To think whole-class birthday parties should be banned?

[FishCanFly]

Done to death threads in this forum. People always complaining about either having to invite unwanted guests and face fallout, or somebody getting excluded.
Its not an official school event, so it should be organized privately. Or am i missing the point?

I'm very grateful to those who do whole class parties. My DD has ASD and whole class parties are the only time she gets an invite. She's not challenging in her behaviour, she just doesn't know how to do social stuff - hence no friends. She's only 5 and it doesn't seem to bother her but i'm very grateful when she gets the chance to go along (even if she can only handle half and hour).

We only had the whole year at last year of primary school, before then we had all-girls or all-boys parties, or just smaller ones! Nothing whatsoever to do with networking (everyone knows everyone anyway). Too much meaning is put in to this!

I loved organising big parties for my dc. I love big group parties and the enjoyment it brings. I also hated exclusivity. About 20 years down the line look on those days as happy times.

The party where the mom hissed at me was the 1 where we had 5 girls at home not a whole class 1

Some serious overthinking going on here! We've only had one whole class party and that was purely and simply because that was what my DD asked for that particular year. No networking, no showing off., no hope of reciprocal invites. It was just party games and sausage rolls in the village hall and it was complete bedlam...but they all enjoyed it and that's the main thing.

Exactly JohnCusackssWife.
I'm just thankful I didn't have a school with 'networking mummies'.

We actually did a two class party one year, the last year of juniors. DS wanted to do a pool party for his friends. I enquired around and the cheapest place was an outdoor pool that offered us exclusive use really cheaply (seriously cheaply considering it was a whole pool, don't know how they made money on that) after hours at night. DS had a bunch of friends who were in the other class in the year and it only cost me about fifteen pounds to invite another thirty kids than a smaller group... seriously.

As it was fairly late at night everyone had already eaten so I just bought a big cake from costco and some ice cream, water bottles and that was pretty much it. A bowl, spoon and a napkin for each kid and brought/borrowed pool toys from home and friends. I did no party favours as the kids were older and there were so many. DS said he didn't want a big gift that year, he really just wanted a big party so we also saved money on his gifts.

It was hands down the easiest party ever, yes a splurge, but we don't do parties every year. They swam for two hours, got out, devoured cake and went straight home. The next time we offered DS a party he chose to invite a friend to a theme park. That cost more than inviting 60 people to the pool and for ice cream and cake.