Four kids tuned up

[Boymum776]

My son is in Reception, and he’s one of the youngest in the year. We invited his whole class to his birthday party through the class WhatsApp group. There are 30 children in the class. This year I’ve taken my son to pretty much every class party we’ve been invited to, or at least every one we were able to attend. I’ve made an effort to chat to the other parents too, even though a lot of them already know each other because their children all went to the same nursery.

Four children turned up to my son’s party. The venue had a minimum of 12 children, so I still had to pay for 12 places. It’s not even just about the money, it’s seeing your child so excited for their birthday and then watching hardly anyone come. I’m just so angry and disappointed. It honestly feels like a parent popularity contest rather than people thinking about the children. They’re only five years old. At this age, birthdays should be about making kids feel included and celebrated, not about who the parents already know. I feel like writing a bit fuck you in the class chat, obviously I won’t… but HOW do I get over the anger when I have to see these people 5 days a week!

Yep this is how it works in all the places I know!

It’s really not blame as such but I think a reflection from people who have done multiple parties and are trying to help. You either take the stance the whole class is populated with bitchy parents or take a step back and think if anything else was a factor. Almost certainly summer availability will be an issue but it isn’t a massive leap to think comms might be as well.

Just from experience you do have to be very clear with communications and I’ve learnt over the years how to sort things out efficiently. I suspect I wasn’t as good at it when organising my first child’s party but now I definitely know what I’m doing and it’s much easier.

But it IS the OP’s fault! There’s absolutely no point in handwringing and telling her it’s a popularity contest she’s failed at when she’s not in some ‘clique’, because she’ll then do the same thing again next year.

She needs to communicate much more clearly after issuing the initial invitations, chasing non-responders for RSVPs, and then sending a reminder closer to the time to those attending, not confusing matters with a poll after the initial invitations didn’t get much of a response rate and then going quiet!

Is it a bit of a pain? Absolutely! But entirely normal in terms of the era of whole-class parties.

I’m sorry @Boymum776 that sucks.

If it helps at all the dynamic in our reception is just the same. The nursery parents all enthusiastically go to each other’s parties, and shower invitations on the WhatsApp with instant positive responses - herd mentality. The non nursery kids get a few RSVP’s in a slow slow trickle, and it’s pulling teeth.

To my mind it shows that the parents are prioritising their own social experience over that of their kids / the good of the class. We’re all going to be in the class together for years, one party is much the same as another and you just do not know who your kid will end up being mates with in Y1, Y3, Y6 etc, so why be cliquey at this stage?!?! That said, I don’t necessarily think the parents who do it are purposefully being excluding, just prioritising ease and social comfort for themselves, but its still rude and thoughtless when the end result is that some parties get 25 RSVPs and some get 6.

We cottoned onto this dynamic early on and for our kid, who hadn’t gone to the school nursery, we:

• sent out invites early
• sent reminders for numbers and sent out parking info on the day as another reminder to actually show up
• invited mates from after school clubs / other classes and pals from outside
• literally door stopped the parents of the kids we knew he was actually mates with at other parties / the school gates and implied that RSVP numbers were high, kids from other classes were coming etc. to force them to either say yes or no - “oh hi, so lovely to see you, isn’t it hot, by the way can xx come to xx’s party? Xx and xx are coming and we’re getting a bit close to capacity but I know my kid will really want xx there so I just wanted to check.”

It worked, but was loads and loads of bother and stress and shouldn’t have been necessary. Other parents of non-nursery kids who didn’t or couldn’t do this, have had really low turn outs and you can see they and their kids are upset by it.

It’s been one of the big disappointments of my kid starting school - realising that at least half the parents are mentally / emotionally still in year 9 and seem to thrive off drama / cliquery / gossip / creating social hierarchies

I haven’t read the whole thread. But feel it is sad that so few turned up. But also awful for the level of etiquette required for a simple child’s birthday party. That you have to hire a venue, a WhatsApp invite, that unless you do this or that it won’t be interpreted properly.
Surely it shouldn’t be so complicated ?

Are people overlooking that another parent included their party invitation on the same WA group and there was a flurry of acknowledgments?

So they know how to reply when it suits them.

I think the issue the OP is pointing out @BufferState is that the parents who all know each other from nursery didn’t seem to have to do this level of chasing and following up and reminding. From the sounds of it their invitations got a big, enthusiastic, immediate response And the parents who RSVPd followed through and turned up.

Maybe the party was at a more convenient location and time.

I think you are taking it too personally. I run children's ckasses ( which they have to pay for whether they attend or not) and when it gets to July there are sometimes only 50% there. People are really busy and want ti get out and about with their family n the summer, especially when they hsve had year of 30 ckass parties, let alone if they hsve multiple chikdren. Where it is a particularly close friend of the child or the parent they might commit to come(although you dont know whether they actually did).
Focus on building upyour child's friendships one on one by having friends back for tea after school.

I don’t get the impression that the invitation was the issue. A formal invite was sent and a poll issued after there were few replies. If I answered a poll about attending a party I would consider that the RSVP, unless the poll specifically said “this is just to canvass possible date options”.

It’s really sad what happened OP. It’s the sort of thing I dread so much it makes me too anxious to throw a party for my child! We did it once when he was 2 and had a great turn out but I’m too anxious to try again in case people don’t show.

Children are resilient though! And I think the people who host all the time/have parties all the time know that some events will be smaller than others, but they do it so often it all becomes part of the flow. When socially anxious people like me throw one party, ALL of the pressure is on that ONE event and it gets too much.

I hope you feel better soon.

Dont do this, or there will be nobody at all next year!
It really isn't their responsibility to make your child's birthday special,

People are busy. If you invite on a class WhatsApp, you’ve removed the burden of making written invitations or the worry of them getting lost in a child’s bag so you find them weeks after the party, but there’s the added possibility that if you issue the invitation on a day when there’s also been multiple posts about missing PE kit or people suggesting a run to the park after school, it’s possible someone reading won’t scroll all the way back to see it, or will register it, but not RSVP immediately and forget.

You just need to put yourself in the shoes of the other parents and make it as easy for them as possible by telling them what you need and giving them all the relevant information clearly eg, if you get hardly any RSVPs by the date stipulated, don’t just post ‘hey, some people still haven’t responded to invitations for Theodora’s party’, post ‘Please confirm ASAP whether your child will be attending Theodora’s party at Wacky Warehouse, 2 -4 Saturday July 21st — so far I have yeses from Tim, Jim, Tom, Eve, Steve and Neveah, and nos from Cornelius, Andrew and Andromeda.’

And then follow up a week ahead of the party, reminding them of the date, venue, timings. Don’t rely on someone being prepared to scroll back a month in the class WhatsApp to see if it’s Wacky Warehouse in Thunderstall or Bounce in Happyville.

To be honest it sounds like mixed messages. The poll coming afterwards sounds like checking availability, not rsvp-ing. Did you then say, great thanks for answering poll, see you all on date/time/venue. Then a reminder couple days before?

Really? funny how these things are done different at different schools. I have a litany of old party groups in my archive. No one used the class WhatsApp group as whole for a a private event. The class group was for school related stuff.

But, respectfully, she didn’t do what she needed to do in order to ensure a decent attendance at her child’s party. That’s the bottom line.

You work with what you’ve got. I’m sure I had to work harder, as a totally out of the loop parent whose childminder did the school run, to ensure DS had a social life, by arranging things so I could leave work early periodically, so we could host play dates on a weekday. If I’d been a SAHM who wasn’t a village blow-in, I wouldn’t have had to. But I was where I was. My options were to work harder to make sure DS saw friends out of school, or to sit about wringing my hands about not being in a clique and how unfair it all was. I mean, you decide what’s a better use of your energy.

I do wonder whether the whole online ‘group’ thing encourages a clique mentality. Everyone waiting to see who has responded. If they haven’t they hold off. Then the expectation of multiple chasing up. People are not that busy to reply to a simple invitation.
It just sounds a lot of hard work. And the parents make it so.

Kind of my experience at those ages - never really knew how many would show even with RSPV being chased up - and if there would be siblings tagging along - often there were and they made numbers up.

Time of day and access did play a role but often it's nothing host does.

This time of year at DC first primary was manic - stuff on every day and while we'd have alweays taken our kids to a party can see who people could slip up but next primary they were already scaled back leading into summer.

For us it was luckily always worked out bar one - summer between primary and secondary for DD1 at home party where one turned up it was late August - though they had fun wasn't great for DD1 confidence.

To all the people discussing poll vs rsvp...there was still a firm invite with the date and time posted. So if people really wanted to come, they would have. It was just shitty behaviour and OP doesn't need to be gaslit on Whatsapp etiquette.

Whenever we get a bday invite, I block out the day immediately. Even if there's no follow-up or some details are unclear, I will write the mum a few days beforehand to check. If it's someone we don't know very well then I politely decline within 24hrs so they're not left hanging or unsure of numbers.

Another possibility is that there was a "chain" going on where some of the closely befriended mums decided to go because all of their kids friends were also going. Then someone pulled out last min and then another decided it won't be worth it and it had a knock-on effect in the whole group.

No one’s gaslighting anyone.

My kids are now twenty-somethings so we did proper paper invites with tear off RSVP strips and put our phone numbers as contacts. We had some every year that never RSVPed. In those years you couldn't tell if the invites made it home or the RSVP made it back and of course we didn't have each other's phone numbers.

Cliquey moms tend to have cliquey children so it was no major loss to my children. It was better to take a small group of our daughter's actual friends to Build a Bear than attempt to have a whole-class party and not know who was going to show.

I totally understand why you feel upset OP but I have yet to know of a child's party that hasn't caused upset to someone.
If the lack of people turning up was due to you not being in the WhatsApp group, that speaks volumes of those parents.
I feel the sadness you feel for your son but please try not to dwell on it.
Take care OP

I honestly can’t believe the lengths some people go to regarding chasing. Firstly I haven’t got the time, secondly I don’t have everyone’s numbers or details, thirdly I would feel very annoying and a bit of a twat to be honest.

I have only ever sent invites for parties. I have never had anyone repeatedly chase me for an RSVP. I find it so weird that people would do that.

@BufferState maybe OP didn’t know it was one rule for nursery parents, another rule for non nursery parents.

I agree with you that in some classes, this is just how things are. That as an out of the loop parent, your kid is going to suffer socially when it comes to play dates so birthday parties unless you make a massive effort - at least until all the kids are older and are deciding for themselves who their mates are.

This is how it has been in my kid’s reception class, and we cottoned onto it and made the effort for birthday - even though it was a massive pain.

Does it mean it is right or fair though - no!

When parents prioritise parties of other parents that are “in the loop : in the clique” or who can put in the work - one particularly nasty consequence is that the kids who have parents with poor English, or who have SEN or who are from less well off backgrounds or minorities get left out.

Awful that people like this are bringing up kids-what are they going to be like? Yes, one or two might have serious problems going on at home and forgot.
But most people seem to manage to respond yes or no to an invitation and stick to it-I'm talking mums with cancer, parents who have literally just been made homeless, some who have just lost babies-as in they're going through awful stuff, and you'd understand why a party could slip their mind, but they still manage to either go, or message that they're not.
And mums (occasionally dads) from the generation before us managed it when they didn't even have phones! So there really is no excuse.

I have only ever sent invites for parties. I have never had anyone repeatedly chase me for an RSVP. I find it so weird that people would do that.

If you have a location with min and max numbers - sometimes you do have to chase so you have an idea if cousins can come if you can acomodated parent who asks to bring sibling as has no childcare - and to have rough idea if it per head how much you are shelling out.

Usually a non reply is a no - but not always and school hoilday brithday have higher drop out rates- but I wouldn't ask more than once and hated asking at all.