Help me not spend $1000 on my kids' birthday parties! - Page 3

[confustication]

Goodness, that's an expensive kid's party.

Birthdays are usually smaller affairs around here. Frankly, I don't WANT to invite ALL the kids my child's age to a party. I don't like them all, and neither does my daughter.

Even with a winter birthday, we have parties at home- cool games, food, cake, and punch. Yum!

In your position I think I would start differentiating between what 'everyone' does, and what works for your family.

[Curlyfry7]

We don't do parties. I have no desire to deal with all the potential problems as well as cost. My DS is going to be 4 (in 2 days!!) and this year he mentioned a couple times "his party" as he has been to several friends' parties. But he seemed to have no problem dropping it when I explained to him that we don't do them. We had a small party when each LO turned 1 (cake, make-your-own pizzas, and gifts for DD, can't remember DS except he cried about touching the cake) and then we do a family thing (special dinner, cake and presents) the other times. We may also do a special outing-last year we went to the local museum for their dinosaur trail. We will probably have a couple b-day parties over the years. This is what my family did for me and what I feel is right for our family.

I have also told DS's friend's moms that we don't do parties, so they won't feel they weren't invited.

Good luck with your decision, OP.

[mommaof3boz]

What if instead you just didn't have a party and took your family to a nice hotel for the weekend? Swim in the heated indoor pool, hot tub, order in pizza, just hang out. There is no way my kids would turn down a hotel over a party. And it would never, ever cost a grand.

[ParisApril]

I could never justify spending that much money on a party.

We choose to work to live around here, not live to work.

There are plenty of nice things one can do together with a child to celebrate their special day without spending a small fortune.

[Ellien C]

ah - pre-K and K changes my advice.

For us, In pre-k there was a bit of an expectation that all kids in the class were invited - 1) the classes only had like 12 kids, 2) at that age they haven't formed really close friendships - they kind of hang out with whomever you stick them with. 3) For us, the last year of pre-school invited a LOT of parties. Kids who hadn't had that kind of friend party yet all had them the last year of pre-school. But once regular school hits the expectations to invite the whole class really do die down. The kids are forming closer friendships and have definite opinions on who they want to invite, classes are bigger and single-sex slumber parties start happening. Anyway, hang in there one more year and do what you need to do to bring sanity. Here's hoping your area is the same and the expectations die down for you like they did for us. I was thinking this was like a 10 or 11 year old. Save the big party for certain years.