Child Invited To Birthday Party Parents Expected To Pay

At all the soft play parties I have been to there is free time to play on the soft play with the general public mixed in.
This time is busy and chaotic and poor vision of where each child is.

The only supervised bit is the party food and games which is usually a shorter time than the soft play bit. And even then we have had to listen out for a tannoy announcement to line up to go to the party area.

They could easily get missed out at this point and left in the soft play.

@CrispieCake exactly this!

At one party we were at last year in a busy venue, I saw a 5yo child with our group 'tailgate' another group because he'd got confused and thought it was time to leave. His mother was elsewhere with a younger child and I had to get another parent to watch my own child before I could follow after him. He'd managed, quite unexpectedly, to reach the carpark with this other group and no one had stopped him by the time I caught up. The mother had just worked out he was missing by the time I returned and was starting to look for him. The party parents were busy supervising their own children, including younger siblings, and organising the food. Had I not noticed him leaving, and the mother not been present at the party, it could have been the end of the party before anyone noticed he was missing.

It's absolutely nothing like that. They are in a contained space where the adults in charge (workers and parents supervising the party) can see them the vast majority of the time and they know exactly who to ask for help if they need it, surrounded by other children who they know.

Has the OP actually given further details clarifying this?
I think more details are needed as I can't tell if they mean the parents have to pay for them, the parents, to attend or if they mean they want parents to also pay for the child to attend?

Scenario 1: hosts have paid for the child but want parents to pay if they want to stay YABU.
If it's a private party then I would imagine it's a smaller venue and therefore they might have a charge per adult. A lot of soft play centres near me have started doing this, so you pay for a child but also the accompanying adults.
So in the case of a party they might include x amount of adults free and any more would be at cost. If it's a private venue then I would think fair enough as the children could be left as it would only be their friends.
If a public venue I would want to stay, and I would just pay the charge. It's normally only £1-2 so not exactly breaking the bank.
The party cost is already quite high and if the parent then stays too and more than one parent in some cases this could add a lot more onto the overall cost.

Scenario 2: child has been invited to a party but no costs are covered
YANBU. This to me would be an informal playdate rather than a party. If I was paying for my child to attend I would assume we were just catching up and it just so happened to be another child's party. I would probably only take a card and perhaps a token gift such as a bag of sweets.

For us our child is 4-5. He’s been to several soft play parties - only of nursery friends.
Not all parents are looking out for kids that aren’t their own. Even I’m unsure who the birthday kid or party kids are at first.

We don’t know the parents or their family members. The soft plays are loud and busy and full of other customers. The door security looks good but there is no one to check that the child you leave with is yours or anything like that. A child could tailgate. At one “bounce” trampoline soft play that we went to, children had access to leave the venue if they wanted to. The parents were all dotted about.

My child also stood in sick at one party - who is cleaning that off him and changing his socks? The parent of the party kid?

I’m not over protective I just think that 4-5 year olds and 5 year olds are still vulnerable and should have someone looking out for them not just a watchful eye of someone who is likely very busy looking after their own kid or the party kid.

Whereas here if you stayed you would be seen as over protective and annoying.

Possibly a different culture? I'm pretty sure leaving a 4 year old at a party in UK is unheard of? But then I've never been to a kids party and expected to pay?!

Some people take the piss with their army's of kids though, expecting them to eat the food and gave goody bags etc.

We've had ones where everyone has paid the parent their child's share. I think they are quite well off, but I do it as I want my kids to have friends, I still think they're a CF.

We've been to state school parties and we've been to private school parties (we still get invites from old nursery friends) and I've noticed very little difference in behaviour amongst the two. If anything, I'd say the private school kids are a little bit rowdier as their parents tend to pussyfoot around them more when they're misbehaving rather than getting in there and physically dragging them out and putting a stop to things.

What I have noticed is that the kids tend to behave worse when it's mostly dads there. We may be unlucky in our group, but, apart from one or two more proactive ones, the dads tend to think that they've done their bit simply by turning up with the kids and don't tend to supervise them particularly closely.

I suppose that fits with boarding school culture. I’m not from UK and was so shocked when I experienced children going away quite young and then often staying away for term time. Definitely not for me - doesn’t seem to fit with attachment theory, but I suppose everyone is making the decisions they feel will benefit their child most.

That does depend on the particular soft play though @User3523526

At our one, the children have been many times and know where the toilets are, and there's specific kids loos where everything is small, the handle on the main door is child proofed so they can't get out, and id only drop and go if they were comfortable and familiar with the party child's parent too. So the shopping centre analogy isn't accurate for the soft play I know.

Drop & go at a big soft play is the same as letting your 5 year old roam around a busy shopping centre completely unsupervised and having to figure out how to find and use the public toilets by themselves. They will be surrounded by adult strangers at all times and have no way of contacting you directly if they get lost, scared or attacked.

It's absolutely not comparable to a school environment where every child is 100% safe and accounted for during the day. They will also know where the toilets are, where their own belongings are and the names of all the teachers and the other children.

Absolutely, yes @Psychologymam . That's definitely my experience.

so you think privately educated children are more likely to leave children alone at kids parties? Interesting - I would have assumed the opposite!

Depends completely on the location. Some parties you attend there's a great staff to child ratio and you know its the kind of place a DBS would be required to work there. Almost like leaving your child with an after school club scenario.

Other parties, like a soft play party - where its a free for all and the kids are only ferried from soft play area into a party room by staff and thats the end of supervision, not so much.

You're assuming that parents won't awnser the phone; but I'd have mine with me and I'd probably just spend the 2 hours 10-15 mins away.

@Psychologymam
Based on my own experiences, my observations are that privately educated children have higher expectations. I actually teach a sport in both a private school and several state schools and what we would expect of the children (not talking about the sport itself but rather the behaviour around it) differs by years between the two. I would expect my reception children at the private to behave on a level with year 2 in the state.

It really isn't. You'd happily drop them at school for 6 hours and go.

If you tried that round our way, you'd get a reputation as a very CF. DC's last party was 20 kids in a large local soft play that you don't get to yourself. There's no way the host parents could watch that many 5-6 year olds properly in there, let alone escort them to the toilet or ensure that the more boisterous ones aren't playing too rough and spoiling it for the others. All of the children were escorted by a responsible adult.

Which demographic does what do you think? I live in a fairly homogeneous area, all the parents work in similar professions and have similar family set ups, but it’s really split half between drop and half stay so I’m curious what you think makes the difference or what you’ve noticed?

There is a difference between hovering at the side lines and leaving the venue.

I would not hover at the sidelines for my 4-5 year old.

I would absolutely not leave the venue while my 4-5 or 5-6 year old attended a party. It’s too young.

At 5-6 years old, it's not normal for parents to stay. I'd just leave.

5-6 is old enough to attend soft play without having a parent hovering on the sidelines. DH and/or I will usually stay and socialise with other parents (kids are 4 turning 5) but we don't "supervise" at all, DD goes off and does her thing for 2 hours. If parents had to pay, we'd leave and come back at the end. If the venue charges per parent then it would be ridiculous to expect the parent to fork out for all the other parents to hang around drinking coffee.

Yes I’ve been that person too! So stressful being the host but it’s just so awful to be the child. I don’t understand why either - the few hours childcare can’t be that crucial to someone??