To ask reception parents how may parties they’ve been to?

[rainyetagainonasunday]

We have only been to two from reception. It’s a fairly small class (only fifteen children.)

Is this common? I see a lot of people saying they are at parties most weekends but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Class of 30 and only 2 invites. One had 3 kids shared party and was whole class and the other was small (10 friends) . My kid is having a whole class party as I'm still not sure about friends and as I work full time I never meet the parents. This is fewer than my daughter 3 years a gonso Cost of living may be a factor.

We found reception & year 1 it was all ‘whole class’ parties. DS1 was in a class of 9 so he went to 9 village hall type parties, or maybe a few were at slightly more exciting places like soft play. DS2 was in a class of 12 and he went to 10 parties plus his own (which we had at home on the farm), as only 1 boy didn’t have a party. From year 2 onwards it eases off a bit. It probably also depends on your school community and what the first few oldest kids do - if they have whole class parties then others tend to follow suit. We live in a small rural community with small class sizes so it is the norm to invite everyone.

Yes, very similar here. I wouldn’t feel very comfortable inviting three boys and excluding three others; it does work out expensive doing whole class parties but generally not everyone can make it anyway which pushes the cost down. I guess in bigger classes the effect is diluted a bit.

Small village primary with kids in Reception and Y2. Classes of 30.

Just totted up on the calendar and both have been invited to 6 parties so far, with the reception child having a further 3 parties with old preschool friends.

A lot of the parties go on the class WhatsApp and everyone is invited!

My second was in a class of 15 and not everyone did whole class parties so was invited to far fewer than these two.

£500 to 800 for a child's birthday party.

I've been throwing kids birthday parties for 26 years and we generally have a decent number of guests and we've never spent that even for my eldests 18th. We've done all sorts from a day at the beach or local attraction to a wildlife park to paddleboarding but we definitely couldn't afford £££ per kid each year.

@Time2beme thats because you’ve been throwing them for twenty eight years. I mean, I think even as recently as seven years ago (because Covid meant 2020/2021 was more or less out) things were cheaper. Prices have shot up massively of late.

Just to get into our local softplay, which is nice enough but nothing special, costs £8. That’s just for a play session, weekday in term time. Once you’ve got food etc on top the prices per head go up.

Class of 21

6 including my daughters all in Dec and Jan and nothing since. One coming up in April.

Got to say seems like the boys are fairly low key and not doing big class parties as 6/7 were girls

We been invited to 2 out of 26 children. There are a few factors:

15 out of the 26 children came from the school nursery and DD has found it hard to break into established friendship groups. Noone else from her nursery came to her school.
Because she goes to after school club, I dont regularly see the same parents at pick up so its also been hard for me to break into existing networks!
Our area is very mixed in income / background and a space to hold a whole class party is looking at north of £500 now once food and some kind of entertainment is sorted. I suspect its unaffordable for many in DD's class.
Like others above, i think there is a cultural angle as well. DD is in the minority in her class as a white child (regardless of nationality) and there certainly seems to be a bit of a divide in terms of friendship groups already, which is sad as one of the reasons we chose the school is because we liked it reflected the make up on our wider area.

Class of 30 and only invited to 2 so far (and those where when the entire class was invited).

Dd has a class of 11 and a year of 21. We’ve been to 7 so far - with 5 more to go (including hers)

The first term seemed to be whole year parties, but since Christmas they do seem to have broken down into class or friendship group parties.

Class of 21
8 so far but these of those have been joint parties so 11 kids.

Class of 18 here and DD has been to 8 parties including her own. 2 others were from outside of school though (hobbies). So only 5 other school children. It hasn't been too bad though as 3 were on the same weekend.
There's another one at the end of the month but she said she doesn't want to go.

Just 1 - it's a small year and I haven't heard any chatter and other parties so I just think people haven't had them. DD wants one though so we'll probably do one for her with select friends.

In reception I think ds still got invited to my (mum) friends kids party’s plus one or two extra so around 8 (over year) out of 30 in his class but 90 in the year. (A couple were out of other classes)

We’ve had 5 with two more invited and accepted and one more we had to say no to. We have 22 kids per class and there are 2 classes so 44 in the whole year and lots seem to invite the full year. We also did a party so would get more invitations as a result I guess. In a class of 15, I think 2 is probably totally normal.

I’m sure I didn’t have as many when my son was small but I think people tended to invite the one class only rather than the full year, I’m not sure why that has changed. We also found it was approx £500 or so for a hall party with bouncy castle for 30 ish kids so I’m sure the cost puts people off.

Class of 18 and 6 parties so far. Only two were all class ones, the others were between 6-10 kids. All class parties don't seem as common anymore or it depends heavily on the school. Most parents tend to invite friends they know from playdates plus a handful from nursery or outside of school.

Hosting and reciprocating playdates seems to be the key factor. If a parent has already been to your home and vice versa, then a birthday party invite feels like a common courtesy. Same for all those who have already invited us to birthdays. So the list gets filled up with playdate families first and there are often very few, if any, places let. I rarely invite someone to a bday for the first time unless DD mentions the name multiple times or insists on having them there. (This is also rare since the closer friends are usually those who have been on playdates already)

DS is 13 now, so it’s old information, but I still have a photo of a class list from reception which we stick on the fridge and used as a party reminder, and put of 27 children there were 19 parties DS attended. A couple of those were joint. Around the same in year 1, and then things started getting smaller.

Sometimes the kind of parent who chooses a school with smaller classes has a child who doesn't get on well with big groups, so may prefer smaller parties.

There can be a cultural thing too. A lot of ethnic minorities don't mix socially with white families - my niece and nephew (white) are at a school where around 50% of the children are of indian subcontinent heritage & a lot of the parents don't invite white children for play dates or parties at all, its been quite hard for my niece and nephew socially. My nephews best friend at school was muslim of Pakistani heritage and in 7 years at school together the parents only had him to play once in year 6 to "say goodbye" because they were moving to different secondaries. They had birthday parties with family/their community and my nephew was never invited.

Parties are crazy expensive so I imagine it depends on the area you live - my boy has been at a school nursery for nearly a year and there has only been one class party. We wont be doing any big parties for him as we can't afford it and I think he would prefer doing something smaller with a few friends anyway

I'm still actively parenting and throwing parties, there were 27 people at my son's party last year, we went to a local (paid for) wild swimming spot, swam and paddleboarded and then came back to ours for food if prepared and t-shirt (white t-shirts bought cheaply in bulk)decorating and free play. Still not £500. As we don't have loads of family etc I've always made sure my kids feel celebrated. If things are tight then it's been cake , bubbles and play in a local playground. Last year we splurged as it was close to £300 but we paid for the tickets early and then just had food etc to buy in birthday month and 2 of my kids have birthdays that month. Fortunately one of them is now an adult so we celebrated with them the day before the big party.

We have a similar sized class. We went to maybe 5 parties a year until they dwindled down to close friends only. A lot of parents seem to do family parties only, no friends. I think the cost is a lot for a lot of families at the moment.

I’ve put 2 kids through primary school who are very well liked with lots of friends and I have never been to a party every weekend (that sounds ghastly!).

I think where this happens it’s when there are huge intakes (3 classes of 30), so you might get invited to 20 all year parties plus say 5 from the other classes that your dc might be friends with from preschool, plus where mums have lots of mum friends from NCT or whatever who still invite their own friends to parties at 4/5/6.

There are absolutely mums who court this sort of lifestyle of multiple parties per weekend to fill their days while their husbands are off cycling or at the pub. Definitely was not me and we don’t live in an area where children’s parties are a big thing.