Drop off birthday party, but don't know the parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I don't know the parents then this is a great opportunity to get to know them. Depending on the location and time of the party I have seen parents that stay, even if its a drop off party at age 8. For playdates and parties if I don't know the parent, I arrive, drop off kid talk with the parents, help with the party set up and decide at that point if I will stay or go. Sometimes there is a nice social gathering for parents going on and I enjoy gettting to know everyone. Sometimes I'm one of the few that is staying. For us I'd rather use it as a way to meet other kids and parents.

Oh, God. I hate you. There is always one at every one of my kid's parties. They're 8. Or even 9. I don't have time for you, I'm busy. I don't want to entertain you. None of the other parents are staying, it's obvious. It's not a social gathering for other parents or I would have written that on the invitation. There is nothing to help with, you're just in the way and you are clearly just interfering with your helicoptering. By the way, your kid is embarrassedby it.

Just don't accept the invitation if you can't leave him alone for 3 hours on a Saturday afernoon.

Then don’t host people at your house?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recently had a newly-hired employee escorted to work by his mother. (Not dropped off... she parked, came inside, introduced herself to the other staff and to me (the business owner), asked to see his work area, etc etc.) Worse than that, the employee didn't seem to think this was strange or embarrassing. That's YOU people in 15-20 years.

Protecting a 4-year-old is nothing like what you describe in your post.

The irony is, the parents who are worried about being cool and pleasing others are way more likely to be the ones escorting their kid to their first job

[Anonymous]

I’m a very hands off parents and I think it’s weird to insist on drop off parties at this age. Lots of kids aren’t ready for that until 1st grade. I think most aren’t ready in preschool. And it’s a handful. I had a party for my kids 5th (in preschool) and to my surprise almost no one stayed — everyone had an older kid they needed to take to soccer or whatever. It was a lot!
For Pp, you don’t have to feed or entertain a parent in this situation. Just let them stand there for 90 minutes and watch the kids or surf their phone. If the kid gets upset and starts crying you’ll be glad they are there.

I’ve also done a lot of work with scouts and IME it’s touch and go for a lot of kids even in K. If they say they want their parent there, my rule was to let the parent stay at that age. By 1st, I start to encourage the parents not to be so available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't have a DC in this age group but am just surprised that any parent would want to be responsible for a group of 5 year olds. As the parent throwing the party I'd welcome other parents, if for no other reason than I don't want liability for their kid hurting themselves (and arguably even with them present I could still be held liable). Seems odd to me.

This. It’s pretty weird for age 4/5 and absolutely not the norm, for the reasons you said! We’re in the midst of that age range and have never heard of such a thing.