Rethinking the classwide birthday party

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I for one am getting tired of all the birthday parties for my child now that its April. I can't wait for my child's class to be bigger so people don't feel so obligated to invite everyone! Fewer gifts to buy and wrap, and fewer places to haul my kids around on Saturday afternoon!

I know! I don't know why I ever sign my kids up for Sat activities. We are constantly missing classes to attend birthday parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My solution is to do a "class party" with cupcakes etc and invite no classmates to the home party. You have to have a enough out-of-school friends to have a non-school party for this to work, but really 3 friends and some family is all it takes to be festive. And I do not feel the need to reciprocate every invitation. Good God, we take a gift. Why do we owe them a reciprocal invitation? I frankly don't attend all the parties we're invited to either because we'd spend every other weekend on the birthday party circuit. You can just say no to all the maddness and step off if you want.

That is a great solution!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are weddings dealt with? You can't invite everyone to your wedding. It would be nice but not economically feasible. Unless it was a classmate that was really close why do you have to feel you have to include everyone so no one gets hurt. The world is not always easy isn't it better to learn how deal with things when you are young.

Bridezillas have a hard time with that concept even when mommie and daddie are forking over the bill. Maybe by getting them accoumstomed to this concept now, prevents Bridezilla type behaviors in the future.

Okay, so let me get this straight: if I invite the class for my daughter's bday (small class by the way, 7 kids), she will one day be a Bridezilla. So by cutting back the guest list I will nip the Bridezilla behavior in the bud. Thanks, pp, very insightful.

[Anonymous]

I guess since I only have one child so ar and it's only been his first year in preschool, I'm not yet jaded by the whole birthday party thing. My ds and I still feel that an invitation to someone's birthday party is a special occasion and we look forward to them and get excited about shopping for a gift and attending the party. DS always asks if I think there will be balloons there or if he'll get to eat cake and ice cream.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Okay, so let me get this straight: if I invite the class for my daughter's bday (small class by the way, 7 kids), she will one day be a Bridezilla. So by cutting back the guest list I will nip the Bridezilla behavior in the bud. Thanks, pp, very insightful.

Are you the OP? If you are, then it doesn't sould like a problem, only 7 kids contradicts the original posting. The OP made it sound like she is dealing with quite a few more kids than 7.

[Anonymous]

OP here: No, that wasn't me. We're dealing with a class of 20. We will definitely invite all the girls (6 plus ours); then there are two boys that our daughter likes to play with; then there are four or five that she doesn't play with much but who invited her to their parties...And there we are with already over half the class.

[Anonymous]

I am one of those who invites everyone to the birthday parties (about half the school and definitely the whole class, or, in the younger one's case, the whole playgroup). I do this because the house is big enough to handle it and we love big parties. I do NOT expect reciprocity! When we issue an invitation, it's because we genuinely want the kid to attend the party to celebrate with us - not in expectation for any return invite.

So formulate your own guest list and don't feel that an invitation conveys a responsibility to reciprocate.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate PP's generosity of spirit, but I issue return invitations because I want my child to learn about reciprocity. Am I wrong here? Can kids at this age (5) handle more information than I think?

[Anonymous]

My DS is in preK and does not get invited to all b-day parties for his classmates. He has no problem with this. He is always coming home talking about who is friends with whom (that week or that day because it changes all the time) and he never had trouble understanding that he wasn't invited because he just isn't that good of a friend with the guest of honor. I have a hard time understanding what it so hard about explaining this to a 3-5 year old.

[Anonymous]

Kids at 5 can handle a lot of messages. You just have to decide which you want to convey. If reciprocity is your priority go for it. For me, it's more important to send the message that "you don't have to do what everyone else does." Our family does things our way, others do it their way. They may have a big party, you may have a small one. Period end of story.

[Anonymous]

Our school has guidelines for handling this issue that make a lot of sense. If you are inviting kids from a class, you have essentially 3 choices: invite the whole class; invite less than half the class; or invite a subset of the class like all the girls or all the boys, etc. The one thing you cannot do is invite most of the class but leave a handful or less of kids out. The other rules that help with this is that you are not allowed to hand out invitations, etc. at school (have to be mailed or emailed home) and there is a ban on talking about birthday parties at school. My kids really follow this, to the point that I have sometimes asked whether a particular person is going to an upcoming party, only to be told that they have no idea because they wouldn't be able to find out. If it helps, I have found that the whole class party largely ends by about 1st grade and smaller parties (sleepovers and such) are more the norm.

[Anonymous]

For me the take away from the special needs threads wasn't about convenience for the parents but the feelings of the children. Is it easier to exclude 4 or 5 kids, of course, but that isn't the point. Being sensitive to others and fostering inclusiveness is about doing something for someone else. The sentence about 'parents who invite the whole class probably don't mean any harm' really rubbed me the wrong way. These are the parents who are being the better person not the ones who exclude kids for convenience or so they can throw a more expensive event.

Lids have plenty of time to learn about exclusion and have hurt feelings, do you really want to the one who teaches that to a little 4 year old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What bothers me is that in a sense you are rewarding kids who invited your child to their party by inviting them to yours - you say the only reason you are inviting them is for reciprocity. So basically by having a party for their child and inviting everyone in the class, these parents have somehow bought social invitations to other events for their kids.

I think you should just limit the party to best friends and ignore paybacks for previous invitations. Just say you had to seriously limit the numbers and everyone really should understand. I for one am getting tired of all the birthday parties for my child now that its April. I can't wait for my child's class to be bigger so people don't feel so obligated to invite everyone! Fewer gifts to buy and wrap, and fewer places to haul my kids around on Saturday afternoon!

This is interesting to me. I invited the whole (rather small) class and thought it was appropriate. Apparently I was only intending to buy social invitations. If invites have become a burden (BTW are people REALLY getting invited to a bday party every Saturday?)-why can't you just politely decline?

[Anonymous]

I'm really surprised by the mean-spiritedness of some of these posts. If going to a child's birthday party is such a burden on you, don't go. Christ, parties are supposed to be fun. I always thought people were happy to receive invitations-- I know I certainly am. Better to be included and turn down the invitation than feel bad about being left out.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised at these responses too. I'm always happy for my kids to get a party invite. They are thrilled to go and enjoy the gift-buying too.