So we went to a Bar Mitzvah yesterday, one of the better ones, I might add. Towards the end of the party I’m chatting with the dad of the Bar Mitzvah boy - 13 years old - seventh grade - and he tells me that his other son - almost 15 - ninth grade - invited three of his friends to come to the reception without consulting either of his parents. Just called them up that AM and invited them. And they showed up - two girls and a boy. The girls wore their party dresses and the guy wore his jeans and sneakers, not that it matters. And that’s who he primarily hung out with during the reception, so it makes some sense.
I asked the dad if he was OK with this and he was in such a good mood that he said something like “Well I’m having fun today and I guess it’s OK.” And I was thinking I’d be furious and agog and worried about my offspring’s common sense if one of my kids did something like that. But OTOH it did work out, his parents were OK with it, I’m led to believe that there was no additional expense - the kids had a buffet, and they just paid for the trays of chicken and pasta and all that.
So am I being a bit too rigid? Should I just lighten up already? Or is this really a nutty thing for a kid to do, especially the part about doing it without asking?
Isn’t it his party? I can understand if it caused a problem (for instance, if he invited a whole bunch of people which the party wasn’t planned to accomodate), but as long as they were able to be reasonably accomodated, where’s the catastrophe?
Edit: Critical reading error on my part. I was thinking it was the boy who was being honored at the Bar Mitzvah, and didn’t notice that you said it was the brother of the boy who invited the friends. Still not a big deal, but in my view it would have been more important to ask his brother if he was OK with it than his parents.
I think the bar mitzvah was for the younger brother, Rigamarole. It seems inappropriate to me, on a par with a sibling inviting her own guests to the other sibling’s wedding. The older brother might not realize what a faux pas it was, but it would definitely be a teachable moment, ie “you don’t get to invite your own guests to other people’s celebrations.”
The parents probably should have had a word about it with him later, but I don’t think it would be worth freaking out and yelling at the kid about. After all, if he’s only two years older, he had his own Bar Mitzvah two years ago, so the process isn’t completely alien to him.
The father sounds like he had the common sense to not let it spoil the party. Whether there’s punishment/lecturing later and whether he deserves it is their business I spose.
I think that he invited three people is ok, any more than that and I could see the disrespect. The kid basically invited them so he wouldn’t be bored to tears. I don’t see it as a big deal at all.
The big deal as I see it, pool, is that he invited them without asking his parents, who were hosting the celebration. I’d be pretty pissed if I invited you to a party and you invited other friends without asking me. That’s just Not Done, even if it’s your family hosting the celebration.
I agree. I don’t see this as a big deal at all. If it were my kid, I’d tell the kid that it’s not proper to do that so they’d know not to do it at a party outside the family, but at a family party I wouldn’t care much. I definitely wouldn’t become “furious” over it. No sense in ruining the fun for everyone over something that wasn’t hurting anybody.
Did younger brother (the one who was being honored at the reception) get to invite his friends to his big brother’s celebration? Probably not. I think it was rude, and while Dad handled it well - no point making a fuss and disturbing the party- I hope older brother got a lecture on manners later.
It also seems a little weird that the other kids’ parents didn’t notice anything odd about it. A bar mitzvah is usually something you get invited to pretty far in advance. And that you don’t attend in jeans. Did they just drop their kid off in front of the synagogue without noticing what he was wearing?
(The blue jeans issue is less of a big deal than the inviting without permission issue. But it’s not something I’d do or that I’d let my kids do.)
Depends on the situation. If you’ve got a caterer who charges by the head, suddenly that kid cost his parents an unexpected chunk of change.
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up before - or maybe it has and the parents just shrugged it off. I learned when I was 6 that you don’t invite people to a family party without getting permission, and around then about how guests don’t get to invite extras to other people’s parties, period. These kids might be set up for some big etiquette problems, like when they ignore that there’s no “and guest” on their invite to a wedding and cost someone a lot of money for an unexpected arrival.
I would assume (lacking other information about the kid) that he had good intentions, and didn’t quite get the whole making arrangements in advance thing. He could have thought “hey, today is a day that we gather with family and friends, I think I’ll invite Michael, Pam and Erica.”
I think the teachable moment here isn’t “you don’t get to invite people to the celebrations of others” – he’s still part of the family, right? And I assume the parents invited their friends? The lesson (IMHO) is more along the lines of “it would have been better if you had raised this ahead of time.”
He should have asked first. At least it was a buffet so the extra kids could be squeezed in without too much notice – would have been much worse if it was a sit down dinner.
Heck, I got in trouble once when I invited a kid to my own birthday party last minute without telling my parents (I think we had reservations at Chuck-E-Cheese or something, and the extra kid messed things up.)
Thanks for the responses so far. Yeah, the main thing that made this post-worthy to me was the part about not asking. Had he asked and the parents had said either yes or no, there’d be nothing to discuss.
It seems like the concensus is that the kid made an error and the parents should talk to him, even though it apparently worked out fine. I agree.
Sometimes when I post a question here, and then read some responses, I find that the question evolves a bit. What I find myself wondering now is “Why would a kid do something like this?” For the record this kid is an A student and self-motivated. So it’s not like he’s just out of control and grabs whatever he wants. And the family seems very open and the parents are barely punitive at all, so I wouldn’t expect him to be scared to ask them.
Maybe it was just a case of adolescent bad judgement, like not doing your homework or some household chores. Or maybe incredibly good judgement, in that he knew his parents would say no, and he’d be bored with relatives, adults and 13 year olds, and he knew it would work out and there would be no punishment.
Or maybe the question should be: Why do I sometimes have such a hard time grasping that sometimes kids have bad judgement?
I wonder if the kid took this into consideration when deciding to invite his friends. As in, he knew it was buffet, knew it wouldn’t cost extra money, so figured it was no big deal.
There is absolutely no reason to be furious about it. Yes, it’s a faux pas, but children are not born with manners, they have to be taught manners. So, you have a nice easygoing talk about it the next day to instruct him on the finer points.
One might also look inward and realize that you could have discussed the Bar Mitzvah with him and asked if he wanted a guest added to the list, a courtesy extended to many of the invitees. He is in a rather unique position, he is required to attend, yet is not offered a guest to keep him company through the event, like most of the other single guests. The people he is closest to, sibling and parents, will be busy entertaining their own guests and friends. This assumes, of course, that the guest list does not already include anyone his age to interact with, such as cousins or family friends.
I’m confused, he didn’t seek permission from the Dad, that parts clear. Is it possible that he asked the younger brother if he would be okay with it, and then acted on that?
And there is no way three more teenagers is even going to register on the caterers radar. They are only concerned with head counts when the meal is plated. But a buffet, pfft, no worries. They charged the family based on the amount of food provided (based on how many guests they expected). Should they have an additional 10 persons show up and the food run out, well, that’s the hosts problem, not the caterers. (Waiter passed hor d’oeurves, plated meal - different story entirely.)
It doesn’t sound like anyone else in the family cared, so I don’t see it as a big deal. Teenagers generally know what their parents will or will not freak out about and it doesn’t sound like this kid thought he was doing anything that would bother anybody. I see it really as an individual family thing than an absolutist breech of ettiquette. Some families would care, others wouldn’t.
The caterer I worked for (not high end, by any means) did care about headcount at buffets, within some margin of error. 3 teenagers would easily have been overlooked, though. But our policy was to feed who you had, and charge extra if necessary. This caterer was a university department, though, so maybe that isn’t the standard. They were in a little better position than most to always have access to more food! And to get crappy headcounts from people with no clue! And to not want to leave visiting dignitaries with empty plates! So I’m not sure this part added much…
It’s possible they just purchased deli trays, though, in which case headcount is a total non-issue.
More to the point, I think it’s a lesson for everyone in the family. It would have made sense for the parents to touch base with the older son as to how he would be involved in the event. That would have allowed the question of whether his friends were invited to come up, and also any particular family obligations he had during the event.