Or are some Mums turning into Bridezilla when it comes to childrens partys?

[mummyloveslucy]

It seems to me that Childrens birthday partys are getting bigger and more elaborate every year. Is it the parents trying to out do each other? I think so in some cases.
I was talking to one of the mums at my daughters school and she told me that her daughters birthday was comming up soon. She said she'd booked x entertainer. I asked if that was the same one as another party we went to, of another child in the class. She then said "Oh no, the one I'm having costs twice as much as the one she had".
Is it just me, or do some Mums turn into Bridezillas when it comes to partys?
I thought it was quite rude to say that about someone elses party, and a small child's at that.
I always thought birthdays were about the children having fun, not a war between mums.

Does anyone really want 10 six and seven year old boys in a three bed semi in the winter? They won't do organised colouring or pin the tail on the donkey. They will do wrestling, chasing, fiddling with stuff and screaming competitions though.

of course Riven

I had a party for DS2 once.
We took the boys ten pin bowling and they had a great time. Someone in the leisure centre didn't realise that bring a 6ft doggy character over to say hello to the birthday boy was not such a good ides with a pretty burley group of boys with social inhibition and communication difficulties. The dog/man had to leg it

Then we broughtthem back here.
As soon as we got in DS went to play computer, one boy went upstairs to play with my bathroom taps and the other two went and sat either end of my biggest sofa and bounced on it. DD was only 3 and climbed into the middle and got trampolined for the best part of an hour.

It was the best party

I got a party invitation for my son once, it was for a joint party, twins. My son knew the boy, but the girl was at a different school, he had never met her, but even so, I would have bought her a token present.
Until I saw

"Remember the presents!"
at the bottom of the invitation, with the s at the end of presents underlined.

I refused the invitation

at skyblue

I would have refused too.

Rollbauble - I see your point. But, mine is an all girl party and from experience, they tend not to do wrestling and stuff. I'm doing a disco/karaoke with a few games like pass the parcel, musical bumps etc. I did one for my younger daughter last year and had no problems whatsoever. (Although I did hit the vino once the last one had gone .

skyblue that is unbelievable! oh my god.

How about having a couple of her friends, over or just family, and have a disco for an hour or so? Maybe you could do face painting and dressing up and she could decide what everyone should be.

Short and sweet, does not necessarily have to involve food but I guess she is used to sitting with you all when you all sit down to eat so may not mind a few snacks being offered?

oops! My last post was to Riven

{wanders off to blame small child for distracting mummy and threatens that there will be no more birthday parties if she does it again}

I think I know what you mean Riven. I find birthdays really tough too Riven. You can't help but assess and compare.

Chippendales it is then.

skyblue that is awful!!

This is the first year DD isn't having a big party (she'll be 5). Like Pag, I love doing them myself and DD is one of those people who is mates with everyone and their dog (including random kids she meets in McD's/softplay/bus queues who also get invited...) and loves having a big crowd of people around her.

For the last 2 years we've hired a hall because all her aunts/uncles/cousins expected to come too and DH has such an enormous extended blended family that there were 25 people on the list before we got to her friends!! No way was I having that in my house... so a hall and a bouncy castle with a small craft table and pizza and quorn nuggets all round it has been.

Now she's at school, however, the 'we MUST come to DD's party' has died off a bit from the rellies and parents are now willing to drop and run, so I am limiting her to 11 girls, at home, and we are having a Dora Adventure around the house(idea shamelessly nicked from Katz -thread here - with modifications to involve fairy princesses (DD's fave along with Dora)). Any parents insane enough to want to stay have been warned they may find themselves being roped in to help - DD's best friend's mum is already cast as the Party Fairy while her DH is Swiper and mine is the Grumpy Old Troll... Thankfully we all do amdram...

The last 2 years I have actually had some mums say to me 'ooh, you've set a benchmark now, we can't possibly measure up to that' and tbh I look at them like they're mental - I do it because I enjoy it and so does DD, but no way would I expect anyone else to feel they had to do similar/better/resort to slagging large parties and their organisers in order to hide their own insecurites...

I suspect you'd have quite a few people queueing up to ''help'' if you did have the Chippendales.

We are showing our age talking about the Chippendales, aren't we?

Luckily the date that dh became disabled holds no particular significance in the same way it does for you with dd.

Hee hee. Dh asked why I was giggling when I was doing 'my research' for the link. Eyes raised heavenward when I told him

Just skip to the end and turn the sound down and keep the whole show to watch for later

Oh, it would be sooo funny.

Imagine the AIBU threads

riven, 6 is a difficult 'party' age. ds1 is having a joint party in 2 weeks time. at maybe aged 8, or even 7, having 2 friends over for pizza or bowling is fine. but ds was invited to loads of parties in reception. and is friends with many boys and girls.
I have only ever had house parties for 3 or 4 people up until now. but it seemed right to do a soft play party for 17 of them this year - we tried to keep the numbers down, but the other d is ds's class has also been invited to lots of parties. once you add their joint friends, individual friends and a couple offriends from outside school, and one cousin, you end up with 18.
But thsi is a one off. am looking forward tot he years of bowling, sleep overs with 1 or 2 friends, that kind of thing.

i once had a small tea party with a few select friends - it was absolutely magic (small, sweet,trad) as i had planned it meticulously. my 'friend' (now moved away - yay!) who had expressley decided against a party for her dd the following week, suddenly pulled out all the stops to have a kind of extravaganza with a neverending (yawn!) magic show (which was badly put together) , vast array of food (she prepared some dishes every day for a week) , private venue, expensive goody bags and 100s of people invited (most did not even know who the birthday girl was). turns out that it felt like a pay-per-child event despite the vast expense incurred by her. she attempted to consciously outdo me on every single count but the few friends we had in common whom i later spoke with, said that their children were overwhelmed and pretty hysterical by the end of it. there is a lesson in there somewhere (no doubt lost upon her though)

I guess some of it may be competitive or showing off or whatever. But thinking back to when DD was at primary and parties were more common, I got the impression that once all the children had a few parties under their belt what most of the parents were trying to do was throw a party that was different rather than more extravagant.

Whether this was a different themed fancy dress, or a different venue, or even just being the first person to have a chocolate fountain the satisfaction seemed to be in doing what hadn't been done before.

I think we were the first in that group to do a craft party at home when DD was 7. It wasn't extravagant at all. I got plain white T shirts for everyone from Tesco (about £1.50 a go) and T-shirt pens. Also masks, badge and jewellery kits and lots of other arty crafty bits and let them get on with it. I remember one little girl saying "I was getting really bored of parties until this one!" Bless her!!