Anonymous wrote:Boys seems to stop earlier - around upper elementary school. I know here that we just invite one or two boys to an activity, like laser tag, and skip the whole "party" thing.

This is what we do too. My 15yo invites a few friends to the movies and then home for pizza and Wii-playing. My 12yo has no interest in parties with friends and chooses a family trip instead (Busch Gardens, Hershey, etc.).

Dunno - DD is in 4th, turning 10 in a couple of months and still very strongly wants a full on party with all her friends. We floated the idea of a fancy tea with 3 special friends by her and she shot that down so hard.

Anonymous wrote:Boys seems to stop earlier - around upper elementary school. I know here that we just invite one or two boys to an activity, like laser tag, and skip the whole "party" thing.

This sounds great to me.

Boys seems to stop earlier - around upper elementary school. I know here that we just invite one or two boys to an activity, like laser tag, and skip the whole "party" thing.

Once my dd hit 9 or 10, most girls just do smallish sleepovers with their close friends.

It really depends. I found that for my sons it dwindled down to a few parties a year by the time they were in middle school. For my daughter, on the other hand, it is still nonstop parties and she's in 8th grade. Then again, she's very social.

Then there's the whole bar/bat mitzvah scene (for Jewish kids and their friends) and the sweet sixteen parties (popular more with girls but boys generally are invited). But those are another story!

I feel like when my kids were young they were constantly invited to parties. (Don't get me wrong - I'm not longing for those days; I didn't see the point of doing the gift/party thing for kids we barely knew and wouldn't expect it for my own kids either). It feels like, now that they're in upper-elementary, those parties are dwindling. Again, I'm not complaining but when do kids stop doing the birthday parties every year?