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People are SOOO rude. I remember one year I even put stamped post cards in the invitation so people wouldn't even have call (in addition to my email and phone number). I didn't get ONE back. How RUDE are people when they can't even make a one minute call or throw a damn postcard in the mail? sheesh.
Ajzj, Thanks--I know he will be fine as we have some friends from outside school attending as well so he will not be alone and he will have a good time.
I wonder if part of the issue is 'party fatigue'--my observation is that children with birthdays in the first half of the school year seem to get higher attendance at their parties than those in the spring. My son goes to almost every party he is invited to; the last three (in the last 4 weeks) had only 1 or 2 kids from the class including my son, whereas fall parties had 10 or 12. So my son goes to parties all year, and then no one bothers to show up for him...
From what I have been reading, not RSVP-ingis a wide-spread problem--showers, dinner parties, even weddings with a majority of people not responding. It baffles me!
I felt badly when I received an invitation for my daughter to attend a birthday party ONE FULL MONTH after the event...the cards were dispensed at her Pre-K, placed in each child's folder...except that hers wasn't. Because she didn't have a folder yet! I don't know where it was...it just showed up one day, much after the fact. Teacher had finally put her name on something...
So I called the RSVP number and left a message, explaining that I would not have been so rude intentionally. Never got a call back. Oh well.
I think I might be on the other side of this than the majority. At the ages of my boys (5 and 7) we are constantly receiving invitations to each and every birthday party from school, from church, and other social activities that my kids participate in. I am one who does a RSVP for each and every invite because that is the way I was brought up.
I've never planned a large party for either of my boys inviting a bunch of people that I don't even know. I have always gone the route of them inviting a few close friends that we have over and do something special with. They are able to spend quality time and enjoy fewer friends without feeling overwhelmed with more than they can handle. I have friends that have these huge birthdays bashes for their kids year after year and I am beginning to grow weary of them. Yes, children should be celebrated but at what point do these parties stop???? Those of us that are inundated with tons of invitations from people my children may have just met last weekend might need to also consider that birthday party invitations are constant these days and I think I'm growing tired of so many of them.
I think its how youmay have been raised, as well. Not that its good or bad. I never new about RSVPing until I was married and well into my adult years. It just never came up.
I think I might be on the other side of this than the majority. At the ages of my boys (5 and 7) we are constantly receiving invitations to each and every birthday party from school, from church, and other social activities that my kids participate in. I am one who does a RSVP for each and every invite because that is the way I was brought up.
I've never planned a large party for either of my boys inviting a bunch of people that I don't even know. I have always gone the route of them inviting a few close friends that we have over and do something special with. They are able to spend quality time and enjoy fewer friends without feeling overwhelmed with more than they can handle. I have friends that have these huge birthdays bashes for their kids year after year and I am beginning to grow weary of them. Yes, children should be celebrated but at what point do these parties stop???? Those of us that are inundated with tons of invitations from people my children may have just met last weekend might need to also consider that birthday party invitations are constant these days and I think I'm growing tired of so many of them.
It is still proper and polite to RSVP NO if you cannot/don't want to make it. Even if you don't agree with the parent's birthday party ways.
I sympathize about RSVPs. Every time we have a birthday party for our kids, getting responses is like pulling teeth. My daughter invited 15 girls to her birthday party in April, and I got two RSVPs. The invitations politely asked a PARENT to RSVP by phone, because 1) parents are who ultimately decide a kid's schedule, and a girl may say yes but her parents have other plans, and 2) my daughter wanted to watch a couple of movies, and I wanted parental approval just in case.
Every day, my daughter would say that this friend or that one would tell her she was coming, and I would tell her to tell them to get a parent to call me. I still only got two calls before the party (oh, and one at 9:30 p.m. the day before, and one the morning of). We had about 10 girls ... and two boys. There's a boy in my daughter's main crowd of friends at school, and one of her friends told him about the party and invited him! My daughter and I had already talked about boys at the party, and we decided that the group was already too big to handle a bunch of boys, and having just one boy would be weird. Her friend is pretty clueless, yes, but then again, her mom was one of the RSVPs. Anyway, the boy showed up and brought a friend, another boy! They are nice boys, though. They had some cake and then went back to the first boy's house--I think the giggling and screaming bunch of girls was too much for them.
It is still proper and polite to RSVP NO if you cannot/don't want to make it. Even if you don't agree with the parent's birthday party ways.
I do and always will.
In the same thought, I'm just as surprised by how many b-day parties my boys have attended and brought present to, the parents do not encourage their child to send a thank you card to each of those who attended their party and thank them for coming and for their gift.
I think good manners is lacking on both sides of this issue.
The one thing I have come to do is not have parties during meal times. I have in the past with my two older ones done a pizza party where we ordered numerous delivery pizzas for the guests, that we weren't sure if they would show up or not, to eat or done the hot dog deal only to have a small number of kids come and be left with leftovers. When you do this often enough the money wasted is atrocious. So I avoid that now and have parties start around 2:00 after lunch and they end around 4:00. We usually have the cake and no ice cream, as Ice cream gets wasted too unless it's an ice cream cake, around 3:00 which won't be much of a ruin for the kids' dinner.
Most of my kids' b-day parties are held at home so I don't need a specific head count by a specific time. Or I hold them at places like the bowling alley or McDonalds or city park/pool where I don't need a certain head count or need to know a specific head count by a specific time. That way I only pay for the guests that do arrive and not have to pay extra for guests who didn't come or be short on food or other things for guests who do arrive but didn't let us know.
I've been lucky so far in that my three youngest kids have been inviting the same friends year after year to their parties and almost everyone invited makes it and if they can't they usually will call. They don't always call to let us know they are coming, but they do let us know if they can't. So in our case no news is good news.
But I and my two older kids were burned many times by guests who either responded saying they would come and then didn't or be surprised by those who never reponded at all. But that was when I was a younger parent and was doing the invite the whole class thing, because now in our schools you can't pass out invites to only a couple of kids in the classroom because it may hurt the feelings of the other kids who aren't invited, which I totally understand. Now we avoid passing out invites in school by mailing or hand delivering invites outside of school and only to the people my kids really want to come and know will most likely come.
When my son turned 3, his dad wanted to give him a party at Monkey Joes. I was against it - he'd slept through the previous 2 parties and he didn't really pay attention at other parties he went to - so we usually just have a few friends over, eat and hang out. So anyway we reserve the place - it's like $300 for 20 kids. I invite his whole daycare class - only 3 confirmed they were coming. I was panicked because it's $300 if 2 kids show up or if 14 kids show up.
So I sent out a second invite clearly stating that they wouldn't be granted entrance into the party without a wristband and I was only sending wristbands to the people who confirmed they were coming. I got 4 more responses. The day of the party I rounded up my age appropriate cousins, neighbors, kids of coworkers and we ended up with 17 kids. Of course, 5 kids from the daycare just showed up and sadly had to pay to get in.
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