Birthday Party Invites...HOW!!? HELP!

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I'm letting my 4 year old have a Halloween birthday party. I figured ten kids would be plenty, and we've got five already o the list. She's in pre-k and I was thinking of letting her invite five more kids from school. My dad says it would be the right thing to do to invite them ALL (there are 21!) or just not invite any. A friend of mine suggested asking the teacher to help her give five invites to the kids she interacts most with.

I'm an aspie, so I don't know any of the parents. It's not like I can do this diplomatically. What do I do??

We invited the whole class once. Not everyone came... that was good!

After that, we helped our daughter pick out a few friends when it came to invites.

Sounds like you may feel uncomfortable singling out certain kids for invitation while excluding others?

It's pre-K. From my experience, the kids are going to be a lot less worried about it than the parents.

I would say to just invite the original 5 kids and if you do think of others, invite them if there is time.

Have a wonderful party! Having every kid over (21 of them?) would be overkill to me. They are not all going to be focused on your kid necessarily, and you might find it difficult to find enough stuff to keep that many kids and parents entertained.

Next year, hopefully you'll know just the kids to invite based upon who your child seems to connect with at school.

I don't know about where you live, but my area is CRAZY when it comes to children's parties

I honestly think it is more about the parent's egos than the kid.
I never knew there was such a thing as 'treat bags' for the guests!
Parents around here go out-of-their-way to top the last birthday party of some kid who invited their kid.
Renting Blow-up Jump-a-Whatevers, renting skating rinks, and the rest of the money wasters parents do for little children has become a big thing around here.

I really got tired of it all. I'm glad our daughter never liked big parties with lots of people anyway.

Good luck to you!

Keep it small... Keep it simple
REMEMBER.... it's supposed to be for the kids... not the adults


eta: just read you post over and thought of this... Ask you dad if he were to want to invite some folks from work(or if he's retired, then when he did work) for a little party, would he feel obliged to invite the whole business or none at all?

From my experiences in my daughter's early school years, all the kids in a classroom do not associate with every other kid in the classroom.
There is no good reason to invite kids who do not have an interest in your child, that I can see.
If you keep the group small, the play will be contained in a smaller area, the kids will have fewer children to try and play with... I just think it's a nicer atmosphere having a small party.

Last edited by wsmac on 30 Sep 2007, 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you! I feel a lot better about my approach now. I considered asking the teacher to help me figure out my daughter's five closest pals and give them invites. 21 kinds would send me and my husband into a whole new level of insanity - we're all on the spectrum here.

As for the whole "keeping up with the Jones's" mentality, I have an aunt like that. Frankly, I don't have the time, money, resources, social savvy or desire to do all the crap that some parents do. And yes, I think it's more about ego. I want my kids to be a bit more practical than that. I totally agree with you!

Why would you even think of inviting the whole class?

I doubt very much whether she is friends with them all so that would mean she would have people at her party that she isn't friends with and possibly doesn't even like.

No, don't invite the whole class. We don't.

We give the boys a limit of how many they're allowed to invite.

We keep their birthday parties very simple.

My 7 year old invited 8 kids to his party. We made paper-mache 'dinosaur eggs' and put little dinosaur toys in and the kids had a dinosaur hunt. That was the 'fanciest' part of the party.

Other than that the kids just played.

Our 9 year old and 4 year old shared their birthday party. We have a permanent 'camp-fire' in our front yard (we live on 2.5 acres). The kids collected firewood, made a fire and toasted marshmallows.

We got take-away pizza for dinner. We had the party in the afternoon/evening and when it got dark the kids played with torches (we bought about 10 cheap ones for the party).

Everyone had fun and it wasn't too much effort on our part to organise or clean up.

Helen

We are also having a Halloween party. A grandparent arrived with several boxes filled with anything and everything related to halloween. From decorations to party favours, from a bobbing for apple tub to cool lights we are set to have the most incredible party!

That said, my AS daughter and I struggle with the invites, every time a party comes up. She LIVES for holidays (special interest!! !!) She always has this overwhelming guilt for not having invited everyone under the sun and well, I think it is unrealistic and would hate for these kids to just "use" her for the chance at a cool party and never talk to her again throughout the year.

I can't imagine giving her a limit, as there are so many factors to consider, so we have opted to invite the couple of kids she does speak to in her class (at a new school). I also asked her to think hard and find a couple that she thinks she would like to have as a friend, but she hasn't mustered the ability to approach yet. We are also inviting the children she has maintained contact with (off and on) over the years from various programs/daycares/camps etc.

This means we are looking at about 14 kids and that was being very, uhm...limited.

Got any cool halloween party ideas you wanna share?

only my girl is 9....

okay, our situation is very different, we can't get one kid to come. But I would invite the original 5, but talk to the teacher and see if there is any one kid that she plays with that she didn't think about. My son's birthday is in December and I was planning on giving invites to the whole class hoping that maybe 5 would come! I think a Halloween birthday party will be so cool!

Wow Mom! That makes me sad.

Not having been to any of his birthday parties, I STILL think those kids are probably missing out BIG TIME!

You definitely are a Cool Mom and I'm sure he's a Cool Son!

December huh? That's winter ain't it?
Do you play that game... 'Stick your tongue to the truck bumper?' Kid's up in Alaska used to play stick your tongue to the doorknob (on the outside, that is), in the winter.

I once played, "lock myself out of the house in blue jeans and nothing else in -30 temp."

It is sad, he never really noticed it before in the past. My mom comes and we always have other family and friends of ours around so he didn't notice there were no other kids his age there...until last year! He was a little sad by that. The biggest problem is that his birthday is exactly 2 weeks before Christmas!! and a lot of people are very busy that time of year which is what I told him last year and he seemed to accept that. I am desperately hoping a few will come this year. He seems to be somewhat popular at school though. I go and eat lunch with him every couple of weeks or so and there are always several kids who say Hi to him. But also every year when I ask him who he wants to invite he tells me the names of all his teachers, he only wants to invite adults!

I'm glad to hear he has friends, I was thinking he didn't by the description of the party turnout.
Our daughter had a few friends she played with through the 4th grade, then gradually they all went separate ways.
By the 7th grade she would eat lunch with one friend sometimes, but she spent more time alone reading or knitting.
I was always worried about that when I shouldn't have. It was her choice and she finished the 8th grade still pretty much a wallflower.

She has always had this one close friend... almost a sister the way they are together. Her mom and I have always done our best to get them together. The girl lives in a town about 25 miles away but her parents and my wife and I work together to keep the friendship alive.

Back to you all....
Is his birthday during Christmas break?
Is it the buying of a birthday gift so close to Christmas that keeps the other kids from coming?

My 11 year old has a tough time with friends....we usually invite anybody he can think of in hopes that enough kids will actually come. It's kindof a double-edged sword....if you have too few kids, the child feels like he doesn't have enough friends. If you have too many kids, the child gets overwhelmed and goes into overdrive (or at least mine does). I think it's probably easier in the younger grades because getting invited to a person's party is a huge thing!

Good luck! )

Connie

His birthday is the week before Christmas break, and I always put on the invite "no gift necessary" besides, he doesn't like the same things boys his age typically like other than dinosaurs. He could care less about HotWheels and Action figures etc. The best birthday present I think he has ever gotten was a set of 5 binders about 4 inches thick apiece with WildLife Explorer cards in them, he has read all those binders over and over repeatedly! He calls them his "Animal Science books" --like on Go Diego Go.

I'm taking it as a good sign that he does appear to be so popular in school, so maybe this year will be different.

at my daughter's school, they ask that unless you're inviting the whole class~that you mail invites to the kids homes........this way no kid feels left out.

Yeah, that would be a good idea in our small communities here because so many people know each other.
I can't imagine how it would go in a school where the parents didn't see each other at all and didn't have addresses.

Yeah, see the problem is my daughter is just into her third week of pre-k, and I don't know a single one of the parents or even what the kids' names are. I'm volunteering today to help with some activities so I hope to meet some moms *cringe* and try to see if I can figure out who my daughter's friends are. I was thinking about giving her invitations and letting her give them to x-number of kids. While this mailing them idea sounds great, I don't think it's practical. Unless I use the parent roster list...? I don't know. I think I'm just going to ask her teacher how she thinks I should best handle it.

my daughter's teachers have, in the past, put out a class list with student's names,addresses and phone numbers ( with the parents permission)..........I'd ask the teacher about getting a class list~ letting her know that you want to have a party for your child but that you don't want to hurt the feelings of those children who are not being invited.