Parents: Birthdays under lockdown

Are local restaurants doing delivery? Maybe a film and pizza night with the family - she chooses the film and get it through download/streaming services. Bake a cake, get presents on mail order - do whatever you usually do with presents on birthdays, e.g. in my family we open them after birthday tea, so do whatever you usually do.

Another thing you can do is get friends/family to record birthday messages and you edit them together and play them before you watch the film together (or whatever you end up doing).

Ask her if there's anything she wants to do for her birthday, given the restraints.

One of mine might end up having a 14th birthday under lockdown if it goes on for the whole summer.

Maybe plan a silly thing involving her friends virtually, like a treasure hunt or scavenger hunt. It could be a treasure hunt in which her friends record stupid riddle clues she can only access after solving the previous, which sends her to a place in the house with a code or name of a friend whose video she can then access.

You could do a virtual scavenger hunt where she and some of her friends get a list txted to them at the same time and all have to find stuff in their homes and take pics and the winner gets, I dunno, a pizza sent to them or cupcakes you guys make and drive over, leave on the doorstep, and run?

An Escape Room thing? You clear out a closet or something without her noticing (someplace big enough for her to move around slightly but not a big room) and put Escape room-type clues around it, then lock her in with her phone and she can take pics/facetime/whatever to solve it and get out, or she lives in the closet until she's 17.

lizmonster said:

These are all excellent ideas. I have the cell number of her best friend - I might be able to organize some kind of scavenger hunt thing.

She is totally getting a tiara.

No delivery here, but we can get take-out. Unfortunately her favorite place appears to be completely closed - last time I called the phone just rang. Maybe I'll try to get some recommendations from Nextdoor for places with similar cuisine.

Gifts are getting harder as she gets older. She's pretty good at saving money - she sits on her allowance for a few months, then buys a bunch of stuff she's been wanting (lately art supplies and upgraded subscriptions to her favorite web comics). But she definitely likes having objects to open. Will have to chew on that one.

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Get her some nice pens for drawing or something -- I've heard these (not this brand, the watercolour pens in general) are cool if she doesn't have them -- and stick little bunches or individual things inside the center of a TP roll and wrap up a few TP rolls with the surprises in the center. She won't forget it!

Another something to unwrap could be a movie DVD/album CD (retro!) from the year of her birth--there's some good choices

I have heard of 'drive-by' birthdays, which would be easier if her friends were old enough to drive, and you lived in a single-family home.
All the birthday person's friends, family (seen examples of both children's and adult's parties) drive by the birthday house, cheering and honking!
Put a banner and balloons on the driveway or lawn, facing in, to look festive for the birthday girl, and as a target so the cars don't celebrate the wrong house.

If there's enough space, someone could take pictures of the cars, with waving occupants, for sharing on whatever social media she uses.

Alternatively, if most of her friends have the same tech she does, could they co-ordinate a movie to watch together, separately? Possibly with connections, so they could comment to each other as it happens? Zoom, I think, is used for group meetings, and choirs, so maybe a 'group' viewing? (And singing of 'Happy Birthday!)

If she likes art, and web-comics, would she like a book of blank cartoon panels (from Amazon?) or, Dover Publications has a vast range of soft-cover art books.

As for other gifts to wrap, as she is 16, do you have anything in the range of 'family heirlooms' that you had thought about passing on to her 'someday'? This might be the time, as least for one of them.

And, I gather someone in the house in a baker? So you have the cake handled? I suppose it would break all the isolation rules to send cupcakes, by delivery dude, to her friends?