Do people assume you all come as a job lot?

[piximon]

DS1 (5) is quite popular at school (and previously at nursery) and yet he never gets invites for play dates/birthday parties etc.

I wonder if he's missing out on invites because people feel inviting him would involve me bringing all the other children along (4 others under 4) and it's just too overwhelming for them. We've had successful play dates at my house (so I know it's not because we're not liked or because of poor behaviour) but as it's never reciprocated I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

I actually do find it much less stressful to have people over to our house but DS1 is now starting to question why he never gets invites and I don't know what to tell him.

I've had the same issue and I only have three none of which would be expecting to go as well as eldest DD.
I think maybe we're just nicer more accommodating than some families.

I don't think it's a large family thing. My children have been invited to friends homes individually.
At 5yo I found that invites to other children's homes for tea have been a bit hit and miss. Sometimes there have been quite a few invites and sometimes they've been thin on the ground. If I felt that my child was missing out in some way then I invited their friend/s over. If the invite wasn't returned, then we weren't particularly bothered anyway.

If you think it's that people are worried that they might have to invite all your children then I would mention in conversation somewhere that you wouldn't expect that to happen.

If any of my children have asked why xxxx asks others for tea but not my child, I usually say it's because not everyone can be invited and perhaps xxxx mum/dad feels they can't cope with too many, too often (whether I believe that or not) and anyway why don't we invite xxxx over ourselves.

I also found that as the children get older, the invites can get a bit more frequent at times.

I saw your post on other thread about this (was that the all but one boy invited to party thread?).

Anyway, we have similar situation, in that we have hosted many playdates but DC don't get invited to hardly any playdates (or parties). How old is your DS1?

I have no farking idea why in my case, either, can only speculate. You said elsewhere that you hadn't lived in the area long, and I would mostly put it down to that. Think of it as a hierarchy, the kids most likely to be invited are:

Kids of people parents are quite chummy with & kids are friendly with
Kids of people parents are quite chummy with (even if birthday/host child doesn't know those kids at all).
Kids known via class & liked by parents.
Kids known well via class & tolerated by parents.

If they can fill their expected number (for a party, number of playdates they feel like hosting each week) with that lot, they won't look further (to a child they don't know well, like yours). Plus (still speculating) some people never host playdates no matter how many times they let their kids visit yours, and some will only bother to invite/host if their kids nag them to the nines about it.