Should I cancel my child’s third birthday party if turnout is low?

[Dbrook]

My child is turning 3 soon and I decided to throw a softplay party and invite her nursery friends and some of our NCT/ other friends.
Problem is only one or two of our actual friends can come so it’s looking like it will be a bunch of the nursery parents who I barely know. And only around 8-10 kids in total.

Having a wobble about how awkward it might be. We’ve been to some nursery parties but they were big ones full of extended family and friends. Think they’ll wonder what on earth I did this party for.

Would you cancel? I have to pay the balance soon so have to decide pretty swiftly.

It feels awkward to cancel but I figure they’ll just move on with their day and not care.

No I would think you were doing a separate family/friends party or didn’t have many friends with similar aged children

My 3 dc are all now adults, but I’ve hosted and been to numerous children’s parties in my time. It really is perfectly normal to have a party for nursery/school friends and a separate celebration with family. Honestly, no-one is going to be wondering why! Your dd will love her party and so will her nursery friends. Their parents will just be happy on behalf of their dc that they got invited!

How do you think you start to make “mum
friends”? This is one of the ways! If you had a party with loads of family/friends, you wouldn’t spend time talking to your child’s “friends” parents.

The party is supposed to be about your child and their “friends” - they’ll start to play together the older they get, so it’s nice to give them time together to do this.

I think the wobble is I’m not sure if a third birthday is still about the parent’s
friends rather than the child’s. I know as they get older it’s all about the child’s
friends and that’s what people expect but wondered if 3 might be too little for that.

But I think you’ve all convinced me to go ahead with it 🙂

It’s in a dedicated softplay place but quite a small one so it shouldn’t feel too empty I think.

Either is fine - parent friend focused, or nursery friend focused. But I think you’ve got it the better way round in terms of who has RSVP’d - you wouldn’t want loads of family and 1 nursery parent who doesn’t know anyone else.

Your party will be great - they’ll be happy that their child is entertained for a bit, and they’ll be happy to meet other parents from the nursery, they won’t be counting up how many non-nursery parents are there.

This is literally how I met my best friend 15yrs ago - our boys are both doing their driving tests very soon
Definitely continue with the party & next year when it feels like you have 154 children attending you will think back to how lovely 8-10 was

Any of the soft play parties my daughter had from the age of 3 none of our friends or family attended always did that separately and most of the mums I got know did the same . I have always hosted them solo as usually DH is at work.

3 is the start of it being DC friends IME, especially if they are at nursery, but it is definitely on the cusp as pre-nursery, their friends tend to be the DC of your friends/other people from NCT or other toddler groups.

By 4 it's definitely DC's friends as the lead.

TBH we always do small parties and have never had as many as 8 guests, so I would not think of this as small. Even for the shared party (DS2/3 have birthdays a couple of days apart) DS3 could only think of 2 people to invite, so we invited I think 6 in total, 5 turned up. They had a great time.

There's VERY rarely any friends or family of mine at our kids parties. My parents are dead, my husband's are entirely disinterested in us and the kids. Most of our friends have much older or much younger kids; except our NCT group, who are also nursery parents...

It's never really occurred to me as something weird, and no-one has ever suggested to me that it was, or that they were wondering where our family was, or whatever.

We didn’t know many of the nursery parents when my DD was three. They then all had third birthday parties and we all got to know each other well. Many are still friends. Nursery children and parents were the majority at most parties, with just a few other family and friends. You’re overthinking it (I also did when DD was 3, but have agonised less and less each year since lol).

For a 3 yo 8-10 children joining is perfect!

8-10 is a nice number for a party, and kids parties are a good way to meet other parents , since you forced to sit there for 2 hours when they are this age.

Absolutely still go ahead with it, parties are how you get to know and make friends with the other parents, as with nursery having such flexible drop off and pick up times it’s hard to meet them otherwise. It’s very normal to take kids to a nursery party having no clue who the birthday girl or parent is. They will be delighted to meet you and the kids will be so excited to be going to a party, please please don’t cancel at this stage! I would never ever go to a nursery party and think ‘this is so strange the mum doesn’t have non nursery friends here!’ Wouldn’t even cross my mind.