To ask about kids party protocol?

[Marlboroughlights1]

Hi

8 year old Ds wants a party. 16 boys in the class. He wants to invite 11 plus two girls.

Is that 'mean' to invite that many of the boys but not all?

Two, he says are not nice to him (he's no angel, btw) and awkwardly one was a good friend of his last year.

I don't know the protocol. I feel like he should invite who he wants but also, i'm conscious of not making kids feel bad.

I think it’s mean. All of the boys or reduce the number to 7 or 8.

Isn’t it a damn sight meaner to exclude three or four boys he actually wanted there just for the sake of hitting an arbitrary ‘fair’ number?

I think it is right on the border of what I would consider acceptable.
leaving 4 (or 5?) boys out of 16 is quite a small group.

Personally I would reduce to his core friends or increase to all the boys.

He's 8 and should be allowed to invite who he wants to. At this age friendship groups have formed so it's not fair on your DS to force him to invite people he doesn't like. If 1 or 2 were being excluded that would be mean but 5 boys and most of the girls is fine.

In my experience it's the parents who get most upset about their child missing a party, the kids themselves are either unaware or don't actually care at this age.

Through Year 6 we did either whole class or fewer than 6 for a "special" treat. Years 7+ it was usually 3-5 mates. I've seen kids who were "one of the only 3 left out" of a party and they were destroyed; so we said we would never do something like that to kids.

Whole class party through year 6 if you didn't want tiny?

I'm sorry; I think that's ridiculous. How can you afford that?

I do think the word 'destroyed' is a little melodramatic. Obviously, I'm concerned as I'm posting here, but even I wouldn't use that sort of terminology.

Sonofabitch - are you in a private school with small classes?

13 out of 31 is perfectly fine, boys/girls is irrelevant.

We had classes of 20-30 kids depending on which DC you want to think about. The child was destroyed because he had had issues to start with and thought he was accepted until the party and he wasn't invited but as I said he had some issues to start. We generally had one or two whole class parties per year but it was rent a hall (not expensive), make all the sandwiches, cupcakes and goody bags ourselves so again not too expensive - just some time involved and had a disco or clown which again wasn't very expensive. All in I think we were talking £150 per party.