To not invite every child?

[MooseBreath]

DS is turning 4 and we are planning a birthday party. Of the parties DS has been to, the vast majority have been the entire preschool class invited (generally soft play but there have been some with a hall rented).

DS has explicitly requested a birthday party with his friends. But we know a lot of children outside of preschool (through friends and sport) who DS plays with more than some of the ones at preschool. Would it be so horrible not to invite everybody? The activity DS would like to do limits to 25 children, and with all preschool children included, we are at 35+.

I'm not from the UK and don't want to do a social faux pas, but not sure what the etiquette here is.

Your son requested a party for his friends so surely the most important thing is that he has his friends there. I am also not from the UK and it's not "normal" to invite the entire class to the birthday party. Having lived in the UK for 20 years, I can't say I bother much about social faux pas. I do what makes sense to our family which is only celebrating with people we want to be around.

It’s fine, as long as it’s less than about half the kids. It’s not kind to invite (say) 23 out of 25.

And be discreet - individual messages rather than using the class WhatsApp for instance.

Ds is 5 and his party sizes have ranged from just 10 to 19. I'd never do whole class, tbh the 19 one nearly killed me 😅

It’s fine to do a party of friends so long as there isn’t just a small set of kids from any larger group left out.

If you’re asking 8 out of 25 pre schoolers and 4 out 16 soccer players, all 5 similar aged cousins and all the kids of your close friendship circle, then you’ll be fine. If you’re asking 20 preschoolers, 4 out of 5 cousins and one kid from your close friends, it will upset more people.

To some extent there is an expectation that if you’ve attended someone’s party you should invite them to yours. I think that’s much less the case when the party you’ve attended has been an all class one, though, and is frequently ignored (but then sometimes causing ill feeling).

It’s fine. As pp say, it’s bad to invite almost all the class, or almost all the boys.

If you aren't going to invite the whole class, then only invite the ones he really wants. As someone said, it's mean to invite a majority. Better to only include a few, than to exclude a few.

It’s perfectly normal and fine to invite less than the whole class. It’s not ok to just leave out a few children though or for example to invite all the boys except one.

And invite discreetly - don’t hand out invitations in front of the whole class at pickup or whatever unless they’re all getting one.

If he's going to school with these kids, I'd invite his preschool friends and do something separate with your friends kids. If he's not, I'd have the soft play for his friends from home.
At nursery, they don't have friends per se. So I'd not bother with nursery friends if you aren't going to be school gate allies.

While lots of people invite the whole class at that age, I think it is absolutely fine to invite only your dc's friends. Just make sure it's less than half. A friend had a party last week for her dd, pre-school class is 16 including her and she invited 6 from pre-school then about 6 from outside of school and a couple of kids of parents' friends. Total was 15 kids of which only 6 + her (so total 7) were from school. It was a lovely party and she was discreet with invitations and let those of us receiving them know it isn't a whole class party so we were discreet too.

Ok, so it seems we can just invite the ones from Preschool that DS actually plays with. Excellent!