4 year old party - parents stay or leave?

[feejee]

I'm currently writing out the invites for my sons 4th birthday party. He is the oldest in his school nursery class so I only have playgroup parties to go on, and all the parents would stay at the parties we went to.

I am hoping that parents will stay at his party to supervise their child - what is the done thing at 4? I am useless at remembering each childs name, let alone trying to look after 20 of them on a bouncy castle whilst sorting food etc out.

The party is in our village hall, bouncy castle, party food etc. Tea/coffee and snacks for parents. Do you think most people would assume parents welcome, or would i need to state this on the invite? and if so, how best ?

Thank for any advice offered

I'd say definitely stay at 4. Dd is 6 next week and parents will be staying at the party. She probably wouldn't cope unless it was a close friend and s venue she knew well. But she has ASD so is young for her years emotionally.

All of the 4th birthdays I've been to most if not all of the parents stay.

Dd is 5 and I've not yet left her at a party. I'd be happy to if I knew the parents well, and dd was happy for me to go. But staying seems to be the norm around here.

The pattern I’ve seen so far is:

4 stay
5 & 6 stay or one parent stays and keeps an eye on a friend’s child too, so still at least 1 adult for 2 children
7 leave them and head to the pub.

I've been surprised by the amount of parents that drop their kids and run, not even a contact number left. I'd say stay, if you can catch them x

From 5 I would drop and run and would prefer others to do that at my child's party.

My dd is 5 and we still stay at parties as do most of the other parents.

All the parents stay and it turns into just another adult/kid playdate and not a party. Either that or you're trying to entertain the parents as well as the children.

This hasn't been the case at all in my experience. Parents usually sit around the edge of the hall/venue or at tables if it's a soft play party and talk amongst themselves whilst the kids do the partying. I never take my dd to a kids party expecting to be entertained myself, doubt many parents do to be honest.

We had this discussion the other day at my daughter's classmate's 5th birthday party. We said probably about the age of 7. Only one parent has ever dropped and run at a classmates 4th party. We were all pretty shocked as the dad didn't know any of the parents from adam so to just leave him there we felt was a bit bad!

Here all parents stayed at 4, most stayed at 5, a few stayed at 6. I'm not expecting anyone to stay at 7.

All parents stayed at my 4 year olds party in October. I wouldn't have been happy of they didn't. I just put on tea/coffee and biscuits for them as well as party food for kids

In DDs class parents stayed at parents until about 5/6. At 4 yo of definitely expect parents to stay.

We have just been through a year of 5 old parties for DS’s school friends, including DS’s party when he turned 5 in December. Every parent stayed. DS’s party was at an indoor play centre, we made it clear on the invitation that parents could pay for siblings to enter the centre but there would be no room in the party room for them when the kids went to eat their party food. We had a table set aside in the cafe area for parents and we set up a tab for coffee/tea for parents which went down well. They all chatted amongst themselves, I didn’t have to entertain.

I think sometimes expectations are different in different parts of the country as I have seen previous threads where parents were expected to stay and others where they weren't.
Here parents generally stay and sit on chairs around the outside. My daughter's 5th party I had one parent that asked could they drop off and pick up later and as there were plenty of adults that was fine.
I usually provide tea/coffee and cakes for the adults instead of catering for them in the party food.
It can be a useful way to meet other parents if you are not always at the school gates.
Around here it is also not unusual for parents to bring siblings. I have has a few ask, but others just brought them. Luckily as I had seen sibling at parties before I was expecting it. Gave out cake to siblings if there was enough but party bags were for invitees only. Did have one parent bring a sibling without asking and then asked for a party bag for them. As they were one of the last to leave and there were some spare so are she was lucky.
I didn't count the children when they were sat eating, so have no idea how many there were at dad's 5th party. I had parents say they were coming and not turn up, others bring a sibling, and some gave no rsvp but turned up, also with siblings.
That was the last of the big parties. For her 6th (jointly with a little boy 2 days older) we took a group of 6 bowling and food while we were there. Decided to use the money we would have paid on a party to take dd away for weekend.