Birthday party etiquette

[EarningMyStripes]

Hello dear Mumsnetters, I'm looking for a bit of advice please on the old old topic of who and how many to invite to a birthday party.

My DD will be 10 next month and we will be giving her a party - we don't as a rule hold parties for every birthday as with 2 children it can become expensive and we do like the fact that they don't just exoext one every year.

Her class is a small one of only 19 children with a fair mix of boys and girls. My DD wants to do something along the lines of tree top activity - I can't rember what it's actually called.

My dilemma is she wants the whole class to go - whereas DH and I think a smaller number of children appropriate.

I'm worried that by only inviting a small group - say 6 or so - I will be upsetting some of the children and their parents

Is it really OK to socially engineer these things?

What would you do? Have any of you been in a similar situation? Is this something we can do on the sly and just keep quiet about the party itself?

All opinions and advice would be really welcome.

Thanks

I don't have a lot of experience of these things but so far it seems that 'whole class' parties tend to be at soft play/church hall type venues where you could book an entertainer/play games for 20+ children.

As the children get older they seem to do an activity with a smaller group of friends - bowling, cinema, karting etc.

Something like the forest/tree top activity sounds like a very expensive party for 19 children - I would think it was perfectly ok to choose 5 or 6 special friends if you are likely to be spending £20+ per child.

The only issue I would have is inviting, for example, 15 children from a class of 19 which feels very unfair.

Smaller group seems to be pretty much the norm by that age - whole class parties are more for 5/6/7yos.

6 sounds fine to me - and they are easily old enough to understand that not everyone can be invited to everything.

For the kind of activity you are talking about, there are a couple of issues.

1. There maybe height restrictions that could affect that age group.

1. You may need a certain number of adults per child.

I think a party like that is moet certainly not the kind of thing you invite a whole class to. In fact another issue is some children being scared of heights. I personally would only invite children I knew pretty well.

I woild say to her either small group and the treetop adventure thing or the whole class and a more bog standard church hall and disco type party. Let her choose.

And I think this is totally the norm- at DD's school it seems to be either small group, half the class or the whole class.

I would say that for that age group and that type of party everyone will accept that you can't invite the whole class. I agree with Tiggtape that you should avoid a situation where you are inviting all but two, or even worse all but one of the girls. From my own DD's experience, I think you will find somewhere where the line "naturally" falls, ie your DD will have perhaps three, four or five friends who are clearly closer friends than the others (although with a small class you do need to be careful to avoid the "all but two girls invited" scenario).

Do you mean zip wire treetops type thing... I thought it was 10 plus and with an accompanying adult for each child. I didn't let ds , 11 do it recently partly as I didn't want to and partly as it looked more suitable for 12 plus to me.

Those treetop days out are costly! And thats before food and adding in the required amountof adults for the ratios.

Id say 4/6 friends to do that activity and have them sleepover. Or she could choose to invite the whole class to something low key?

The Go Ape stuff I know of requires

• minimum age 10 - which your DD's classmates won't be
• minimum height
• 1 accompanying adult per 2 kids
• some outrageous price per head

You could take the whole class to a park or something but ime whole class parties are rare by 10

A lot of the Go Ape places have now installed smaller versions which you have to be 6 and 110cm to go on (to the mixed annoyance and relief of my kids who aren't quite tall/old enough), but it's age 10 for the main ones - so worth checking practucalities before worrying about invites.

Have you thought about doing a joint party (share the cost?)

Hi there.

Not much more to add here really apart from to echo what everyone else has said about avoiding inviting -nearly- all the girls and leaving just 1 or 2 out.

My DS has been in the situation of being just 1 of 2 of whole class being left out and, quite frankly, that sucks. It's very hard to explain and reason to a child why he is the only one not invited.