At what age do you stop inviting out of town family for your kids birthday parties?

[Anonymous]

DD is turning four this summer. We invited DHs out of town family to her first birthday party, but we haven’t had a “proper” birthday party since then, as she was at home with me, but now she goes to preschool and has friends that she wants to invite. If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to invite DHs out of town family, as it’ll be a hassle having to host them, etc, but I know they’re expecting it, especially since BIL (DHs brother) has invited DHs family to our nephews bday parties his entire life (he’s 6).

[Anonymous]

When they have friends to invite.

[Anonymous]

Um, we never invite out of town family to a kids birthday party.

I would say, not being born in this country the over the top birthday culture seems a bit insane to my family.

[Anonymous]

We have never done this.

[Anonymous]

It would never occur to me to invite out of town family. If they’re visiting over a birthday maybe they’d be included in the family celebration but it shouldn’t be a party or anything.

[Anonymous]

My kids are teens. The out of town grandparents still come because their birthdays are 6 months apart and it's a good time to visit. When they had friend parties, we had that on a different weekend and grandparents didn't come. No other out of town relatives have ever come for birthdays, even when they were little.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't invite them to the children's party. If you want to have a separate family party that's up to you. My kids b'days are 2 weeks apart so we usually had a family party in between for both because grandparents and aunts wanted to join. I think that stopped by 6ish for the older one.

[Anonymous]

One

[Anonymous]

Only if they are the child’s grandparents would I invite them.

[Anonymous]

We never did.

[Anonymous]

We never invited out of town family to our kid parties and we didn’t travel for family kid birthday parties.

[Anonymous]

You have two parties. We never mixed kid friends (couple of hours, bounce houses whatever) with a family barbecue held near the child’s birthday and if possible between a bunch of family birthdays. We had several birthdays at the end of May, so one of the weekends was the party for me, my dad, my aunt, and a cousin. Of course the biggest deal was made around the kids whose birthday it was.

So invite family when you want a family get together. No one, however, should be planning to overnight. You should be in driving distance (except for a regularly scheduled grandparent visit)

[Anonymous]

13, but we're Jewish, so....

Think about what you and the kid will want to do at the party, and invite family to that party or not. Maybe have 2 parties. Maybe just have them over for dinner or go out for dinner or an activity.

Any reason to get together is great. There are eno formal plot.

[Anonymous]

We always do. But we only have grandparents and one sibling. Both sets of grandparents fly and drive in as well as sibling. It’s a lot and feeding everyone does get to be too much.

I can’t wait until all birthdays are drop off and then the other parents aren’t there too

[Anonymous]

We’ve never done this. It sounds crazy. Why would people come from out of town for a birthday party?