You certainly don’t need to invite 25 kids to a birthday party. But you also don’t need to pass the invitations out in the classroom or at lunch, which is what usually happens in schools without student “mailboxes”. It would be rude if I walked into a gathering of 25 adults and handed invitations to only some of them, and I’m not sure why it would be different for children.
This was one of the toughest things my wife and I dealt with when our kids were young. Any number of times my kids “friends” would have parties, to which my kids weren’t invited. Or my kids would have parties, and invitees would not show or even RSVP. Really sucked, and I don’t know the best way to deal with it. All I can say is that now that my kids are in college, they all have very active and healthy social lives. I got no idea how to figure out kids’ popularity.
That’s why I said it needs to be handled with discretion. And it isn’t like having mailboxes, or letting kids drop invitations inside of desks before or after school is burdensome.
Kid’s need to learn sometime that they don’t get to do everything - that some people like you and other people don’t. I don’t think that lesson is any easier if you delay it.
EXACTLY! And they don’t know either. And it changes… They also haven’t learned yet to hide their feelings. It’s a social skill they are learning. Pretty much trial and error as they start out in life.
Parents, you can’t protect them from everything; they have to learn to make their own way through the world. If they come and ask your opinion then you can soothe their wounds or distract them or whatever is necessary at the time. Otherwise, let them figure it out so they can learn.
That kind of depends. In my kids’ school the students went up to the classroom together and left the classroom together. And to be honest, I don’t see what’s so burdensome about not giving invitations out in school (or at Scout meetings or team practices , two other places I’ve seen this rule). Nothing wrong with inviting only actual friends of your child, but I imagine that would be a smaller group who the child would also see outside of school.
They learn it even when invitations are distributed outside of any group activity.
Word.
I remember I once had a girl from my class who I wasn’t really friends with invite me to a slumber party. I was a bit surprised and distinctly uncomfortable when it happened as she was one of the “popular girls” and I was a nerdy, bookish sort. I was pretty much non-included in the “late night slumber party activities”, and the next school day she marched up to me on the playground and pointedly announced that she’d only invited me because her mom said she had to. I realized at the time she was a wretched little snatch so I wasn’t terribly lastingly wounded (although clearly it made an impression on me at some level as I still remember it happening). I remember wondering at the time whether it would have been better to have been the only girl not invited or, what happened, to be forcibly invited and be treated like an untouchable while I was there. I wouldn’t have really yearned to be invited in the first place, but it seemed like an honest invitation at the time. We both would have been happier had I not been at her party.
the first paragraph.
I interpreted this sentence - “Evidently this six year old accused her mother of not buying her nice enough clothes so she didn’t get asked.” - as meaning ‘after the kid didn’t get invited, she told/cried to/yelled at her mom that she didn’t get asked to the party because her clothes aren’t nice enough.’
I am too, but at the same time I’m not. It’s the “I’m A Special Snowflake!” generation we’re talking about, after all.
:nodding: That’s how all the mothers in my childhood neighborhood did it. If it was an outdoor party, though, they’d be more inclined to not only invite more kids, but to also include siblings.
LOL, that’s how we did it too. I never expected to be invited to everyone’s party. Conversely, I never invited everybody to my own, just my friends. To my knowledge, nobody ever threw a fit for not being invited. I never did either.
and another anonymous one as well …
I’ve done it and it’s all of those things. I was terrified of leaving someone out - and of my son having a poor turn out.
I’ve gotten over it since then. Medication helps.
I would ask the teacher what’s up with the invite.
The need to be included and accepted is a very strong human desire and devastating if this basic need is not met. It is a warning sign that help is needed IMHO.
We just had a birthday party for my son this weekend. He’s two. Not in daycare, luckily, so we didn’t have this issue.
Look at it from the host mom’s perspective (assuming that 25 kids were actually not invited and it’s an exaggeration). You have to draw a line somewhere. If the party was going to be for 20 kids, say (which is insane, but anyway), that means the kid’s cousins, siblings, church friends, friends from the neighborhood, etc. have to be included… then the class friends. It’s unlikely that everyone can be accommodated.
So maybe the hypothetical kid is #21. Or maybe s/he isn’t really a close friend of the host kid. I agree it’s a valuable lesson, and that it should be explained to the kid that it might simply be a question of numbers. My first question would be, “Are you and X good friends?” If not, I’d say that parties are expensive and sometimes you can’t invite everyone. That’s true for us as well.
I’d also tell my kid to wish the kid a happy birthday, and not to worry because there will be other parties. And of course, if the kid didn’t invite my kid because of his clothes, I’d make sure he understood that people who judge you based on the clothes you wear aren’t the kind of people you want to spend your time with, anyway. (Again, assuming this reasoning has any merit.)
But no, never contact the parent. That’s tacky. Your precious snowflake is not entitled to an invitation to every party.
I’m in two minds about the teacher/school policy. It’s probably better that party invites are handed out after school, but it’s not like the kid won’t know about it anyway. It’s disruptive and the teacher has to deal with the hurt feelings, so I can’t imagine a teacher allowing it to happen under his/her watch. But the kid could give them out outside of school before the bell, or at lunchtime or something… who knows?
I like the “number of friends = birthday guests” philosophy. My 2 year old is like 10, by that math. We’ll try that next year though.
Yeah, after rereading it I’m not sure. Maybe Markxxx can clarify a little. In that case she’s getting bullied which can be pretty catty with little girls.
I actually don’t know, according to the thread on another board where I read this, which is actually shorter than this one 
Somehow (it wasn’t stated) that the mother learned her child was not invited to the party. The little girl said she was the only one not invited because she didn’t have nice clothes, etc.
Granted six year olds are not the most reliable source of information
Not being a parent, I have no clue how such things work (Except for the episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show were some 20+ kids did wreck the house).
I thought it would make an interesting “what if” question on its own without really caring about the original post that got me thinking about it.
In my daughter’s school, if you distribute invitations at school, then you need to invite everyone in your class.
You are free to distribute invitations to anyone or no one as you wish outside of school.
I think that is fair. I don’t distribute invitations at school for my daughter’s gatherings. If they are friends, we have their phone numbers.
My son’s school has the same policy, and it works quite well.
He had his first birthday party with friends, last year when he was five. We only invited 5 kids, so we just mailed the invitations. He never even discussed it at school, and I don’t think that most people were aware that we even had a party for him. Four of the five kids came, and it was the perfect little party.
His birthday is next Friday, BTW, and we aren’t having a party this year. Another boy in his class is having one on the same day we would have, and our son is going to go to his instead. Whew…saves me a lot of work!
My sister just dealt with this. Her daughter had her fifth birthday party this weekend. (At Monkey Joe’s, a marginally less hellish venue than Chuck E. Cheese.)
Her mom told her she had to invite everyone in her class because that was the rule – everyone gets an invite, or you can’t pass out invites in class. Niece objected only to inviting one little boy because “he burps, farts, and pinches bottoms.” After making a mental note to speak to the teacher about the “pinches bottoms” thing, my sister told her she had to invite everyone. So she did. Invitiations to 22 little five year olds.
Two showed up for the party.
Fortunately, Sis had also invited Niece’s cousins as well as (of course) Niece’s sister, so there were eight kids total. But she’s at a loss as to why other parents think that just because now every kid has to be invited, that means it’s not a “real” invitation that deserves a response. The 5 year old didn’t care, but she’s worried a 10 year old might.
At my old school, you could only celebrates birthdays or invite people if you included everybody. It never dawned on me that I could have invited them outside of class…
Is it possible the other parents never even saw the invitations? Why is it a good idea to rely on 1) a five-year-old to reliably distribute the invites to all other kids, and 2) all the other kids to reliably take them home and remember to show them to their parents? They’re 5!