Kids party

[gonutkin]

Please help me out here..

My son hasn't had a birthday party for a few years and I want to throw him one this year. He will be turning 8. He has a lovely little group of friends at school however the whole class get on great and they are all a lovely bunch.

But.. I can't afford to invite them all.

AIBU to say he can pick 10 friends for his party? It's about £12 per head so I thought 10 would be fair however I also don't want any of the children in his class to feel left out.

But then it would mean not doing a party for him at all as I can't afford to pay for all 20 odd children.

What should I do 😩

It’s ok to invite 10 kids and not the whole class. It happens all the time in Dc’s school. The kids understand that they won’t get invited to every party.

So, don’t worry. 🥳

Depends-are these ten a mix of boys and girls or just boys? How many in the class? If you’re inviting 10 boys and leaving 2/3 boys out I don’t think that’s very nice. If it’s not a whole class invite I wouldn’t send the invites into school with your dc as it’s not inclusive.

Perfectly okay to invite 10 friends to a special activity. Let him choose the friends

I think most parents tend to understand stuff like this, I've always looked at it this way, some parties are "class parties" where everyone gets an invite. But then you have your smaller gatherings, close friends only. Makes perfect sense and no reason for people to be upset or offended. Sure if you invited the whole class and left out one or two kids (this happened to my niece and crushed her), then that's awful. But different situation entirely.
Let him pick his friends and have a great party!!

Has he actually asked for a party? If he hasn't then I would leave it for this year if you are short of money.

8 is past the age of whole class parties ime. It's fine to pick 10.

How many are being left out? Ds had big parties but also some smaller ones. If there are say, 30 in the the class that’s fine. It was the inviting ones who invited him/ his friends/ ones I’d invite to be kind scenario that was trickier on smaller numbers. Better a small party than no party!

What you’re proposing is absolutely fine so long as the class make up and his chosen friends doesn’t mean that he ends up inviting say 10 out of 12 boys with 2 very obviously left out. In the class is bigger than that and/or he’ll invite a mix of boys and girls then all good.

My ds and his friends always have 10 people at parties (including themselves and siblings) because that’s the minimum number for most venues and parties are expensive!

I never done this because I'd feel bad leaving out the rest when they all got on. I done all or none, but I understand everyone is different.

In my experience the whole class parties have finished before the age of 8 so I'd definitely say it was ok to pick his friends. However as previously mentioned as long as he isn't leaving one or two kids out.

Yes as long as it's not more than half the class or for example leaving out just one of the boys and inviting all of the others.

We're doing a smaller party and it's worked out about 4 from her class and 5 from the other Y1 class plus a couple of friends from activities out of school so I don't feel like we're excluding people.

I wouldn’t round it to a neat, round number like 10, if possible. Just ask him who his close circle is and invite those. That way if there’s 11, there won’t be just one kid left out. I’m sure he will say a smaller number than 10.

This is why my cousin takes her son away to a holiday village type place for a couple of nights, around the time of his birthday. Parties can be expensive and a fuss to organise/cater for.