birthday party invite dilemma

[meysey]

Hi

My son's birthday is coming up and there is one child he says he doesn't want to invite, who is the daughter of good friends of mine. Which makes everything very difficult.

The problem is, although he likes playing with her, she has a younger brother who is a bit of a terror - bites and scratches other children and show no signs of growing out of it (he is two and a half).

Now my son doesn't want to invite her because the brother will come too.

Do I

a) Come clean with my friend, who will probably be mortally offended, and ask her not to bring the son.

b) Not invite any of them and also risk her being mortally offended.

c) Invite them anyway and hope my son doesn't go bananas when they turn up, and say he didn't invite them!

d) any other ideas?

Meysey,

c) yes
d) no

Good luck. Are you inviting the parents too? I imagine you will be if they're good friends of yours. In that case, I'd expect the parents to take care of the little 'darling'. Give him everthing all the other partygoers are getting, include him in games etc, but the parents should be with it enough to realise he's been invited along as a sibling and 'excersise due care and restraint', IYKWIM . Good luck whatever you do - let us know how it goes

How old is your son, and what do you have planned for his birthday? Could you not organise something which is obviously too old for the younger brother to come?

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Send out invites and just put the older ones name on it. I wouldnt expect to bring the other child if not on invite and I wouldnt expect the younger one to be invited either.

thanks for the ideas. unfortunately the children are fairly close in age and always come as a package (4 + 2.5)

it's DS s 4th birthday and we are not planning anything elaborate that would exclude younger ones

as for parents exercising care and restraint, there is also a baby in tow, so the others get left to themselves unless war breaks out!

If you absolutely have to I'd go for option C and hope your ds doesn't make too much of a fuss. However the parents are going to have to realise that their dd can't always go wherever their ds does. When their ds starts school and is invited to parties by schoolfriends, his sister won't be invited.

My dd is 2 1/2 and ds nearly 1 so close in age but sometimes dd gets invited to parties ds isn't invited to which is fine as far as I'm concerned.

Will other people be bringing younger siblings too?

Depends on the age really! I am having a party for my dd and have said to all of my friends that it's school friends only as I am limited with numbers. I am not using this as an excuse but maybe you could?

I would make it a "kids only" party and let the parents know they don't need to come (joke to the mother about taking her dd off her hands for a couple of hours maybe?).

Good luck. I have to admit to doing this on my son's 5th birthday, but she wasn't such a good friend and it worked out fine.

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Quite a few of my friends have a 4 year old and a 2.5 year old and they are usually quite keen for them to have their own friends. As a 2.5 year old isn't as chatty and as big as the 4 year olds I reckon it would be ok to just invite the older one somehow. I take it there are two parents so one could spend time with the 2.5 year old? Or would you prefer both parents to come? Good luck!

I think personally that it all hinges on whether it is a parents stay party or not.

If dd was to be invited to a party where I had to stay then ds would have to come as well.

I guess age 4 is just on that borderline. Another year older and at school and it will be named children only.

good point JulieF. It will be a parents stay party so guess I will just grit my teeth until next year! They are borderline at 4 - DS was invited to a no parents party but was too shy and dh had to stay (luckily they were dh's friends so that was fine)