Birthday Party

[LuckyKoalaBear]

We've recently moved to the city from a village, and our DD has started a new school. She turns 8 next weekend and was keen for a party, so we invited the whole class of 30 to a local play centre next Saturday. Invites went out 10 days ago and we had one reply saying they couldn't make it, but have not had any further responses.

I don't know any parents or whether there is a class chat to chase them up and I've checked the invite to make sure my details are correct, and confirmed the teacher handed them out.

DD goes to after school care and we don't see other parents at the school gates, but on the day I took leave to collect her I still couldn't work out how I could know who the parents of the children in her class are. It's a large inner city school with 2/3 classes per intake. The hope was to meet some other parents via the party.

RSVP date is tomorrow and I'm not holding out hope of hearing from any other parents by then. Should I print a reminder note for DD to hand out next week? Has anyone been in a similar situation?

I've had a similar situation - whole class invite, no way of contacting the parents. Out of 25 kids I had one RSVP yes, two no's and nothing from the rest. Only one kid turned up 😢

Is there a class rep? Have you checked your DD's bag just in case.

Can you text back the mum who replied and her if there is a class what's app or what the protocol is?

Oh that’s tricky. I agree with PP to ask the person who replied if there is a class WhatsApp. Hopefully there is one. If not can they share any numbers they may have for the parents they know, then ask those parents and so on. A bit of a pain but that’s what I’d do, though we are also a village school so more likelihood of parents knowing each other I guess.

Oh no, I'm sorry you had a similar experience - this actually helps set my expectations a little because when I've spoken to colleagues etc, they just tell me it'll be fine and kids will show up. Which feels very unrealistic at this point 😢

I'm one of those parents who checks the bag every single night when I collect for fear of missing things, but nothing lurking at the bottom. I've never heard of a class rep before - we never had anything like in the previous school.
You're right though thanks, I will maybe just need to reach out to the one parent who contacted to say no.

Thank you, it's probably the best way to go about it. There's still part of me worried that other kids don't want to come or that families have enough pressure without me chasing them to come along. Or of course they might be worried about the cost of a gift, when actually DD doesn't need anything other than a chance to play & enjoy cake with her classmates.

Poor DD, it’s hard with parties when they are new. And people not bothering to rsvp is very annoying as you don’t know who will show up or not. At preschool I found that no rsvp could mean a last minute yes but at school it does tend to mean they are not coming. Most annoying was the mum last year who asked to bring two siblings to my sons party due to having no childcare available which I said yes to - and then on the day said none of them could come due to sickness!