When do people stop inviting the whole class to birthday parties and how does that go?

[Anonymous]

My kid is in K and most people still invite the whole class. I get why but don't love this phase as (1) I find planning a party for 20 kids exhausting, and (2) I find fielding 20 birthday invitations throughout the year exhausting as well, even if we only make it to about half due to scheduling conflicts. It's just a lot of birthday at an age where birthdays aren't that fun for the supervising adults.

When does this stop? And how hard is it on the kids when it does? I know the nice thing about whole-class parties is that no one feels left out, and I'm sure once kids are inviting smaller groups, there ARE kids who are left out. My kid has friends at school but also can be a bit of a loner and I'm sure there will be parties that she doesn't get invited to but hears about and is sad.

When does this shift and what can parents do to support their kids when it does, if there are any hurt feelings or your kid feels excluded?

[Anonymous]

A lot of people in K just invite all the boys or all the girls. There are no hurt feelings in that case.

[Anonymous]

Some never invite everyone. At least with our kids, whole class parties were done by third grade. It does suck for the kids left out. At least for our loner, it wasn't not getting invited that was hard it was realizing that they didn't have enough people to invite to their own party

[Anonymous]

We stopped at K. There was only one kid in my sons class that invited the entire class in K.

[Anonymous]

We invited the whole class in K and 1st. By 2nd grade my kids had their friend groups and didn't want the whole class anymore.

[Anonymous]

I don't think we had any whole-class parties after second grade. People either invited just the boys/girls or a handful of friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people in K just invite all the boys or all the girls. There are no hurt feelings in that case.

I dislike this because it just reinforces the idea of same-sex friendships which I think is negative in the longterm. I'd rather my kid be left out of some parties as the invitation lists shrink then have a culture where kids are told that friendships are always supposed to be same-sex. It just doesn't reflect how friendships/relationships work in adulthood and contributes to misogyny by teaching boys, in particular, that they don't need to be friendly with girls or treat them as equals.

I have a girl and she gravitates to female friendships but she has made friends with a number of boys in early elementary and we nurture those friendships too and would totally invite those boys to her birthday. They might choose not to come or they might come and decide to leave early if they aren't into the same stuff DD is into (unicorns and mermaids) which is totally okay. But I wouldn't just exclude them because they are boys.

[Anonymous]

I never have. In ES did smaller parties with just the kids they considered their closest friends.

[Anonymous]

We only ever invited the full class in pre-K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We invited the whole class in K and 1st. By 2nd grade my kids had their friend groups and didn't want the whole class anymore.

I should answer your question about how it went only inviting part of the class - it went just fine. We ran into one girl who asked flat out "Am I invited to Natalie's party this year? I want to come over and play with her toys." (She was upset because at Nat's 1st grade party in our backyard, despite the fact that we had a guy do an animal show (he brought like ten animals in cages) and had a table with arts and crafts that were animal related, she wanted to go into the house and bring out toys to play with and asked multiple people (me, DH, my FIL) and then ultimately snuck into the house and was heading up the stairs when she was found and kicked out. She wasn't even one of DD's friends - just a girl in her class.)

[Anonymous]

We only invited the whole class in K because DS didn't have many close friends yet. After that, he could articulate who he wanted to invite.

[Anonymous]

We invited the whole class this year, 2nd grade, and it was great. Most families accepted, including several we don't know, and I was happy to be able to meet them. I could see this ending in 3rd grade or higher, but that makes me sad because we are new to the school and my son doesn't have a strong group of friends so I imagine he will be the one left out.

But, you don't ever have to invite the whole class if you don't want a large party or don't want to deal with it.

I also agree that inviting just boys or just girls is odd and not the message I want my young kids to get about socializing.

[Anonymous]

I wish my boy would play with some girls. I think girls at k/1st grade are more mature and nicer, but my boy only wants to play with boys ONLY. What a silly boy! Now at 1st grade, all of his birthday invitations are all from boys so far.

I have seen some boys around that age may invite a few girls, but girls around that age tend to more likely to invite girls mostly.

[Anonymous]

I have a 2nd grade boy and Kindergarten girl this year. Last year when my son was in 1st grade, he was invited to 3 whole class bday parties and 4-5 other parties that were a smaller group of kids invited (like 5-6 kids from the class, but never all the boys in the class). Before that, there were no bday parties when he was in K due to the pandemic. The parties he was invited to in pre-k from his classmates were all whole class parties.

My daughter last year in pre-K also all the parties were for the whole class but this year in K she's been to 2 parties that were just a small group of friends so I think it just depends on the specific group of kids!

Personally, I haven't and wouldn't host a whole class party. My kids invite only their closest friends. I want to be inclusive and hate to leave kids out or make them sad but at the same time I just can't handle the stress of a whole class party and they're overwhelming and not fun for my kids (both of whom are more introverted type kids who don't like large groups) either so we don't do them. We just emphasize strongly to our kids not to talk about their bday party at school/around other kids...I'm sure sometimes they do--they're kids and kids talk. But we try to make sure they understand that someone may get hurt feelings if they hear it and I think my kids are sensitive enough to understand that for the most part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people in K just invite all the boys or all the girls. There are no hurt feelings in that case.

I dislike this because it just reinforces the idea of same-sex friendships which I think is negative in the longterm. I'd rather my kid be left out of some parties as the invitation lists shrink then have a culture where kids are told that friendships are always supposed to be same-sex. It just doesn't reflect how friendships/relationships work in adulthood and contributes to misogyny by teaching boys, in particular, that they don't need to be friendly with girls or treat them as equals.

I have a girl and she gravitates to female friendships but she has made friends with a number of boys in early elementary and we nurture those friendships too and would totally invite those boys to her birthday. They might choose not to come or they might come and decide to leave early if they aren't into the same stuff DD is into (unicorns and mermaids) which is totally okay. But I wouldn't just exclude them because they are boys.

I’m thinking about having a party and my kid is in K. The rule of thumb seems to be to invite all the boys if you’ve got a boy, but mine often likes to play with the girls because they “are so kind”… but I feel bad handpicking kids too.