Not getting invited to parties after being invited in previous years

[Anonymous]

My kids are older but all the parties now are small. My one kid is having 4 friends over to our house and my other just invited 4 friends from school, sibling, friend’s sibling, and 3 not from school…to a venue and the venue is expensive so we had a limit.

This is the way everyone around us does things now, so my kids also fully understand (and don’t care when they aren’t invited to things).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parties starting late in 1st and then in 2nd get smaller. 10 kids. Boys and girls both get left out, it happens to everyone. Those 10 kids can include family friends, sports friends, close aged siblings or cousins. Continue all class/all gender parties if that is what you or your DD wants but it doesn't guarantee reciprocal invites. It does help if you are friends with the moms at that age.

My older kids are now tweens/teens. Over on the tween/teen forum, people often talk about their kid being the left out one. My boys were never the left out ones. I have even responded on those threads that I often only take who I can fit in my car so that means closest 4 friends only.

Ugh I feel like my daughter is not the same as my boys. She seems also much more sensitive.

So you didn't care or feel bad at all until it was your kid. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parties starting late in 1st and then in 2nd get smaller. 10 kids. Boys and girls both get left out, it happens to everyone. Those 10 kids can include family friends, sports friends, close aged siblings or cousins. Continue all class/all gender parties if that is what you or your DD wants but it doesn't guarantee reciprocal invites. It does help if you are friends with the moms at that age.

My older kids are now tweens/teens. Over on the tween/teen forum, people often talk about their kid being the left out one. My boys were never the left out ones. I have even responded on those threads that I often only take who I can fit in my car so that means closest 4 friends only.

Ugh I feel like my daughter is not the same as my boys. She seems also much more sensitive.

So you didn't care or feel bad at all

No I doubt until it was your kid. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By second grade, many birthday parties are smaller and just close friends.

+1, and you have to consider that there are 'outside school' friends to consider (cousins, church, scouts, sports, etc.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parties starting late in 1st and then in 2nd get smaller. 10 kids. Boys and girls both get left out, it happens to everyone. Those 10 kids can include family friends, sports friends, close aged siblings or cousins. Continue all class/all gender parties if that is what you or your DD wants but it doesn't guarantee reciprocal invites. It does help if you are friends with the moms at that age.

My older kids are now tweens/teens. Over on the tween/teen forum, people often talk about their kid being the left out one. My boys were never the left out ones. I have even responded on those threads that I often only take who I can fit in my car so that means closest 4 friends only.

Ugh I feel like my daughter is not the same as my boys. She seems also much more sensitive.

So you didn't care or feel bad at all until it was your kid. Got it.

I also said that I made my kids invite all the boys in the class until sixth grade. It didn’t feel right to invite only 10 of the 11 or 12 boys so we invited all of the boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parties starting late in 1st and then in 2nd get smaller. 10 kids. Boys and girls both get left out, it happens to everyone. Those 10 kids can include family friends, sports friends, close aged siblings or cousins. Continue all class/all gender parties if that is what you or your DD wants but it doesn't guarantee reciprocal invites. It does help if you are friends with the moms at that age.

My older kids are now tweens/teens. Over on the tween/teen forum, people often talk about their kid being the left out one. My boys were never the left out ones. I have even responded on those threads that I often only take who I can fit in my car so that means closest 4 friends only.

Ugh I feel like my daughter is not the same as my boys. She seems also much more sensitive.

LOL. Karma is a…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really feel like this "everyone has to be inclusive" is setting our kids up for failure. DS has been excluded. I've been excluded. Yeah it hurts but it's part of life and you learn how to build your own community. DS will never be part of the "popular kids". But it's ok, he has a small group of close friends and he's happy.

You say your daughter doesn't play with the boy and girl who didn't invite her. So it makes sense she wouldn't be invited if they were doing small things. She's young enough where you can still facilitate playdates. Id start doing that. Help her build her community at school. There are other girls who aren't into sports and the like.

My daughter does dance. She does have friends and she was invited to probably 15, 20 if you include my friends’ kids.

It just feels bad if your friends are going and you are not. This is a new feeling for her. After Covid, everyone had parties and it seemed like invited everyone. She also got invited to a few smaller parties last year where they did a manicure or a sleep under. Only 5 girls were invited.

and there were likely girls who didn't get invited to the 5 person party whose feelings were hurt. But you didn't focus on that because your kid was one is the chosen ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I plan to mitigate this by ensuring my daughter always has multiple groups of friends outside of school like Girl Scouts, neighbors, music group, etc. so that there are always other friends when on group isn’t working out. Could you help your daughter develop some relationships outside of school?

I probably made more effort when my older kids were younger. We became very good friends with multiple groups of families.

When my youngest was in preschool, I already had kids in elementary so we were more focused on the older kids and their sports and friends. We did have friends but not as close as the families of my older kids. Older kid friends we would travel, celebrate adult birthdays, do moms night out, etc. in addition to do all the kid stuff. For youngest one, I would do playground play dates, coffee and kid birthdays only.

[Anonymous]

My daughter makes the invite list and pretty much designs her party. The last one we included kids from many facets of her life so, there were only her favorites from school. Also, we had a galaxy slime party and each kid had a bowl but we could literally only invite 20 kids or so. This coming party in 3rd grade she will have it at a large venue so more can be invited. Yes, some were upset but that is life.

[Anonymous]

Sorry your child is upset and I would assume a smaller sized party. When did you invite the birthday party child for a play date? If there haven’t been any recent play dates, then that’s your answer— they are not best friends. She is not a mean girl, they simply had to condense the party count.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By second grade, many birthday parties are smaller and just close friends.

This. Don’t overthink it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter makes the invite list and pretty much designs her party. The last one we included kids from many facets of her life so, there were only her favorites from school. Also, we had a galaxy slime party and each kid had a bowl but we could literally only invite 20 kids or so. This coming party in 3rd grade she will have it at a large venue so more can be invited. Yes, some were upset but that is life.

Nobody cares that they weren’t invited give me a break

[Anonymous]

Don't understand this post. At all. Your DD is not good friends with these kids. So basically you're saying, people are not allowed to have birthday parties. Ever hear of inviting the same number of kids as your age? It's very typical. So if people don't have the money, energy, space, bandwidth to invite the whole class or half the class (single mom here 🙋‍♀️), like you do, that's a problem? Sorry, this is utterly ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parties starting late in 1st and then in 2nd get smaller. 10 kids. Boys and girls both get left out, it happens to everyone. Those 10 kids can include family friends, sports friends, close aged siblings or cousins. Continue all class/all gender parties if that is what you or your DD wants but it doesn't guarantee reciprocal invites. It does help if you are friends with the moms at that age.

My older kids are now tweens/teens. Over on the tween/teen forum, people often talk about their kid being the left out one. My boys were never the left out ones. I have even responded on those threads that I often only take who I can fit in my car so that means closest 4 friends only.

Ugh I feel like my daughter is not the same as my boys. She seems also much more sensitive.

So you didn't care or feel bad at all until it was your kid. Got it.

I also said that I made my kids invite all the boys in the class until sixth grade. It didn’t feel right to invite only 10 of the 11 or 12 boys so we invited all of the boys.

Yes, but as others have said, kids have friends from church, activities, family friends, cousins, etc etc. WAS your DD the ONLY kid or girl in the class not invited, or you're just saying random crap to make it seem hurtful?

What grade is your daughter in? So in 6th grade it's fine, but not younger? Thanks for letting us all know. You should have published this somewhere so all the parents could see the rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter makes the invite list and pretty much designs her party. The last one we included kids from many facets of her life so, there were only her favorites from school. Also, we had a galaxy slime party and each kid had a bowl but we could literally only invite 20 kids or so. This coming party in 3rd grade she will have it at a large venue so more can be invited. Yes, some were upset but that is life.

Nobody cares that they weren’t invited give me a break

DP, but did you read the OPs post and the whole thread? People do care because “hurt feelings”.

It’s shocking that people will swear kids are resilient in terms of parents divorcing or cross country moves, but lose their minds over lack of a BD party invite.