I was wondering how everyone handles party invitations for primary/elementary school-age children.

If your child is having a birthday party:

and your child has been invited to another child's party, does that mean an automatic invitation for the other child?
If so, is there a time limit, i.e. your child was invited within the past year, two years, or ever? Does it make a difference if your child actually attended or not? Or the reverse, if your child was not invited, do you think s/he should not be invited to your child's party?

how are invitations extended?
Are they handed out in school, in front of or not in front of other (uninvited) kids? Do you hand out invitations to the childrens' parents? Or telephone or email?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Cheers, from
SwampWitch

Our schools have rules about invitations. If they are given out in school, then the entire class must be invited. You may mail out individual invitations if you do not wish to include the whole class.

As far as who to invite? Depends on the party, I guess. If I were inviting most of the kids in the class...then I would just invite all of them (even if they hadn't invited my kids the last time). If you are selecting a couple of kids....that's different. Send them in the mail...you don't want any child to feel unwanted.

I guess it depends if they're still friends when the time of the party comes. One girl invited my dd to her party once, but when it was my dd's turn, they weren't friends anymore, so we didn't invited her!

You do not have to return the invitation, it all depends. For example, my son was invited to a party where everyone and their brother was invited - huge tent, games, etc. He was one of many. When we had his party, it was very small, soccer team only. The other child was not on the team (3 years younger) so I had explained in advance that it would be just the team, but her son could come play a different day.

Usually schools have guidelines about that kind of thing, and that can vary from teacher to teacher. Some teachers will ask the child to give them the invitations and she will discretely pass them out. I'd call or email the teacher and ask what she would prefer. I don't think that being invited so someone's party means you have to invite them if your child doesn't want to invite them. The child can always say that mom only allowed X number of kids to be invited so he/she doesn't look like the bad guy.

-Lisa

The reason I asked: I volunteer at the school and was there when two children handed out invitations in my daughter's class last week. One child and his mom handed out invitations in the coat room after the morning bell. All the kids were waiting around, not wanting to go into the classroom in case they were getting an invitation! Then, another day, another child handed them out after the children were seated in their desks... all those little hopeful faces fell as she passed them by. She seemed to enjoy the power she had; it wasn't pretty. There were lots of dissappointed little kids both days.

I've always discreetly given invitations to the parents before or after school, and for the kids going on to daycare, I'd catch up with them after school and ask them to put the invitations in their backpacks.

Thank you for your responses! I'm going to talk to the classroom teacher and/or principal. It was heartbreaking to see those sad faces and so unnecessary.

Cheers, from
SwampWitch

p.s. I've always felt that if my daughter accepts an invitation and attends a party, she should reciprocate. I was wondering if that is the norm or just me. But she's free to invite any friends she wants, whether they have invited her or not. The guest list has been very long for some of her parties!

Swampwitch,
You have brought up a very good subject. My son is in pre-school and his
BD isn't until April so I have a while but I have thought about this very thing a few times since he started school. I will probably invite his whole class and if the parents want to bring their kids then o.k. if not then o.k. I just can't stand the thought of a child thinking they are being left out. His class is only about 12 kids anyway.

Why does the teacher allow the parents to pass out invitations at school? I was always told that's only ok if EVERYONE is getting an invite. If it can't be done in a quiet manner on the bus or something it shouldn't be done.

The parents who allow that are cruel.

I'm not sure why the teacher allowed this in the classroom. She didn't see it happen in the coat room. A quiet "Please don't do that now," would have been good, but maybe she didn't know what to do. I'll be finding out if she said/wrote anything to the parents.

My husband had a good point. He said that when kids do this, it can backfire. Some kids might be nice to the party kid if they weren't invited, but other kids definitely won't.

Thanks again for the thoughts.

Cheers, from
SwampWitch