So if you’d told me 5 years ago that I would be attending a family dance party on a Sunday afternoon with my three under 5’s in tow then I would have laughed in your face and told you to get back to the bar and make mine a double.

So this Sunday I attended an afternoon family dance party with my 3 under 5’s in tow.

Things were not in my favour – I had a MASSIVE hangover after a night out in London with the hub for his birthday. Headache further exasperated by 5 year old being ridiculously interpretive with the ‘dress wild’ theme, saying things like ‘fairy princesses are wild aren’t they mummy?’. No they are not. wild. at. all. They are BORING. You dress up like that evvvvery weekend for one child’s party or another. We managed to compromise by finding a fur gilet (WTF) and a pair of leggings with giraffes on them. Fine.

2 year old was bouncing off the wall with excitement about being allowed to go to the party (the day before his sister had been to a birthday party without him) saying things like ‘I do dancing mummy, I do my robot dance’. ‘YES’ I say, a little too enthusiastically (it is actually rather good) and so we bundled everyone into the car and set off.

We only had one argument in the car on the way there (I knew we should have left earlier) so everyone was feeling pretty chipper by the time we got to Tunbridge Wells and spotted a pretty impressive display of drumming going on outside the Royal Wells Hotel. We got parked up and after a brief ‘buggy or no buggy’ debate (2 vs 2, baby noncommittal, the 2 that were ‘for’ were the 5 year old and I, both non users of the buggy but prob laziest members of the fam). The boys won the debate (robot dance trumped grumpy hungover mum) and we followed the sound of the drum (all quite pied piper) and we arrived at the #wild_child dance party.

Names ticked off and in we went. After passing the chill out room (which sounded amazing to me – had visions of slipping in there later to nurse my hangover and curl up in a foetal position but it sounded a little too like ‘time out’ to the two year old so he bypassed that room sharpish) and we reached the room that the partaaay was in. Children audibly gasped when we got there – think multicoloured animal print balloons, lighting spelling out the word d-a-n-c-e, disco lights, and of course, the pièce de résistance, old skool garage and 90’s RnB tunes being spun on the decks.

Naturally the most important thing on my mind was how freakin instagram-able the whole set up looked so I grabbed for my phone to get snap happy, and, practically tripping over the kids, went straight into Mario Testino mode – shouting at the kids to stand next to this or pose next to that. You’ll be pleased to know that they all totally ignored me and pottered straight over to the dance floor where the flavour of the afternoon was undoubtedly the bouncy cows, of course.

Now, I’m going to tell you something unusual but absolutely true about the baby. She is a huge fan of old skool music. It’s pretty weird actually. She can take or leave ‘Humpty Dumpty’ or ‘Wind the Bobbin up’ but she cannot get enough of ‘Sounds of the Wickedness’ or ‘Tipsy’.

As a result she was in her element and literally did not leave the dance floor. It was a bit awkward when she tried to join in with the dance crew, who put on a fantastic performance, but I think we styled it out by doing a bit of freestyling on the side. Her older sister is more traditional in her music tastes (square) but does love a bit of art and crafts so the craft station was where she spent most of her afternoon. So she was happy glueing and sticking, the baby was on the dance floor and the two year old was enjoying bubbles, the parachute and a spot of kick-ball (football) with a balloon.

There was only one thing for it- a cheeky beer for the husband and I whilst the going was good, I mean how often are they all occupied at the same time? It’d be rude not to, hair of the dog etc etc.

All in all a great afternoon was had by the whole squad. I only elbowed a small child out of the way once (to be fair it was my fave song) and I KNEW, I just KNEW there was a reason I had learnt all the words to Run D.M.C’s ‘it’s tricky’ many moons ago. I just didn’t know it would be to show off on a dance floor of under 8’s. Alarmingly no one was impressed at all – they’re young, they’ll learn.

So ‘party weekender’ means something different these days, but there were tunes, there was booze and there was fun. Now get back to the bar and make mine a double (and 2 orange squashes and a bottle of milk, please).

If you want to attend a #wild_child party then you can –  hangovers optional, children compulsory. Find out where the wild things are here.