How do I plan this party?

[BirthdayPartyPooper]

Posting on AIBU for traffic because I can’t work this out without really upsetting someone. My daughter is due to have her birthday in October. She’s picked an activity that has a party package available but it’s for restricted numbers. Luckily she has a small class. Unluckily, there’s only 8 children allowed and there’s 10 girls in her class. One is away so we would literally be leaving one child out. I’ve contacted the organisation and there’s no wiggle room on numbers at all. My daughter has picked her friends from the class and is happy, but I feel awful leaving one child out. Should I just get on with it and hope the child doesn’t find out? Or contact the mum and explain and hope it’s ok? Or send out invites and hope someone can’t attend and then I can invite the extra child?

Don’t ’see if you can convince her’ she is a child and you therefore have to make the adult decision to not leave one child out.

And hope that only applied to one child? 🙄

If it was me, I think I'd say to DD that we couldn't invite all the girls but one to the party, so she could choose between: (1) doing the activity she's chosen but inviting fewer friends, (2) doing the activity but inviting a mix of girls and boys, or (3) doing something different for the party but being able to invite all the girls, or the whole class if you have the budget for that. Then if she's more bothered about the activity, she can pick that, and if she's more bothered about the specific friends, she can pick something else.

There was a similar thread a week back where a child chose an activity for their birthday some other friends couldn’t do (for medical reasons). I’ll give the same advice as I gave then, she needs to do another activity that can include all her friends. This activity can wait for another occasion.

Interestingly enough many replies to that other thread were along the lines of “it’s her birthday she should do what she wants” which is terrible parenting and just the way to bring up a spoilt brat. So good to see that almost all replies here are sensible and suggesting the opposite.

that’s a horrible thing to do to a child.

I agree it’s not nice to leave one out. From the PPs I’d say either look for another activity, pick a couple of girls and then a couple of cousins/boys, put the feelers out (hi all - looking at options for parties for this date, it would be hugely helpful to know if you’d be around…let me know by….)

This is a perfect teaching moment. Your daughter needs to learn that it would be far worse to damage another child than for her not to do her preferred birthday activity. I'd talk about it with her and let her come to this realisation herself.