DC not invited to parties

[Craptimesahead]

I know this is not something I should get worked up over but I do feel sorry and upset for my DC who is consistently not invited to most birthday parties. DC is 7 so this year has changed slightly from the all class parties which he was invited to nearly all of them to this year being invited to a handful (less than 5).

Every other weekend it seems I hear from other parents or the kids that there is a party which DC has not been invited to. There have many where I thought my DC was friends with the child but then he isn't invited.

Obviously not expecting my DC to be friends with everyone and he has a few good friends which I'm grateful for. But it does make me feel upset for my DC that he's being excluded from most parties.

There is another side here which I think there is a group of mums who dislike me as DC had issues being picked on and the parents were contacted by the school. I haven't had any conflict with the parents and just go about being friendly on school runs etc. I am also a single parent as I feel perhaps the other mums don't like me because of this (one of a very small handful). I know I'm projecting here but I wish things were different for my DC.

How do I get over this? I feel like I'm failing my DS so much.

Maybe I'm out of touch but five parties seems a fair amount for one term.

My DD is rarely invited to parties, it breaks my heart. I’ve always been worried about her socially but at every parents evening I’m told ‘she plays with everyone, people like her’.

I'm starting to think that whilst she’s perhaps lots of people’s friend, she’s no one’s favourite friend and not thought about by anyone.

it breaks my heart

Ah this is sad but I would try not to overthink and worry about it .
Doing the odd play date might help but it sounds like you’re more upset than your son. How is he about it?
Being a single mum probably doesn’t help either because maybe you feel more isolated and cut off then you might otherwise . Perhaps it’s time to try and do some coffee dates and meet ups even if it’s the odd weekend . Or sign him up to more activities to meet other kids .

My youngest DC is 7 and in year 3. Parties have definitely changed & only around 10 people are invited from what I've seen (Ive got 3 DC). My DC has a very firm group of friends at school & the majority of them also all do an outside of school activity with each other every week as well. This means that the parents all see each other several times a week so have built up a bond as well. My DC has been invited his close friends parties & also invites them all to their party too. Now they are in year 3, they haven't been invited to anyone else's party outside of this group and thats fine as they aren't really close to the other children.

From what youve said, your DC has already been invited to around 5 parties so far and I think thats really good - he obviously has friends who want him to come to their parties. Its not as if he hasn't had any invites at all.

You need to remember that as kids get older they do have a smaller group of good friends and also have smaller parties and fewer play dates.

It doesn't sound like your DC has anything to worry about as he is being invited and he is well liked. Don't beat yourself up - there is nothing wrong with not being invited to everything, no one is invited to everything!

It’s quite obvious if you’re not hosting play dates……

i think you are going to have to make more of an effort. The kids that invite the party host around often will always be invited. It’s not the end of the world, all you need to do is either invite some around over the weekend or taking them to an activity once a month. Sometimes it’s just a numbers game. Good luck and don’t stress about it.

DS has I think had one party invite this year! He has a tight friendship group of four - two don’t do birthday parties for various reasons, his third best friend has had one. He has lots of other people he is friendly with but he’s probably not in anyone else’s close friendship group. He’s very happy.

Is your DS happy? Does he have friends?

My ds is 8. He's got 4 close friends. He's only been to parties or playdates with 3. To be honest, I can't name most of the other kids in his class and I certainly don't know who their parents are! I drop off and pick up every day, by the way. Just to give you a comparison here op! You're probably worrying about nothing. And I don't think you've mentioned your ds actually being upset about the situation. But if you want a playdate then just say to your son to ask someone if they'd like to come!

Birthday parties do drop off around this age. Also lots of people are opting to either not do a party or are doing much smaller parties due to costs. There are also a lot of at home birthday tea with best friends parties happening now rather than hire a hall and a bouncy castle.

My DD is in reception and there is yet to be a class party. Every parent whose child has turned 5 has said the cost of hosting 30 children at any venue is prohibitive. Soft play is nearly £300 for a basic party for 30. All the church halls round us have all put their prices up to £20 an hour and a minimum 3hr booking restriction so your £60 down before you even think about catering, entertainment and a cake. Cake makers have all put their prices up round us.

We've also got lots and lots of siblings in the year group and it's normal in our area that siblings come along to parties (parents pay for the sibling to join in if it's a soft play or paid activity) so realistically if you are having a church hall party you are looking at nearly 60 at the party.

We had a few class parties last year and every parent said they wouldn't be doing it this year due to expense. DD is having a shared class party with her best friend. They are 2 weeks apart and so me and my mum friend are going to do a soft play party for the class for both of them so it will be half price. The soft play do a 30 children package and then you pay for any additional children at a reduced rate. So we are just paying extra for any additional family children we each invite, so I will pay for 10 more spaces for my families children and she's paying for 10 more of her families children. If we weren't going halves on the price for the class, neither of our children would be having a party as it's too expensive.

This. It may not be "fair" but it's human nature. In every class there are families who meet regularly outside school. Those are the ones who get prioritised for parties because it would be far ruder not to invite the children of parents you know well.

As PP mentioned, venue cost and head count are prohibitive these days. It's also courtesy to let siblings come especially if both families know each other well. Sadly, the friend who the child might mention a few times but whose parent you don't know, with whom you've never had a play date and (crucially) whose Whatsapp contact you don't even have, will be the first one to get dropped from the list.

Statistically, each child at this age probably has 3-4 very close friends and each family socialises with 3-4 other ones. There might be 1-2 siblings in each family which means every party will inevitably have a "non negotiable" list of 10 kids. So by default, if you don't socialise with other families outside school and don't host play dates, you may only be invited to parties that are 20+ or whole class ones. Sadly it has nothing do with the child, or how close friendships are, it's just the numbers and basic social etiquette.

@Icecreamandcoffee example has 50 children going (if I’m reading that correctly) between 2 party hosts, their class & own family guests. So even if your DC did get invited to something like this @Craptimesahead it doesn’t really indicate your son is friends with the birthday child, they might not even speak or play with them at the party.

I know it’s awkward at the school gates at this age when it’s a party that your DC isn’t invited to. However, it’s part of life learning you can’t go to everything & if you model that it’s not a big deal to your child, they will understand that. iIt’s often parents making sure invitations are reciprocated at primary age but once in secondary DC actually arrange to hang out with who THEY want.

I think you're over stressing. He gets invited to parties, just not all the parties.

My DS is autistic and lovely, kind, friendly and socially gregarious but a bit 'wierd' to many people's tastes. Once whole class parties stopped, he didn't have a single social event in primary. We tried having parties for him, but people wouldn't come to them, either. It was sad for a year or 2 while we got used to it, as clubs etc didn't help. (He's doing great in secondary and has a whole crew of sightly unusual, geeky mates by Y9.)

I'd worry if he gets invited to nothing, but not if it's just not everything.

Five parties sounds fine/a lot to me. Five good friends is great! DDs had a little group of friends like this and all went to one another's parties. It was such a relief after all the big parties.

DD2 is nearly 17 now and part of big extended friendship groups who have parties at one another's houses. We've done our stint and had 45 teenagers in our house the other week. We went to the pub 😅

i think it’s a bit unrealistic to expect kids who have been disciplined for bullying your son to invite him to their birthday parties. If I was their parents I’d assume you didn’t want to hang out with them. And why would he want to go to a party with kids who have bullied him?

But by the sounds of things the majority of kids were excluded from his party?

When parties drop down to everyone having fewer children to them, most children will only get invited to 4 or 5 parties a year. Otherwise the maths doesn't add up!

5 invites since January is still pretty good going in my opinion, that's 1 invite every other month.

By age 7, you tend to have smaller friendship groups. Parties become more expensive as they are no longer play gyms etc. so invites reduce to keep costs down, so kids are only going to invite their close friends.

5 parties in a calendar year is good. I have an 8 year old and he’s been to a few but it’s mainly only his very close friends now. I’d concentrate on his closest friends and offer to have them round at the weekend.

I always felt very sensitive about this with my four DC and did have parties for the whole class, but even then they didn't always get asked. Obviously not everybody has room or money to do this anyway,
Many mothers just invite their friends' DC so that can cut your DC out of some parties, particularly if you are a working mother who doesn't go to school very much. Also as the DC get older they sometimes have parties outside the home and numbers are limited by cost and capacity, unless you go down the route of asking people to pay which I personally don't like.

I am going through something similar with my DD7 last year quite a few party invites and this year only 1 and that wasn’t even her closest friend as she didn’t get invited. However this year she didn’t do a party with school friends so I’m not sure how much that impacted. I’m not one for play dates and don’t generally make much effort past saying hello to many mums partly through choice and partly due to working and only doing one drop off. It was similar with my older DD but when I reflect on it now she has just started senior school her friends changed so much over the course of the years and so many things come into play but whilst I panicked that she didn’t have any close friends she did have friends and then of course it’s changed again now so I would say whilst it’s very easy to panic try not to because so many things change over the years that the parties don’t actually matter.

I remember having a conversation with the parent of someone in my child's year years ago. It was quite confrontational along the lines of...was I aware that their child hasn't been invited to anyone's house or party since Y1 (this was now y3). I wasn't aware (not my business, the child wasn't a particular friend of mine nor in the same class any more) but we had a bit of a chat about it and it turns out they had not invited anyone to their house for a play date and had never done a party either.

The parents couldn't see that they were doing exactly what they were moaning about other parents for doing.