[QUOTE=Beadalin]
I thought a good rule of thumb is to invite as many kids as the age your kid is turning. So, five or six other kids should be at the party if you’re not going to invite the whole class. At six, a kid is old enough to choose his own friends.
[/QUOTE]
I think my parties tended to get *smaller *as I got older. A party for a Kindergartner with only half a dozen kids would have been a sorry event indeed when I was that age.
What does a basement have to do with it? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a birthday party in a basement.
I guess all the other moms lock the kids in the basement with the booze, radon, and dead hookers? I dunno, I didn’t grow up in a place where anybody had a basement.
I know a lady that I used to talk to awhile back when I used to sunbathe in the park. Her name was Zoda. She was about 75 but didn’t look a day over 90. You know the type.
She used to talk to me about, guys with earrings, loose women, people on welfare, etc etc
Oddly enough I noticed how friendly she was with them however. So I asked her, if she didn’t like guys with earrings, loose women, people on welfare, why then does she talk to them?
She said:
“Well it would be rude not to. Imagine how awful the world would be if people went around ignoring people and being unkind just because they didn’t like them.”
Good Point, just because you don’t like someone is not a license to be rude or unkind
I think you have to bear this point in mind when you make your decision and your son needs to keep this in mind.
The simple way to figure this out is to sit with you son and figure out the consequnces of his actions.
If you leave out those two kids, what will the result be? Probably he won’t be invited to their parties. Can he live with that? Some of the othe children might not want to go to his party if they’re friends of the uninvited guests
The bottom line is this: Figure out the consequences of NOT inviting those two kids and the consequnces of INVINTING those kids.
Which one is worse. Choose the lesser of two evils
I think part of a birthday celebration is to honor a child, not those that have done him injury, and not to teach him a life lesson. You want him to learn fair…on his birthday???
He patently doesn’t want the other kids there because he is afraid of them, not because of some policy forced on his young mind by (bad person of your choice.)
If you are using this party to train him, have them do some fun math problems, and give his some healthy carrots and broccoli for their treats.
Don’t invite the two, and let him invite the ones that you can afford.
Listen, when I was a kid, I could overlook getting my arm broken accidentally. Maybe we should grant the son the same grace that we would extend to ourselves-let him make decisions that effect himself. There’s something not right in the scenario of a 6 year old kid not giving a friend a pass, even for a broken arm. Maybe he knows something that we don’t about the goon that broke his arm. Maybe he is some Jekyll and Hyde character that can apologize one day and mop up the playground with him the next day. Maybe the son can tell if an apology wasn’t sincere, but was pressured into accepting it, as children are. Maybe the son knows the guy is an oaf that gets everybody around him into trouble. Who knows?
The other kid has anger/biting issues, and has been agressive against the son?
And, apparently against others? That’s who I want at MY birthday party!
We should give the kid a break…
The Arm Breaker (A.B.) is generally described by the other kids as being “naughty.” Prior to this incident, my son has refered to him as “naughty but funny.” What I personally have seen is an unsupervised kid who can’t afford NOT to have supervision. One time an uncle brought him to a pool party and then sat inside with A.B.'s little sister. Various adults around the pool area had to run interference the whole time. If that had been my party, I think I would have called the mom and said, your son is welcome but he, as all our children do, need to be supervised, espeically around bounce houses, pools, etc. Perhaps if we decide to invite him, I should call the mom with that disclaimer. I don’t know.
Point being, I know my son pretty well, and I truly don’t think he is in fear of either of these kids. If I believed he was, it would be a no brainer. If anything, he may just be an older soul than I realize and simply not want the drama of them being around. Biter (and A.B.) signed his cast the other day and has been mothering him. I guess I go back to…I’m not sure he really understands the consequences of not inviting them and don’t want it to be a rude awakening for him if that’s not really where his heart was at.
We are having the party outdoors with a petting zoo so there will be a lot of room for kids.
Again, all your points of view are very helpful and I really appreciate the responses.
But he sounds like a little shit to me. I wouldn’t invite any kid to my home who couldn’t be trusted to not harass mine if given a moment’s unsupervised access to them. This is your child’s birthday and the party is being held for his benefit, not everyone else’s. If you’re really worried about traumatizing the poor thing by not inviting him to a party then go with the other popular suggestion and just let your kid pick a small number of classmates to attend.
I simply meant there’s no space in my house big enough to hold eleven active eight year olds. If we had a large finished basement that would solve the problem. We don’t have any real open spaces here where kids could play games like twister. When I was a kid a basement is where people traditionally held their children’s parties when they had them at home. I could fit the kids in my backyard easily but five inches of snow are predicted in the next two days so I don’t think the parents would go for it.
winneee,
Twenty four kids is a lot of kids to have in your house at one time. A quick celebration at a petting zoo sounds like a nice compromise.
Another chiming in to support the “only invite a few, or else invite them all” idea. It breaks my heart to sit here and think about those two little kids knowing they’ve been deliberately excluded from a party that everyone else gets to go to. It would be flat-out mean to do that, and I don’t care if it is their birthday, I would never allow my kids to be deliberately mean like that. No matter how “naughty” the kids in question are.
Another thing to bear in mind is that kids that age seem to fall out and make up with each other on a daily basis.
My daughter will be three in April, and already her response to being told off is “you can’t come to my party”.
Every day she comes back from nursery and announces that one her friends is no longer invited to any future party (due to some minor, everyday issue like not sharing a favourite book, or not being allowed to sit on the red cushion for story-time).
On the other hand, there’s usually also a friend who was persona non grata the day before but who is now “my best friend ever”.
Personally I would have no problem excluding a really troublesome child, but often that child will be paying the price for bad parenting, so it will seem unfair (but as noted, life sucks sometimes and it’s worth getting used to the idea).
I don’t have kids either but why the hell would you even consider not backing up your kid 100% in this? The kid broke his arm! I am sorry to be harsh but it just seems like you are trying to be fair out of some misguided sense of adult principles. The kid’s six. Let him learn about fair on some other day.
I too am a proponent of only inviting enough kids as matches the kid’s age + 1. So in this case, seven kids only.
I think six is old enough to have actual friends, rather than friends-because-they’re-near-me, which is what you tend to see with toddlers.
Looking back at my photo album, I tended to have about seven friends over to birthday parties in my childhood, that seems a much more manageable number.
Either invite everyone or else pick 6 or so. I totally get that the kid doesn’t want a couple known trouble makers at his party, but you have to realize that excluding only 2 from the class can cause issues. We’re talking about kids, so it’s not unreasonable to think some of the invited kids might taunt the uninvited kids after the party, which could lead to resentment toward the birthday kid and eventually a division in the classroom. That’s probably a worst case scenario, but I think it’s worth trying to avoid.
This is the part that made me wonder - your kid breaks another kid’s arm (accidentally), and you don’t even call up and say how dreadfully sorry you are (the other parents, not you, Winnee)? WTF, man?
As for the original question, I’d say invite everyone or invite only seven to ten. Excluding two from the whole class, even if there are extenuating circumstances, seems kind of mean to me. Of course, I’m the person at work who refuses to clique up and exclude anyone there, either - I hate exclusionary practices.
No one else has school rules that cover this? I have no idea how they go about with enforcement, but The Littlest Briston’s school has a policy on this – you have four choices when it comes to inviting classmates:
1: All of them.
2: None of them.
3: All the boys.
4: All the girls.
No picking and choosing allowed. I don’t know if this is just a way of giving parents an “out” when their kid wants to invite everyone except that one funny-looking kid who eats paste, nor have I heard of anyone trying to get around the policy (of course, there’s only been one birthday party so far, so who knows what the year will bring).
What does a basement have to do with it? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a birthday party in a basement.