Let me guess - they are white, and you are not? They like to stick to their own kind.

It sounds like you need to initiate 1:1 or small group playdates to build a closer friend network, if you think your DD is more classmates with her peers than friends. I would start there.

That said, parties are getting smaller as kids move up in elementary so she just may not make the cut right now. I don't do home parties because my home is not large enough for a ton of kids but even what we do has changed. In Kinder it was a My Gym with the whole class, now in 2nd grade we did a small craft studio with 10 kids. Home parties DD has gone to have between 5-10 kids max.

So start with playdates that YOU are taking the lead on to help foster closer friendships if she needs a boost might help. I also do not think it is a terrible thing that kids learn that not everyone gets invited every time....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think there are as many home birthday parties as you think, especially in early elementary school.

We live in an affluent neighborhood. Money is non factor. We have been to very few home parties and the parties we did attend were not necessarily smaller. My child did get invited to one sleepover when she was 7 and I believe 4 girls were invited. Only one girl stayed over. I picked her up around 930pm.

+1 They're not much cheaper once you hire some kind of entertainment (magician, science show, whatever), require much more cleanup before and after, and run the risk of destroying a bunch of your stuff. We have parties at our house pretty often and they're a pain. (We don't do home birthday parties because my kids have winter birthdays and the home party only works for us if we can utilize the backyard as well as the house.)

Hiring a magician for 1 hour does not cost $1,000+ which is the cost for most venue birthday parties

It’s more difficult to have a home birthday party- the cleaning and prep, and then you have to manage a bunch of hyper kids running around. It also costs more than you think by the time you buy food and plan activities.

I have hosted sleepovers at home and the list is very small. Venue parties lets you invite more people and it's more inclusive.

Very few kids have birthday parties at home in our circles. Between 2 kids who are now in later elementary grades, I can only remember two parties at someone's house, and one of those they hired a video game trailer so it was still like a venue.