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Birthday Presents - Volume I

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September 25, 2007

Birthday Presents - Volume I

The Classmate Co·nun·drum

I recently read a great article Anatomy of a kid’s birthday: expensive, excessive, insane By Katrina Onstad in Chatelaine. In the article, the Momwriter points out her weekends are spent amongst screaming kids at over-the-top birthday parties. Now that the school year is on top of us...many of us in the ParentClub will be doing the same.

Today I ask; how many classmates do you invite?

The first, non-family birthday (in Kindergarten), I invited the entire class as I didn't want to offend anyone. Many parents responded promptly, for which I was thankful, but also requested the invitation of siblings. I understand this...as parents have busy weekend schedules and quite frankly my youngest wouldn't understand why she too wasn't invited to a birthday party. Thank goodness for Playgound Paradise where the rental is the most reasonable in the city (at $40 for the room rental plus $2 per kid to play). I ended up having 28 kids (and - most parents stayed too). The two hour party was broken down into an hour of play, half an hour of eating and half an hour to open presents/give out loot bags and jump around the private room. It was a good way to hob-knob with the classmates but really it was great chaos.

The lastest party; I used the invitation equation...# of invited kids + birthday kid = birthday age (i.e. 5+1=6). I liked this as it was manageable and I got to know the circle of friends a bit better. Not one parent stayed (are they getting smarter?...) and the three hour party was about one hour too long.

So dear readers; is it better to go big or to keep the party small?

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posted by Parent Club @ Tuesday, September 25, 2007   1 Comments

1 Comments:

At September 26, 2007 at 8:02 a.m. , Blogger Karen said...

I think small is better. The first parties I have had for my boys with friends they get to chose is when they are 4, my older son only wanted to invite 5 kids to his 4th b-day and 6 to his 5th birthday so it worked out perfectly, I had a few siblings come along...but only those I had invited. When my older son is invited to a party and my younger son is not, my younger son does not go, unless his name is on the invitation he stays away (and same goes for big brother when little brother gets invites).

This year however I have a larger dilema...it is my younger sons first calendar birthday...being a leap year baby he has not had the chance to celebrate on his b-day before and it is DAD who wants to do a big play place extravaganza...I am afraid if I do one it will be expected by my older son as well and I really don't want to get into those kinds of parties...but also the b-day is in Feb and the thought of having 5 energetic boys in my little tiny town house is not thrilling to me either!!!

So far the 5 or 6 friends at my house seems to have worked well, all the kids have had fun and it has not been too stressful - 2 hours max for sure! However other than my sons birthday he has only ever been invited to one other home b-day party, all others have been at play places and bowling allies etc.

 

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