work to assemble all of their truth or dare challenges and then I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up spelling, grammar and weeding out the <cough> inappropriate ones, I thought I’d share it here for your party planning purposes too:
Click here to download our Truth or Dare list for Teens
Got a copy? Excellent. Now good luck having it work smoothly! 🙂