Birthday Party Abandonment
 

In your experience, how old were the kids when parents just started dropping them off at birthday parties and coming back when it was over? I didn't get invited to a lot of birthday parties in elementary school, and I can't remember the 2 or 3 I know I must have been invited to, so I can't remember where that line used to be, not that it would necessarily be the same today.

So far all the parties we've been to this year have been at bouncy-castle places, which I guess have rules that no one can leave their kid there to begin with. Suddenly today there was a party at a house, and one other mom and I were the only ones who stayed. The host mom said she was surprised, me I was rather stunned. One kid spent the last half of the party sitting by the front window waiting for his mom to come back. Is this the point where the bandaid normally gets ripped off?

I can't really remember, but it sure looks like for this group of friends this is the time.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's when they are kindergaten age.

I remember going to birthday parties in Grade 1 where I just got dropped off and Mum would come back a couple of hours later, and that was pretty much the way of it all the time unless my Mum and my friends Mum were friends and she stuck around to help out.

It's been mostly like that with my boys too. A few Mum's hang around to help out, but peripheral parents go home and come back. The only time I've ever seen a whole heap of parents stay is when the invitation specifically says that there'll be 'adult snacks' served to please feel free to stay. Normally in that situation I'd stay because I would think the parent is tacitly requesting it.

Round here, we make it clear in the invite whether parents are expected to stay/leave/choose.

How old? well some parents expected to drop them from first grade -ish- and others still expected to stay at 4th grade. I just did whatever the invite suggested.

It would depend if I knew the parents or not. I would think that by first grade or so I'd feel comfortable dropping off if I knew the family well enough. Most of the birthday parties my kids went to when small were family-type affairs in which whole families were invited.

I was always surprised as the primary driver for school trips and such when the kids would jump into my car and their parents wouldn't even come outside to meet me. Same goes for birthday parties - please come inside and check to see if I at least look safe. Tell me about allergies etc.

Yeah, first grade was about what I was figuring. We're still in Kindergarten. We also got our first sleepover invitation (all the boys in the class, not us specifically,) which also seems a smidge early to me, but in any case we decided to decline. I will never trust the random parents, so we have to wait until I can trust Minifob to take his own meds without reminders.

with our decidely non-sample group there is a wide range of comfort among the parents with leaving the kids. A lot has to do with the individual kid some are clingy and others aren't. Some parents are very protective/controlling and other are more "take me away Calgon..."

It's hard to say how the kids have responded to the parents choices. There seems to be a correlation between the kids degree of engagement, self assurance, respect and the parents meeting the concerns of the child. Not pandering and indulging but not ignoring either.

Oh that reminds me! I need to rant for just a second about this birthday party.

If you have two giant, excitable dogs, and one phobic child (not mine) who is screaming, literally screaming and running away in terror at the mere sight of these dogs, and can only barely handle being in the house knowing they are somewhere, let alone handle being in the same room... do you think maybe you ought to put the damn dogs in their crates, or off in a bedroom somewhere, for the duration of the party? Because saying for the thousandth time, "Oh he's very friendly, he won't bite," to the sobbing child who is climbing up his mother's leg is missing the point entirely.

Welcome to my world. Not my child's world... mine.

------


All the kids who had sleepover parties in K-3ish were the kids who were smarter and/or more mature than their parents. Extrapolate at will......

Dog owners? African American Por Favor.

I know only a few dog owners who don't use their dogs as a proxy for expressing the antisocial behaviors they don't have to nerve to express themselves.

HaHaHa I typed "myself" there.

If I am having a kids party (and almost always even if it's an adults party) we isolate our dogs.

I can't imagine what kind of an idiot wouldn't do so.

Apologies to any dog owners who live by the 'love me, love my dog' ethos. I disagree. We even lock the cats up if someone who doesn't like cats is coming over. It's just inhospitable if you don't. IMO.

My mom had one birthday party for each of us, in second grade.

No parents stayed. We played funny games, ate something, and had a great time.

I got a little taste of what my mom was actually signing up for when we had my younger brother's party. I helped out, being 8 years older than my brother. It was a blast, but exhausting!

A couple of times I've dropped my kids at birthday parties and considered leaving them there for good.

That would count as abandonment wouldn't it?

If someone leaves a kid at my house, I'm sending them a bill. This isn't a daycare.

And, believe me, I hope your kid doesn't have an issue with me shouting at them like a boot camp drill sargeant, because when you notice how my kids are so well-behaved, that's why. You leave me in charge of them, I'm not taking one ounce of shit. I don't care how permissive you are at home.

If you've planned a party for kids, you expect non-military behavior. It's not that hard!

Wow, the generation beyond 'helicopter parents' is 'gestapo parents'.

I'm frightened. :)

I'm just saying, if you leave your kid here, expecting me to "parent them" for several hours, they get parented by MY house rules.

Oh, absolutely.

I was thinking how my younger brother's girls know how to be gracious, and to not be jerks.

Kids need to know the etiquette, and too many parents don't teach them.

A rambunctious kid is awesome. A rude kid is tiresome.

I'm with Flint more or less. If kids are at my house unaccompanied, I'm going to treat them the same way I treat my own kids. If they don't like it, they don't come back. Most of them seem to keep coming though, so it can't be all bad. lol

eta: and even if their parents are there, if they break my rules I'll be letting them know.

If Flint meant what Ali said, then I'm with it too.
I was chastised at many parties - I was an excitable and hyper little girl.

I managed to get myself impaled on barbed wire at one party - we went to see the horses. Mum took me for a tetanus shot after, the hosting (farming) family figured once I stopped crying I was okay.

I was criticised for ordering other children around. I was Important in the classroom and I brought that to parties. The hosting Mum generallly didn't like that. I'd been bigged up as funny, special and an important invite and then arrived as a short, skinny little bossy-boots. I also ate as if I'd never been fed. I said please and thank you and thankyouforhavingme, but I expect I was tolerated rather than welcomed.

No parents came to parties in my day.
I went to lots because my sister was scared to go alone.
Siblings, not parents were the norm.

Many parents seem to go to "parties" now. Because they are all held at venues.
One of the girls on my table had her party this month. The thank you cards were provided by the company (although they were handwritten by the parent). They offered £2.50 off any refreshments - you can go as a single consumer as opposed to a party group.

Musical chairs, pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey? As if.
This is the 21st century, grow up.

Ugh, this. Since September (including the ones that are upcoming, and the ones we didn't attend,) the kids have been invited to 7 parties--one sleepover, one at a house, and 5 at a single bouncy castle place called Pump It Up. Their main business model is birthday parties, and there's a multi-room system you travel through as the party progresses, so that 4 parties are going on at once but you feel like you have the place to yourselves. The full package deal, including the Saturday afternoon sweet spot, pizza and sodas for everyone, balloons, and invitations/thank you notes/prize bags provided by the company, costs about $400. And they are always booked well in advance. Absolute cheapest--weeknight, less time in the rooms, lower max number of kids, and nothing provided--is still $150. If you book your future party while a guest at another party, you get a discount.

Minifob has his heart set on this place. I've explained to him that if he has his party here, he will basically have to get no presents from us. He said that was okay, his friends would give him presents. Sigh.

Pump it Up? WOOOOOO!!! cloddd--it's AWESOME. Even I know that.

Effing $400 though?! I did not know that.

Mine have never had a venue party and never will. At the house, each year, sleepovers start at 9. I told them they end at 13, but apparently I was mistaken on that one ;) Pass-the-parcel featured at most of them -by request, and has been adopted by many friends (yes, it's a British thing). The name always gets changed to Pass the Packet, though. Every party has a theme and the rest of the games/activities are based on the theme but stem from the games I played at parties as a child in the UK. (Pirate party = pin the X on the treasure map, What Time is it Captain Cook..... and more too complex to explain completely.... rolling the dice and dressing up to cut chocolate, digging for treasure blindfold...)

As a bouncy castle place, it's the best. The best thing is to go as an individual during the weekday, because no one ever does that. You really do have the whole place (the individuals room, that is) just for you and your kids, and the adults can get on the equipment too. And as an individual, it isn't any more expensive than any of the other places. But that's why birthday parties are their business model...

:thumbsup:

We've only once done a 'venue' party for our boys, and that was for Aden's 13th, he wanted to go to a place that is like an adventure park where you go along in harnesses, and travel through a course with rope swings, abseiling, flying foxes etc. He took half a dozen friends including his brother, and that cost us about $400 in the end, which was a lot more than we wanted to spend, and we would never do it again, but he had a great time. His uncle went through the course with them too, which was really nice.

I generally dislike venue parties though. Mostly because the kids are forced to do what they're told to do for the whole time. I much prefer to have a party for the kids at home and plan a few activities, but mostly leave them to their own devices. It always worked out well for us (although they only ever had one or two actual planned parties).

As for sleep overs? Mine started going to them and hosting them when they were about 7 or 8 and they just don't seem to have stopped. Part of that is because we live a little way away from a lot of their friends, so often they just come down for the weekend, but mostly it's just because they behave themselves and just muck about watching dvd's and playing xbox, so it doesn't bother us. In fact, during the summer holidays, the local boys hang around in a group of 6 to 10 boys down at the skate park at the end of our street, and they seem to spend the holidays going from house to house as a group and just crashing out all over loungeroom floors. Who am I to change a local tradition? lol If it's only once a week, it's no big deal anyway.

I'm much more concerned about the types of parties the big boys get invited to these days though. They mostly don't bother going though which suits me just fine.

Found the website for the party I mentioned above.
£15.50 per child.
Plus another £4.00 for the extras (I saw a party bag, I know which option they chose).
Possibly plus food and drinks for adults, allowed in on a 1:1 basis. Although they may have been expected to shift for themselves.

The invites went out to the whole class of 30, so let's suggest 20 came.
£390 even if parents aren't catered for - $610.

Okay they have bumper cars, a climbing wall, one of the largest play frames in North London (apparently). But no pass the package :)

Wow, and I thought The Great Santini was just a movie.



Okay, it was sort of based on Pat Conroy's life.

What hyperbolic bullshit.

Your kids are well-behaved because you "shout at them like a boot camp drill sergeant".

No they're not. They may well be well-behaved, but this isn't why. Not unless you and I have different universes where boot camp drill sergeants are dramatically different. That kind of behavior by the adult in charge, parent or otherwise is rarely acceptable, and even more rarely productive. I know because I've made that mistake. It has its place, in boot camp, with adults.

Oh poo on you, BigV, more like big bully, a.k.a. guy-who-ruins-everything.

You nutty libs wanna take my guns, my liberty, tax me to death, and now I can't even use a little hyperbole without "Mr. Internet Nazi" going all Nancy Pelosi on me. Geez Louise. You're like the drill sargeant at a camp that teaches people how to suck.











Annnd... . . . scene!

That's it. If you can't all be nice I'm never inviting you to my party again! :storms out:

You're such a sook Zengum. I don't know who even invited YOU in the first place!

Who are you? You didn't even bring a present! Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!

My Mum said you weren't getting one from us because the present you gave me at my party was crap!

Hah! Call that a party??? Pfft, carrot cake with carob icing? We didn't all suddenly get food poisoning, we just wanted to leave!

Oh yeah, and that's worse than these slimy cocktail franks with stagnant sauce and luke warm sausage rolls? and let's not even talk about the CAKE you have. lol Aren't you a bit big for Thomas the Tank Engine???

My six year old niece has been a cat every halloween and has had a spongebob birthday theme every birthday. A couple weeks ago she told me she wasn't going to be a cat next halloween, she was going to be a pumpkin. Now I'm worried about the spongebob tradition. My brother has the old spongebob pinatas hanging around the barn and we keep joking that we're saving them for what is bound to be her Spongebob Wedding someday. Now what will we do? :lol:

Make her eat pumpkins until she is sick?