DS is starting Reception in Sept and his birthday is a month afterwards - who do I invite?!

[BornToFolk]

This issue has been stressing me out for months but now the time has come to start making decisions!

DS is starting school in a couple of weeks and his birthday is mid-Oct. He wants a party, I want him to have a party but who can he invite?

I don't know if he'll have had time to make friends by then but I don't have the room/money/energy to invite the whole class. I was thinking of asking the teacher for names of a few kids that he seems friendly with and inviting them but is that going to alienate people so soon into the term? It's possible that DS's birthday will be the first of the class and it might set the precedent for how parties are handled in the future.

And WHEN do I invite people? If I leave it too late, so that he's had a chance to make friends, people might be busy but if I do it too early, he might make a friends with kids we haven't invited.

I suspect I am over-thinking this - it is just a 5 year old's birthday party after all but I'm anxious about DS starting school for all kinds of reasons (main two are that he won't know anyone there at all and that his dad left us about 4 months ago...) and I am desperate for his party to be a success and for it to help him build friendships at school.

- sounds like that is sorted then, OP - probably cheaper than hiring hall and bouncy castle, and with someone else to do riot control for you.

..and the max 20 kids gives you a get out of jail free card for any parent who thinks that you should have invited the whole class (not that it is any of their business, of course). I would still stick to 10-12 from school IIWY, though - that way it is clearly less than half of the class and no one can it is harder for people to get sniffy about their precious darling being "left out".