A Neuro-Diverse Percy Jackson Party
My daughter Lizzie has fallen HARD for Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books.
Like me, my daughter has Level 2 Autism + ADHD (inattentive type). She has a seriously wonderful friendship group in which almost everyone is neurodiverse (and almost no-one is straight, lol). I have a pretty good sense of some of her friends, and the rest I can’t really remember properly but I can rely on them to be kind. Which is important later.
The Percy Jackson books are about teenage demigods, all of whom have ADHD (which sharpens their battle reflexes) and dyslexia (because their brains are hard-wired to read Ancient Greek). They go on quests and are attacked by monsters a LOT. The books are very famous (plus the movies and the current TV series) so several of Lizzie’s friends already know the general vibe, and some have read the books (either before or after hearing Lizzie talk about them for many happy hours).
Percy Jackson loves blue food, and is a son of Poseidon (so he’s very connected to the sea). Therefore, the first thing I did was order a bunch of blue lollies online, from Lolly Warehouse who (unfortunately?) provides lollies in bulk. I also ordered about six books from Lizzie’s wish list, and when people asked what to get her I had books ready to give them, which was what Lizzie wanted most. She is also getting a Camp Half-Blood T-Shirt (which I was very anxious to acquire as she was given a “Wise Girl” T-shirt for Christmas and she literally hasn’t worn a different shirt since then! I really want to wash it!)
There’s an official Percy Jackson cookbook and it’s incredibly good. We’ve literally made twenty-seven of the recipes, and there are several that we make over and over. The “Blue Velvet Cake” is really nice, so I cooked that (yes I screwed up the icing slightly). As you can tell, that’s a mermaid/pirate set of cake toppers. There are pirates and sirens in the books, so that works great!
I also made Tzatziki using the book’s recipe. It has lots of Greek recipes, for obvious reasons! Plus it can be made the day before.
On the invitation I asked people to dress as Greeks, characters from the book, or monsters—and to wear swimmers underneath. Some of them forgot, which is fine as the characters are all American teenagers so… done! But some of them looked AMAZING. My greatest regret is that I didn’t take photos of them in costume.
Everyone was assigned a character, and was given a piece of paper with some details including their allies etc. I’ve read the first five books (and I’m onto the second series), plus I used the Percy Jackson wiki… and Lizzie’s encyclopaedic knowledge to check details. I definitely fudged things a bit, because we ended up with a total of TWELVE kids coming to the party, which is a lot!
There are some characters that would have been great, but it was slightly spoilery to use them. Most of the characters I used appear in the first book.
Some of the characters have skills and heritages that are not immediately known, so there are very minor character-based SPOILERS from now on.
The main trilogy of friends are:
Lizzie’s favourite character is Annabeth, so that was a no-brainer. This is what we used for her hat that lets her turn invisible (the hat style is NOT book accurate, lol):
One of her friends is especially good with animals, so I decided she was Grover.
One of the friends didn’t know anyone else, so I chose them to be Percy so they had lots of links to people via their character. Percy has incredible sword skills (and one of Lizzie’s friends gave her a blue hairbrush recently in honour of a certain moment in the books, so we had two decorative weapons).
The next natural category is more demigods, plus Tyson since he’s Percy’s half-brother. My son Tim was Tyson, because he’s quite over-powered (fun), and Tim knows the kid playing Percy so I thought Percy’d enjoy having Tim as their brother.
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Clarisse is a bully with zero social skills, so I was a little nervous about her. But the person who I’d decided could play Clarisse was absolutely thrilled. It turns out Clarisse is literally their favourite character…. and she (the kid) does boxing! So that was really cool.
The dryads at Camp Half-Blood grow strawberries, so of course we had those!
There are two more demigods who don’t actually join the group at Camp Half-Blood, but Nico in particular is a fan favourite character. Plus, children of Hades is cool!
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I decided to let the two main teachers of Camp Half-Blood be characters too, even though it’s a major thing in the books that gods (like these two) aren’t allowed to go on quests. So there was a certain amount of fudging book rules. Why not?
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AND I chose to also write up Kronos, the big bad of the first five-book series. I knew one of the kids was super confident and would enjoy being a villain (including being targeted and “hated” by every other kid at the party).
Even though the characters have wildly different power levels, they all have skills and faults and so I was able to make sure everyone got a ‘hero’ moment in the quest.
They really enjoyed reading their character sheets and working out who was friends with who and what their powers were. One of the kids has only one hand, so they suggested it had been lost in a monster battle. (See THIS is the quality of friends my daughter has!)
We ate while waiting for the stragglers to arrive (but, as often happens in the neuro-diverse community, two of them simply didn’t show up at all… which was fine. Arguably, the only essential character was Grover).
I gave them a little safety talk, which had three purposes:
- Making sure everyone was okay with having water balloons thrown at them.
- Making sure the newbie had a quiet room to retreat to (which he did, several times). Quiet rooms are so good for Autistic kids!
- Making sure everyone knew the ground rules for when cats were around.
Here’s a painting one of the kids has been working on for Lizzie. How cool is it!?!
The quest had three main stages.
STAGE ONE: GAUNTLET
Camp Half-Blood is a sanctuary for demigods… but it can be VERY dangerous to get there. So we changed into swimmers and went out to our driveway. In small groups, the kids had to run the entire length of the driveway while getting pelted by water balloons (by other kids).
We’re on a battleax block so the driveway is long, but we also have an old mattress so in order to slow down the kids as much as possible, I laid down the mattress and hung shadecloth over it (using bins and outdoor pegs) and told them they had to crawl across the mattress under the shadecloth. It worked great! They were very easy to hit while crawling.
The teachers (Chiron and Dionysus) ‘defended’ the camp (ie they joined my husband and I in throwing balloons at the kids), and Percy and Tyson did too (just because they have water powers). The logic doesn’t quite hold up, but who cares?
Thalia was armed with water guns, and allowed to fight back (except not at Percy as the actual human kid didn’t want to be targeted at all).
Annabeth could wear her invisibility hat, which meant no one could throw anything at her (but she still got wet due to being nearby).
Kronos can manipulative time, so he could choose a moment to shout “STOP” and then I counted five full seconds during which no one could throw anything at him.
Conner is sneaky due to being the son of the god of thieves, so he was in the group with Kronos, which gave him a slight advantage.
As people reached safety, they joined the defenders.
As I suspected, the kids who were hesitant about getting targeted soon wanted to be hit, so our groups went as follows:
- Thalia, Annabeth, Grover (a historical combination if you’ve read enough of the books).
- Clarisse, Nico, Bianca.
- Kronos, Connor.
- Percy and Tyson.
- Chiron and Dionysius.
(I made the kids pick up ten broken balloons each before going inside. We filled most of the balloons the day before the party.)
I’m personally going through a prawn-canapé phase, and of course they’re seafood so that was sufficient excuse for me to make some. Also, my mum has a devilled-egg plate and I wanted to see how canapés go in it (great, except they tend to want to slide around—they’d work better on cucumber slices or basil leaves).
STAGE TWO: GODDESSES GIVE A QUEST AND A CLUE
I appeared to the party in the guise of Artemis, goddess of the hunt (who is a fan of Bianca) and said, “Please help me!
Four of my fiercest hunting cats have been trapped by a terrible enemy!
As a goddess I am not permitted to actively rescue them, but Chiron and Dionysus may act even though they’re gods, because they’re men so they don’t count [Artemis is extremely sexist in the books].
I recommend you seek Athena’s favour. She also loves the hunt, and the crunch of fangs rending flesh and bone. And she’s wise.
Please rescue my sweet deadly kitties! Oh… and when you free them, be careful or they’ll definitely eat you. But I’m sure you’ll figure something out!”
Then the kids decorated cupcakes as an offering to Athena. Dionysus got three cupcakes instead of just one, since he’s the god of food (and wine of course). In practice that meant that when someone felt they’d screwed up their cupcake, Dionysus could save the day by giving them one of their spares.
Athena (ie me, with a white sheet hung over my Artemis dress) accepted their offerings, and said:
I accept your offerings,
And wish to aid the kitties.
I’m not allowed to intervene…
The drakon holds the key!
STAGE THREE: BATTLING THE DRAKON
I ordered a dragon piñata online (from ebay for $30), filled it with individually-wrapped lollies and put in a key I cut out of a piece of cardboard.
In order to simulate difficult terrain, the kids had to stand on a mini trampoline while hitting the piñata. I placed it near a swing which I swung at the kids to represent a ghost army. If the swing touched them, they were wounded.
There were four distinct groups. The first group were armed with pool noodles (NOT an effective weapon, even against cardboard): Kronos (because he doesn’t have a physical form), Grover (not a demigod so no super strength), and Dionysus (a god… but I said he was probably drunk because… well, god of wine).
The second group also used only a pool noodle, but the ghost army didn’t attack them: Nico and Bianca (who as kids of Hades can command ghosts to go away), Annabeth (who can sneak past ghosts in her invisibility hat), and Connor (who is sneaky due to being the son of Hermes, god of thieves).
The third group is super strong, so they didn’t have to use a pool noodle—they could use their fists. That group was Tyson, Clarisse, Chiron, and Thalia.
And finally, Percy. Percy has amazing sword skills, so he was allowed to use an actual (replica) sword. Yes, one made of metal.
In the second round, groups one and two could use their fists and group three could use a baseball bat.
The drakon soon died horribly, and its delicious sugary guts were pulled out along with the cardboard key.
We returned inside and I gave them ambrosia aka cake (which heals demigods), starting with the wounded.
I brought out Artemis’s terrifying hunting cats, in a zipped carrier.
I asked the kids if they remembered anything that might be important at this stage… and they DID remember that the cats will eat them.
Luckily, we happened to have a satyr with the ability to speak to animals, so Grover released the cats, making sure they promised not to eat anyone first. (And I made sure all the kids were sitting down and several had dangling toys to draw the kittens to them safely—two of the guests have adopted cats off me in the past; like I said, this group is fundamentally kind and that’s important even with the extremely chill attitude of Ragdoll kittens.)
As a bonus, Poseidon (aka my husband in a Hawaiian shirt) appeared to deliver this conclusion:
Congrats for now your quest is done!
Enjoy the spoils and have your fun.
To praise the heroes you’ve become
Welcome all to my kingdom.
So at that stage, anyone who wanted to could go in our spa.
We all just relaxed after that: admiring the kittens, or eating more food, or going in the spa.
What worked well:
*The characters were fun, and helped with any social awkwardness because they gave people a role to play. Also, it didn’t matter that two people didn’t show up because a lot of their powers were similar. Some kids would definitely want to choose their own characters, which would take time and be quite complex. But I got lucky.
*The water balloon fight worked well despite unusually cool weather and a lot of Autistic sensitivity. The water balloons themselves were surprisingly unpredictable, literally bouncing off people sometimes and other times exploding for no reason. So someone truly sensitive would probably get wet unless they were very far away. They hit pretty hard too, and in the chaos instructions to avoid head shots can’t be followed accurately. One of the kids said, “This is the best party I’ve ever been to!” and I get it. Waterfights can be fun, but waterfights while playing a heroic character? AMAZING. It’s like baby’s first role-playing game.
*Cupcakes were a nice break from the violence although it was crowded around the table.
*Piñatas are very risky if you have kids with hyperactive type ADHD, but this group was careful and trustworthy even though they were hyped up.
*Once the quest was done, I got to chat to some of the kids, which is always incredibly rewarding. I accidentally made one of them cry, but she said it was with happiness. She is one of my favourites so I hope that is true.
*Percy (aka the newbie) told two of the others, “I can tell you’re really cool” which was such a classic Autistic thing to say, and the recipients absolutely loved it.
*The kittens were extremely popular! Not every group of kids could be trusted, especially in a party setting. But these guys were great (and the kittens were able to leave the room if they wanted—but this is an especially social litter, which was why I wrote them into the party in the first place). It helped that these guys are teens rather than young kids, and none of them have hyperactive-type ADHD.
What surprised me or didn’t work so well:
Kronos came outside, spotted the water balloons, and immediately threw several balloons at me! THAT I did not expect! But it was funny… and my phone survived despite getting soaked. So, yay!
Blue food colouring (and especially the blue icing) got everywhere.
I had the party in the morning so it wasn’t too hot, but that made everything a scramble and I really wasn’t ready in time. I should have made the party at least three hours long. In the end it was cool and even a little rainy. But everyone handled it well. Weather is always tricky, and neuro-diverse or disabled kids are more likely to be thrown by it.
Because people had to change clothes multiple times, I had no hope of keeping track of the kids I didn’t already know well. Like many Autistic people I’m terrible with faces!
One of the parents was fascinated by the devilled-egg plate. She’d bought one for a friend without realising that’s what it was. Knowledge acquired!
Autistic parties are awesome because:
Autistic people tend to accept their fellow weirdos.
Autistic people tend to ignore silly rules like “Only be friends with people the same age as you” or “Stick to small talk”. So you get a genuinely interesting mix of people and of conversational topics.
Autistic people tend to have at least one special interest and they go deep on that topic, so you can find out some amazing things if you just let them talk.
Autistic people absolutely glow when an Autistic adult lets them know they’re in a safe place (eg by asking everyone’s pronouns and/or indicating a safe room).
One of the adults (also neurodiverse) was absolutely thrilled when she asked if she could help and I gave her a job. When Autistic people offer to help, they mean it.
Don’t forget to:
Have at least one quiet space and make sure people feel able to use it.
Check in with potential sensory issues. Ask questions like: Are you okay with having water balloons thrown at you? Are you sensitive to noise, and if so what can we do about yelling? Should I turn off the ambient music? Should I turn down the lights? Are there any smells (coffee, bananas, air fresheners) that bother you? Will you be okay with X number of other kids in one space? Would it help to be outside or would it be better to be inside? What are your safe snack and/or treat foods?
A lot of Autistic people are extra uncoordinated and/or have hyper-mobility (joints can be dislocated easily) so things like water on the floor are more hazardous than for neurotypical kids.
Just knowing someone is trying their best to be accommodating can mean the world, and make people feel much safer (which also makes them more flexible).
If someone doesn’t know many people or is shy, figure out a way to put them in a pair (eg “John and Bob, can you two please cut up these strawberries for me?” or “Peta and Jane, you both love dogs. Why don’t you show photos to each other?”) It’s much easier to interact with one person than a group, and it gives a shy person an anchor. Giving a job to a shy and/or Autistic kid can help them a lot because a job is a nice clear role for them to play.
Make sure someone with inattentive-type ADHD hears and understands safety instructions.
Make sure someone with hyperactive-style ADHD is able to fidget and/or move around.
Felicity Banks 