Not a Drop Off Party

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Annoying. Part of the fun of birthday parties is talking/meeting/getting to know the parents of my kids friends. It's not free babysitting. If you want that, suggest playdates. Those can be drop off.

+100 Great time to meet other parents.

I absolutely agree with this in general, but that isn't what ends up happening. All birthday parties since my children turned 5 have been slumber parties at our house. Should the parents have all stayed the night? Many do stay and have a drink, but then they leave and, if they don't have any other kids, they usually go out. They aren't using me for childcare, but it is the upside to someone inviting your kid somewhere.

But see, not everybody wants to meet the other parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Annoying. Part of the fun of birthday parties is talking/meeting/getting to know the parents of my kids friends. It's not free babysitting. If you want that, suggest playdates. Those can be drop off.

+100 Great time to meet other parents.

I absolutely agree with this in general, but that isn't what ends up happening. All birthday parties since my children turned 5 have been slumber parties at our house. Should the parents have all stayed the night? Many do stay and have a drink, but then they leave and, if they don't have any other kids, they usually go out. They aren't using me for childcare, but it is the upside to someone inviting your kid somewhere.

But see, not everybody wants to meet the other parents.

You don't want to know the parents of your children's friends? I feel bad for your kids.

[Anonymous]

My child is only 18 months, so take this with a grain of salt, but a friend of mine has adopted the idea that she only invites the number of kids of her kids' ages to each party -- so for 4th birthdays it's 4 kids, for 8th birthdays it's 8 kids, and so on. If you stick to that principle rather than inviting 25 kids, it should be pretty manageable to have drop off parties starting at age 4. You can handle 4 4 year olds, right?

[Anonymous]

I'm reading all this, and I am wondering, did your parents hang around at parties when you were kids? I can remember from age 4 on being dropped off. Back in the 80s, the hosts usually had another parent or two, or a helper to wrangle kids. What changed? If your kid can do preschool, can't they do a party? Also, don't kids interact differently when parents aren't hovering?

I guess if you aren't comfortable with having that many kids without help, there's that, but otherwise, why do you need a parent per kid?

[Anonymous]

Parents don't need to stay with their 4-year-olds. Sorry. How about you only invite as many kids as you and maybe one helper can handle? 4-5 kids for a 4-year-old party are absolutely enough. That way your little one and the guests are totally overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people and stuff going on and you (and your possible helper) don't end up in a coma after 2 hours. Nice and easy. Age appropriate fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I am OK as long as there is someone else watching the child -- for example, a parent could bring a child and another classmate; I don't necessarily need one parent per child, but I don't want to be the parent responsible for the child if I'm hosting the party. There was an accident at a party I was at last weekend. It wasn't bad, but it required parental attention.

Question for parents who drop off at that age: do you normally ask ahead of time? Or assume it's ok? I'm wondering if instead of saying something in the invite, if I can expect the parent to raise it with me and state that I would prefer they not drop off? There is one child in particular that I am concerned about (the others seem to be more self-sufficient).

Don't assume just make it clear on the invite.

I have 3 kids and siblings, if me or my husband cannot go along I 'll just decline and it is not big deal... but if I have to try to guess it is really annoying.

[Anonymous]

This is PP whose son is 5. It would never occur to me that a party IS drop off unless it was directly noted. I always assume I would stay. I am social though and do enjoy meeting other parents, etc and usually know the parents hosting also. Sometimes DH and DD come along and sometimes not. I imagine once we hit the 6 year old parties drop off will be more common, but now, never.

[Anonymous]

No one is dropping off in our crowd/preschool until K age. I would be shocked if someone just dropped a 3 year old off at a party-who does that?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love the parents of multiple children saying they only do drop offs because they essentially had more children than they could handle and want the free babysitting. Please don't try to drop off your supposedly independent 3 year old. Just decline the invitation if you had more children than you can handle!

This. We have one child. I always assume I am staying, unless it says "drop off" or mom greets us at door and says "see you at 3."

[Anonymous]

Ive done this for my kids 7th party - on the invitation _ request that a parent or adult stay for the patry, its not a drop off party. Most parents were a lil surprised but almost all the kids invited came it was at a chuckee cheese.

[Anonymous]

Just make it clear on the invite. Either say straight out that it is not a party or something along the lines of parents are expected to stay with their child. If you've got space then say sibs are welcome. If people don't want to stay they won't come but if they're like that you probably wouldn't want them to be there anyway.

[Anonymous]

It would never occur to me to drop off a kid at that age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents don't need to stay with their 4-year-olds. Sorry. How about you only invite as many kids as you and maybe one helper can handle? 4-5 kids for a 4-year-old party are absolutely enough. That way your little one and the guests are totally overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people and stuff going on and you (and your possible helper) don't end up in a coma after 2 hours. Nice and easy. Age appropriate fun.

Other parents aren't babysitters for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ive done this for my kids 7th party - on the invitation _ request that a parent or adult stay for the patry, its not a drop off party. Most parents were a lil surprised but almost all the kids invited came it was at a chuckee cheese.

Yes, I would be surprised to get an invite stating all parents must stay for a first/second grade party. Very odd.

[Anonymous]

My kids are older now but we've attended probably 50 preschool parties. Not one was drop off.

Towards the end, I had a friend's mom take my child for a child turning 5 but I would not consider that drop off. Another mom was taking my child with her kid.

Kids are now in elementary and we stay for half depending on situation. My kindergarten child has been to 4 parties since school started and I stayed at 3 of them. Only reason I didn't stay at 1 was because I had to go pick up my older child from another drop off birthday party.