Older Kids Parties

[melody330]

DS1 will be 3 in January. He's been with the same group of kids in DC since he was 6 months old. There's about 6 new kids this year, but it's mainly the same group. No one has ever invited DS1 to a birthday party from DC.

Should I invite some of his close friends from DC?

Should I invited them all (12 kids)?

Or don't invite anyone since apparently no one else does this in his class.

FWIW he's very close with about 3 kids. He talks about them often, by name. The party will be at a private gym type place.

[rungirlrun]

I personally feel 3 is a bit young to have a lot of kids for a party. I'd invite the 3 or so your son is actually friends with. 3 is also young where no one will feel left out by not being invited (not that they'd ever know). Plus those gym places are expensive - do not want to lay for people I/my kids barely know.

[melody330]

Nov 15, 2016 20:18:48 GMT -5 rungirlrun said:

I personally feel 3 is a bit young to have a lot of kids for a party. I'd invite the 3 or so your son is actually friends with. 3 is also young where no one will feel left out by not being invited (not that they'd ever know). Plus those gym places are expensive - do not want to lay for people I/my kids barely know.

See this is where my problem is! The rate is for 20 kids, regardless of if 2 or 20 show up I pay the same amount. This is the standard around this area- I've been researching for a few weeks lol.

[melody330]

Nov 15, 2016 20:45:47 GMT -5 katelou said:

How much do you actually *want* to do this? IMO at 3, it's totally acceptable to just have a family party, or a party where you invite your friends and their kids. And you only have maybe 1 or 2 years left where you can get away with this. So if you're not super excited about spending $250+ to entertain kids you barely know, don't feel obligated.

Keep in mind that any time you have a non-dropoff party, you also have you decide if you will include siblings. So the size of your party can double once you add siblings, or you can exclude siblings , which will mean a number of families won't want to come because they don't want to bother with mom taking one kid to the party and dad staying home with the other two.

It's a pretty big priority for us. I DNW kids and families at my house for a party. I will avoid this at all costs.

The sibling thing is a good point- I had not considered this.

I'm leaning towards inviting only two or three kids from his class. Only one of them has a sibling so that's not a problem.

So it will be friends/family with little kids and a couple of kids from DC. I guess I just felt bad about not inviting the whole class, but DNW to start this trend either!

[rungirlrun]

Nov 15, 2016 20:27:15 GMT -5 melody330 said:

Nov 15, 2016 20:18:48 GMT -5 rungirlrun said:

I personally feel 3 is a bit young to have a lot of kids for a party. I'd invite the 3 or so your son is actually friends with. 3 is also young where no one will feel left out by not being invited (not that they'd ever know). Plus those gym places are expensive - do not want to lay for people I/my kids barely know.

See this is where my problem is! The rate is for 20 kids, regardless of if 2 or 20 show up I pay the same amount. This is the standard around this area- I've been researching for a few weeks lol.

Oh that's annoying! This is why I have yet to have a bday party for my son. Too many logistics that I don't want to deal with.

[cabbagecabbage]

We did family parties at home with cousins and neighbor friends until 4. She had her first friend party this summer and I did a big (for us) pony riding at a horse barn party. Ours was exactly as yours, up to 20 kids for the,same price. I did the math on whether I wanted to contain and feed that many people, including parents since 4 isn't drop-off aged yet, and we invited just the girls from her preschool class instead of the whole class. We invited siblings on the evite but none came. We had 12 kids and it was plenty. I was very happy with it. We fed everyone for under $100 in pizza. I'd do it again.

[katelou]

Nov 15, 2016 21:07:21 GMT -5 melody330 said:

Nov 15, 2016 20:45:47 GMT -5 katelou said:

How much do you actually *want* to do this? IMO at 3, it's totally acceptable to just have a family party, or a party where you invite your friends and their kids. And you only have maybe 1 or 2 years left where you can get away with this. So if you're not super excited about spending $250+ to entertain kids you barely know, don't feel obligated.

Keep in mind that any time you have a non-dropoff party, you also have you decide if you will include siblings. So the size of your party can double once you add siblings, or you can exclude siblings , which will mean a number of families won't want to come because they don't want to bother with mom taking one kid to the party and dad staying home with the other two.

It's a pretty big priority for us. I DNW kids and families at my house for a party. I will avoid this at all costs.

The sibling thing is a good point- I had not considered this.

I'm leaning towards inviting only two or three kids from his class. Only one of them has a sibling so that's not a problem.

So it will be friends/family with little kids and a couple of kids from DC. I guess I just felt bad about not inviting the whole class, but DNW to start this trend either!

Gotcha. If it's worth it to you, then go for it. You have no reason to feel guilty. The fact that other parents haven't had class-wide parties speaks volumes- they don't want to deal with it either!
My DD turned 4 when I was 30 weeks pregnant, we'd just moved 7 days before (thus our house was a disaster), we felt completely broke and as a bonus, DH was OOT for the 5 days before her birthday. I invited our parents and one friend with a kid and cooked brats and made everyone bring appetizers. I have zero guilt about it!

[willow]

Omg now I'm stressing about hosting future parties. Why did I get pregnant lol.