My birthday’s three days before Halloween. I learned fairly early on that I’d have better luck getting people to show up for my birthday party if I held it in early November.
Preach it. Mine is 2 days before Christmas.
We share a birthday. It’s a good thing for me that I don’t like to have birthday parties. The question is, would I like birthday parties if I was born in April?
I honestly think the timing has more to do with it than teenagers being flakes. They are, but usually to things that they don’t want to go to. And parties, even the kind in the backyard, are not usually the types of things teens avoid. The only exception is if there is something better to do or prior commitments, both of which are likely relevant since you did this on Memorial Day weekend.
And I agree that Facebook is a horrible way to know whether people are attending or not. There are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which that Facebook invitations are just inherently casual and the fact that it completely leaves the parents out of the equation–and prior to 16, they need to know. Teens will say yes because they want to go, but then their parents either won’t be able to take them, or, worse, it won’t even dawn on them to ask far enough ahead of time.
Did you say there would be punch and pie?
I glad she ended up having a great time. Personally I don’t like throwing parties for fear of nobody coming. I also hate going to parties as I just stand around feeling awkward.
Next time, have the party at a place with a swimming pool. Although I’m not sure of the weather in your part of the world in May.
Not necessarily. I have two kids - one’s an “Easter” kid in April and one “Thanksgiving” kid.
Neither of them has ever had a birthday party on time to accommodate party goers around holiday weekends.
My sister was born on Thanksgiving Day.
Mine’s around Thanksgiving. I don’t even bother.
I’ve found that with Facebook events, “maybe” means no and “yes” means maybe. I’m glad your daughter had fun regardless.
I have had the nightmare scenario–threw a party, had lots of enthusiastic response, absolutely nobody showed up. And for whatever reason I have always attracted a particularly flaky bunch of friends–they don’t mean to be, but they’re mostly really busy people with lots of responsibilities and things come up. And yet I love to throw parties, so I’m really sensitive to this.
Some things I’ve learned:
–Facebook event invites are not useless, exactly, but you have to learn to use them. What usually happens is that someone sees the invitation, thinks “Hey, that sounds cool”, clicks “yes”, then never thinks about it again. (Hence the “oh, that’s this weekend?” responses.) You really have to push it–post it to your wall every few days as the party approaches, send messages to remind the "yes"es and push the leaners, etc. I worry about overdoing it, but all people have to do to not hear about it anymore is respond “no”.
People who don’t respond to the FB invitation at all–a large percentage, in my experience–often have to be contacted some other way. Email or a phone call is probably best. A lot of people just don’t know that the whole Facebook Events thing exists.
–I try to never throw a party by myself. I like to get a couple of close friends to be involved in the planning and the preparation, and I plan the party based around when they can definitely be there. That way the party seems like a bigger deal, the prep is more fun, I have people to help spread the word and remind people, and in the worst case scenario at least they’ll show up.
I was born on April 1st. Trust me, stick with 2 days to Christmas.
In my experience as a parent, parties in back yard were not considered real fun. Parties at places with games, bumper cars, roller coasters etc. were considered real fun. Everybody who RSVPed showed up at the amusement parks (and a couple of people who had not RSVPed). About half the people who RSVPed showed up for the back yard stuff, even with the attraction of a pinata.
So…teenagers are flakes, you have to get their parents on board. But about half of parents are also flakes.
It is very distressing, though, to plan for way more than show up. Or to plan for fewer, but then you can always run out and buy more stuff. There are no guarantees, even if you rent a party bus and go around to peoples’ houses to pick them up. (Although this isn’t a bad idea if you can get alcohol involved, which of course, for a kid, you can’t.)
Also, they may have been weirded out by the invitation to party at Michaela’s Dad’s friends backyard…As a parent I would say WHo’s house? Where at? I don’t know those people so i don’t know go ask your Dad.
I think it’s a mix of things.
Teenagers are flaky- the teenage brain is growing so rapidly that the circuits for being reliable, remembering stuff, and managing commitments gets entirely out of whack. Added to that, teenagers are in an awkward spot in terms of how they view time commitments. As a child, you’d expect your parents to take you to things like parties. As an adult, you keep your commitments because you’ve learned that being flaky is bad for relationships and will quickly kill a friendship. But as a teen, you have to provide the motivation to get to something like a party, but you may still rely on your parents for the means, leading to two levels of flake potential. Additionally, social relationships are different because you see everyone every day at school, so it is not as critical to maintain out-of-school social commitments, and you don’t have the experience to understand the long run results.
Facebook invites are not RSPVs (though, in my circles, evite invites are.) Facebook invites are usually a way of rounding up a group for broad, open-invite type situations like a happy hour or a lecture or something. Saying “yes” to a Facebook invite is expressing an interest in attending, but not a commitment. If you are planning a regular party via Facebook, you’d want to follow up pretty intensively with emails or phone class to get a final count, perhaps using Facebook to put together a party mailing lists to give updates on. It’s more of a publicity tool for inviting your circles to public events than a way to organize a personal event.
Timing was probably also an issue. It’s quite likely that people were either traveling or receiving visitors, and as a flaky teenager they probably didn’t even consider that when they said they’d go.
Finally, teenage parties are just kind of weird. It’s fairly easy to get together a small group of close friends, but big parties are subject to a “tipping point” situation. It’s not like college, where you attend parties even if you hardly know the host, because the whole thing is lubricated with alcohol and the possibility of sex. In high school, you either attend because you know the person really well, or because everyone else is going. And if you don’t hit the “everyone else is going” point, it just won’t tip. It may be that a lot of people were bluffing- saying they’d go because they thought there was the possibility that everyone might go. But in those situations if one or two well connected people drop out, it could create a chain reaction as people decide “nobody is going to be there.”