Inviting the Whole Class to Birthday

[Sasha at Parenting.com]

Is it mean not to invite your kid’s entire class to his birthday party? Vote to tell us what you think -- and then explain your answer by hitting reply. Your answer may be used in a future issue of the magazine!

[Disco Lemonade]

I do not think it’s rude at all. I have a 9 year old step daughter and what we did was invite her close friends. Last year when she really wanted all her friends to celebrate her birthday with her, we asked her teacher permission to throw her a party at her class after lunch. It was wonderful!

[Amilianna]

It's not mean - there are plenty of reasons not to invite the whole class. Our reason this year? My daughter and her cousin (who have birthdays 2 weeks apart) have chosen to have their 6th birthday together this year and that means that we have to split the numbers of kids each can invite. So my daughter could only invite 15 kids - and those came from her class of 20 and dance class of 12. Sometimes you just can't afford to invite that many kids!

Also - just because your child shares a class with someone does not mean that they get along. It's their day! Why should you have to invite the kid that bullies them or that calls them names?

Just my 2cents

[freckles]

I do not think it is a matter of being fair, rather it is more a matter of practicality. I think an average of 20 kids is too many and costly. We do however let our daughter invite a few classmates and explain to her before her party to not bragg about the upcoming event. We have plenty of close neighborhood friends who we invite first on our guest list.

[freckles]

Also - just because your child shares a class with someone does not mean that they get along. It's their day! Why should you have to invite the kid that bullies them or that calls them names?

This is true.

[razimi]

I think inviting 30-40 kids to a party is way too much! Even 20 is too much. The problem is that other kids feelings will be hurt if they don't receive an invitation at school, and it's just wrong to say "who cares" about hurting the feelings of children. On one hand, it's a practical lesson that not everyone likes everyone, whatever, but on the other hand, the feelings of children are so fragile and they have their whole lives to experience hurt and rejection. Why not try and staunch some of it while us moms have it somewhat in our hands?

More experienced moms than I have said that in order to avoid exclusion, they have done things like have their son have an all boy party with all the boys from class or have their daughters have an all girl party with all the girls from class. It cuts 30 kids from a class into 15 and it might be a lesson in diplomacy for your own child in how to pretend to like someone for a day (a wonderful skill for adulthood..).

If your kid is picking and choosing who to invite and leaving others out for whatever reason, the best thing you can do is to MAIL the invitations and do not send your kid to hand them out in school...a six year old can't be expected to handle being the "only one" (in their mind) without a glittery Batman invitation on the bus. Some schools have this as a rule, now.

[Cami_Allen]

I dont think its mean i think it is practical. A class room may have 30 kids can you imagine!! I mean u could always send out the invites and see who all shows, chances are, most of them wont anyways. I think an in school celebration is perfect then just have your child give her close friends an invite quietly so others in the class wont feel left out, or even you hand the invites out after school to the parents.

[craftyashley]

While Razimi may think it's wrong- but I don't really put that much stock in one or two kid's feelings being hurt by something so trivial. There is no way I can safely watch 20 kids at a party. Plus my kids have other friends outside school- so there is just no way to invite every kid my kid comes into contact with.
The sooner these kids understand that, the better. Besides, the kid who doesn't get invited to one party may get invited to the next. Whatever. They'll get over it! I'm sure my kids' won't get invited to a party one of these days- there's two of them! I'm not going to insist that a kid invite both twins to a party. They will have different friends, and that's ok! As a parent I will handle my own kids' hurt feelings. I will never blame another parent for excluding one or both of my kids- I totally understand!

[Bec caV]

Are things that different than they were 25 to 30 years ago? Wow... this would have never even entered into my parents minds when we were kids.

Our birthday parties included no more than 10 kids... most of the time not even that many. Our entire class was not even thought about.
First, we were not on a best of friends basis with everyone in our class. Most of my classmates barely socialized with the entire class. We sat next to each other and that was about it. We were in school to learn, we made friends, but not one child got along with everyone in the class, so we all weren't friends. Our parties... we included friends. Mostly those from the neighborhood that we spent time with. I know I didn't get invited to all the kids from school parties, and frankly, none of us cared. So Jenifer or Sarah didn't invite me in 3rd grade to their parties... didn't matter, I didn't know them and didn't care if I missed anything. But Julie and Heather always invited me because we'd been friends for a couple years and Julie lived down the street from me.

I never once, and no one I knew ever, felt left out because we didn't go to classmate's party... a classmate we barely knew. If this is the way things are now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do, because I'm not inviting the boy that's a trouble maker and picks on other kids to my son's party if my son isn't actually a friend of his (and if he is, we're having a talk....).I don't care what parent gets offended because I didn't invite their child to a party, if they aren't my son's friends.... they can just deal with it.
Course I won't send my son to a child's party if they aren't close friends with the kid and I know the parents.

It just strikes me as the parent just wanting more gifts for the kids... how could the kid possibly be best of friends with all 20 or 30 kids in his class?

[srmassey]

Since my son started school, he has had 25 kids in his class both years. I worried about not inviting every child in the class, but decided that it would be just too expensive and too chaotic! I asked his teacher her thoughts and she did not have a problem with it at all. She agreed to discreetly hand out the invitations to the children invited. We decided to invite all of the boys in his class. This year we had a smaller party at our home and I told my son he could invite 7 of his friends and he chose them. I really didn't see the point in inviting kids that he doesn't play with on a daily basis. Even in the first grade, he has an established group of friends. If he had a smaller class size, then sure, but these days the class sizes are just too big.