No birthday invitations this year

[Anonymous]

My 1st grader has not been invited to a birthday party yet this year, though I know there have been 5 or 6 kids who have had birthdays (the teacher sends out photos of the b day kid). I have no idea if the kids have had parties with friends so I'm wondering if it's pretty typical for parties to either be smaller in 1st (so only select kids) or just family parties? Have your first graders gone to birthday parties yet this year? We are new to the school so I'm unsure of the culture around parties. My kid seems to get along well with her classmates--lots of kids say "hello" to her at drop off, but she reports that all of the kids have a best friend besides her. For example, she says thinks like "Larla played with me at recess today because her best friend, Lisa, was out sick" or "Larlo chose me for his team today. He usually choose Largo, but Largo wasn't there." She doesn't seem upset about this--she just sort of reports that she doesn't have close friends but that she likes school.

Anyway, I'm just trying to get a sense of the social norms and whether I need to do more to support friendships. We work fulltime, so we don't do a ton of afterschool playdates. Maybe I need to figure out how to plan them (though my kid says she doesn't want them).

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

My 1st grader has been to several parties and we sent out invites a for a November party. He didn’t invite his class - but rather 2 kids from class, 2 from soccer, 2 from scouts, 2 from our neighborhood, 2 from last year’s class, etc.

We couldn’t have invited the whole class if we wanted to. His teacher has not sent out a class list.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry! I started doing half days (I just end 3 hours early) every other week and having my dd do playdates on that day. I walk them home from school, bake cookies and then a game and they go play. I always have a good snack and drink because I want kids to like it and feel at home. My dd wasn’t getting many invites either before I started. People seemed to not want weekend playdates. I have other kids and it works well that they’re in daycare during this time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 1st grader has been to several parties and we sent out invites a for a November party. He didn’t invite his class - but rather 2 kids from class, 2 from soccer, 2 from scouts, 2 from our neighborhood, 2 from last year’s class, etc.

We couldn’t have invited the whole class if we wanted to. His teacher has not sent out a class list.

Same. No class list was the reason we couldn’t invite more kids. We only could invite the kids we knew.

[Anonymous]

You can ask for a class list. That is silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can ask for a class list. That is silly.

Privacy issues.

[Anonymous]

It's probably a combination of smaller parties or family-only parties. There is a definite shift to smaller parties around that age--no more inviting the whole class. We actually just do family parties for my kids most years.

Definitely work to support friendships because parents are still controlling their kids' social lives at this age and will push their kids to be friends with certain kids (at least that's been my experience). We both work FT too and can only do playdates on weekends which is hard.

[Anonymous]

My kids always got invited to 2 to 4 parties a year. We've had a few this year already.... We don't have huge parties every year for our kids though. Maybe once every 3 years depending on what they want. So perhaps parents are taking a year off

[Anonymous]

1st grade is when we started having smaller parties for our kids (who are now 12 and 14). 3-4 friends for a sleepover or to the movies and out for pizza afterwards, etc.

[Anonymous]

My first grader was invited to several so far this year but I think it is where the birthdays fall. I went to school on Halloween and I saw a birthday poster and there was a huge cluster of September and October birthdays.

Last year when this same child was in kindergarten, she was invited to no parties in the fall and I knew the other kindergarten classes had some all class birthday parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can ask for a class list. That is silly.

You can ask.

The answer is always no.

Then what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can ask for a class list. That is silly.

You can ask.

The answer is always no.

Then what?

Our teacher told us she can forward an invitation to the parents. I believe it has to be the whole class.

My friend had a similar problem. She didn’t want to invite the whole class.

[Anonymous]

H

[Anonymous]

My first grader is similar. Had kids she plays with but no close friends at school (she has one very close friend from an outside activity who goes to a different school). Have reached out to a couple parents for play dates but they either flake or don’t reciprocate. It was the same last year in K. She has been invited to one party so far but it’s a girl she knew from last year’s class. However from looking at the board before school started it seems the majority of her class has spring and early summer birthdays (as does she).

At our school it’s impossible to do a whole class party. We tried last year and we tried when our older child was in K but there is always about 1/3 of the class whose parents don’t post their info on the PTA/parent portal. And the teacher and room parents are not allowed to provide the contact info they have. So for instance in DD’s class of 25, only about half even listed their kid on the portal, and not all of them provided contact info.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My first grader is similar. Had kids she plays with but no close friends at school (she has one very close friend from an outside activity who goes to a different school). Have reached out to a couple parents for play dates but they either flake or don’t reciprocate. It was the same last year in K. She has been invited to one party so far but it’s a girl she knew from last year’s class. However from looking at the board before school started it seems the majority of her class has spring and early summer birthdays (as does she).

At our school it’s impossible to do a whole class party. We tried last year and we tried when our older child was in K but there is always about 1/3 of the class whose parents don’t post their info on the PTA/parent portal. And the teacher and room parents are not allowed to provide the contact info they have. So for instance in DD’s class of 25, only about half even listed their kid on the portal, and not all of them provided contact info.

So interesting, I have a K-er and we've already been invited to two class parties (I can tell by the invite the whole class was invited). I just looked at the last email we got from the room parents and it has every single parents email right there. So clearly they aren't shy about sharing! Seems silly to make it so difficult.