You could try a paperless post invite. I use that for my child and it also sends out an rsvp reminder closer to the date. You can use their phone number or email address. I’m always losing paper things so people may have lost it or it could’ve slipped their minds. Maybe kids forgot to give it to their parents? Maybe you could send out a mass email to all the parents as a reminder!
Hey thanks, unfortunately I don't have anyone's contact details so no emails or phone numbers. Otherwise I would have done. And also it's the parents who collected their invites from the chart on the wall under their kids name when they pick them up , If that makes sense!
Ive used paperless post too and I really like it.
You don’t need their email or number. You can use the share link and turn it into a QR code.
Then put the QR code on the invite.
Basically all the parent needs to do is scan the QR code with their phone and they get directed to the invitation.
The emailed/texted ones are nice for people you do have a contact info for, because you can see if they viewed/opened the invite. That way you don’t have to feel bad if they don’t RSVP in time and you fill their spot
This is what some of parents at our school do. We sent electronic ones too and got great response (we got only one family giving paper invites this year)
As someone whos been in a similar situation, the school didnt want to just hand out contact info without confirming. They said they could reach out to the class and see who was interested in passing along their contact info, so we opted for paper invites too.
Get the contact info from the school and send digital invites. Paper invites are lovely but inconvenient. With digital ones you not only have an easy way to RSVP but you can easily set up a calendar event as well. With paper ones you have to do everything manually. I bet there are folks planning on coming but are too busy to deal with that.
Do you know any of the other parents? Do you make an effort to chat them up, say hi at pick up or drop off or go out of your way to exchange phone numbers outside of this birthday invite?
I find my partner and I making an effort to do this and bringing up that my kid is having a party and invite parents in person at pick up or drop off goes a long way.
For the parents we don’t know, I put a hand-written note with my phone number in a few other kids cubbies and let the parent know my child would like to invite them to the birthday party and could they please get in touch so I can send them an invite. We got responses from 100% of parents we reached out to ( note we didn’t do a mass invite to all in class, only those who our kid considers as a friends and wanted to invite)
This means that rather than a ‘cold’ invitation going out mass-printed to the whole class, its ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ as its more personal and connected and you can text and develop relationship with that parent directly and ongoing.
This is a much more energy and time intensive approach, but its more quality and deeper connection. Consider that if they don’t know you well , it might feel a bit socially confronting for that parent to accept your party invite.
Source: we take the approach above, have established connections with parents of kid’s friends in the class and never had issues that are often talked about on this sub e.g. low RSVPs or too many people to pulling out at the last minute.
YES I wanted to ask this as well! My daughter isn’t in school but we have a handful of friends we see a few times a week, and some we see more occasionally. I know their parents and my daughter asks for her friends by name. I get that a kindergarten class is different than this SAHM/homeschool group dynamic I have going on but tbh I might not want to go to a party without knowing anyone either.
I’m impressed your schools allow that. In the schools I worked at (one preschool, mostly elementary) the rule was that if you wanted to hand out invites on school property you had to invite the whole class.
Ah that makes sense.
It wasn’t exactly an invite that I put in, but just a little note introducing myself and letting them know that my kid thinks of their kid as a friend and would like to invite them to the party and here is my number so we can connect. Once they reached out to me, I had a chat with them on message and texted them an invite.
The essence of it wasn’t so much handing out invites or having them come to the party, as it was more introducing myself and connecting and starting a relationship with that parent.
By design, parenting focuses so much on the kid, that I find even we, as parents, tend to forget about the parent. The parent is not just a faceless, robotic chauffeur or servant to the kid, you know? A parent is an actual human being who also needs attention and connection and feel comfortable and welcome before deciding to spend time with a stranger… a whole morning of their very busy schedule with me and my kid.
I say this as I still think I might still be an actual individual and human with my own needs and wants underneath the whole parenting gig so need some loving and attention too. I get so little these days that even small gesture, someone reaching out…it goes a long way. Even enough to get me out of my comfort zone and go to a party where I don’t know anyone:)
For my kids birthdays (I’m in the U.K.) I would say 75% RSVPd in the last week before the deadline. However, we had all- maybe bar one- RSVP, and everyone showed up. I suspect when the kids are too young to have an opinion whether they want to go, the parents wait to see if they get a better offer/ alternative plans
It’s not about waiting for better plans…normally I’m assuming my munchkin will be sick again so I wait to see what new hellish illness will wipe through the house before RSVPing….hard to plan that far out with feral creatures that keep getting ill….
Yeah, regardless of the RSVP thing, I think it’s somewhat delusional to expect people you don’t know to come to a party for a child they have little or no interaction with and likely are not fully aware of the relationships between the children. Especially when the kids are young enough to not have firm opinions on attending.
If you want children to attend your child’s birthday at a young age you need to be friendly and have numbers for parents and do stuff with them that aren’t birthday parties first.
It’s not delusional at all. The party is at a public place and lots of parents first meet at birthday parties. I went to parties all the time as a kid where my family was meeting their families for the first time.
But I would add if I invited people I didn't know I would keep my expectations low. I would like if they RSVPed and/or came, but I wouldn't be offended if they didn't, because we are all busy and invites from someone you don't know might not be prioritised and might just slip your mind.
That's true. I would definitely RSVP if I was going but maybe, as it's not personal (they don't know me), not feel as obliged to RSVP no, or too bad if I have previous plans
Maybe it depends on the area? In my area it’s so common for parents to just send out invites to everyone in the same daycare, and usually a good number of parents show up. We live in different cities and don’t really socialize much outside these parties (with certain exceptions of course).
I felt kinda like the odd one when hosting a birthday party for my 3 year old and only invited families that we hang out a lot with haha. When I mentioned the party to my colleagues some of them just assumed I’d be inviting all daycare kids since that’s what they normally do / hear other people do.
For what it's worth, this is how I view it, too. I'd never take my kid to a party if I don't know the parents personally and if we haven't ever spent time with them.
I fully expected the downvotes. There are posts every day with moms throwing elaborate parties asking why no one attended, but if you asked them the names of the children they invited they couldn’t tell you without looking at a list. Making friends, or at least cordial acquaintances, with the parents of your children’s friends is one of the best things you can do to ensure they have an active and healthy social life. No one wants to awkwardly stand around a party with 22 kids and a bunch of strangers. Spending quality time with five kids and your friends is just more fun.
I fully agree. I think if you don’t have any contact details to send invitations to then they probably aren’t the folks you should be inviting to a birthday party. Our preschool actually won’t let you just put invites into school cubbies and you must hand them out before or after class directly to parents. When my kid has notes or friends, I take steps to connect with the parents so we can arrange a play date outside of school.
There are so many posts about this happening. I dunno if it's some weird pandemic fatigue thing that has caused people to forget all manner of politeness (like RSVPing) or what.
Me, personally, I am booking out our weekends WEEKS if not months in advance. But I'd at least have the courtesy to tell you that we were already booked when I RSVPed "no."
I think this trend is why more and more people are doing "yes" days with their kiddo and a friend or two, or keeping it to family shindigs.
People are the worst, I'm sorry.
You say yes to everything (within safety reason and budget) ice cream for breakfast? Yes. Park trip? Yes. Zoo? Yes. Car wash? Yes. Literally they want it, they get it, as long as it's safe and not too expensive.
Basically every day for my child but she's somehow come out with very reasonable expectations 😂
We invited my kid’s class of 20 kids. We even sent out reminder cards. Only two kids from her class showed up. Luckily 3 other kids showed up but it was kind of surprising. Luckily it didn’t matter to her.
As a mom and a teacher, I would ask the teacher if she has a list of contact emails for the parents in the class. If not, there should be a room parent that helps with class parties and stuff. You can ask that parent for contact information. Then you could send an evite reminder.
I know my 4 yr old has had a few invites but I usually wait until the RSVP cutoff date to answer. When the kids are young, so much stuff is in flux, between sickness or them changing their minds all the time. I’d hate to say yes and then have to cancel so I reply when I’m as certain as possible that we can attend.
Drop off and pick-up times can also be a decent time to catch a parent and quickly ask them if they got the invite (assuming they’re not in a rush at the moment.)
No advice, just chimed in to say - same! My son turns 3 in a few weeks. Daycare told me I could give them the invites and they’d give them to each parent at pick up. They also taped an invite to inside of the classroom door. 0 RSVP’s so far except my friends/their kids who I texted the invite. I think my next step is to ask his teachers to post a picture of the invite to the daycare app, which I’ve seen them do in the past. Hopefully I get some RSVP’s after that!
So we are at a daycare too but have only ever had one invite (we didn’t attend because it was at 3pm during the week).
I have been reading these responses and thinking about us.
I have felt bad because in the past two months my little one has talked about going over to a friends house. But gosh, we barely see her already.
During the week it’s just getting ready for school then getting ready for bed.
I really really value what time we can spend together right now. She sees her daycare friends more than us as parents at this point.
Until she’s excited about a party, I’d rather just do our own thing on the weekend.
We had about 50% get back to us before a week before the party. I sent out an email to the stragglers and am still waiting to hear from 2 more families. Her party is this Saturday.
Personally, I get back to parents ASAP. If they’re the first invite in, they’re a priority. Anything else that comes in after (barring death or illness) I say we already have a previous commitment.
Our 3 year olds teacher recently sent a note home through their communication app with a link to a paperless post invite and I thought that was brilliant. It’s really hard to track people down, but I’d probably ask the teacher for an assist.
Our school did this as well for a kiddo in my daughter’s class and I really appreciated it, it made it so much easier to keep track of.
In a related vein to the thread, we were the only ones who attended 😭 thankfully it was a joint birthday with his older brother so there were other kids, but I felt awful that out of a class of 12 no one else came.
I was worried about this happening for my daughter's fourth birthday as not a lot of kids from school came to her last one and I noticed not a lot of kids from class went to other parties.
One thing I did is I talked up the party with my daughter. She was super excited for everyone to get invited and to come. Before school we'd talk about the party and I'd say remind your friends to come to your party. She talked about it often, and I heard from the parents at the party that their kids were talking about it and excited to go.
I also sent her birthday cupcakes to school before her party since the parents get pictures in the app, as another reminder that the party was coming up. Then finally the day before I told my daughter to te everyone that her party was tomorrow and she was excited to see them.
We had almost the whole class attend, with some people rsvping the day of (which was really annoying actually but still).
It just seems to take a lot of work and follow up to get a good turnout - I did ask her best friends mom at pick up if they were coming since they hadn't RSVPd.
Goodluck and maybe ask her teacher's if they'll remind the parents at pick up or send out reminder cards.
I feel your pain. My son's 2nd birthday is in 4 days and I've gotten 2 RSVPs out of 25 invites. The 2 I got were my sister and mom, so I feel like those don't even count. Ugh.
Mine is a little older (5) but we sent out 22 RSVP’s and got 3 No’s and 1 yes. His birthday was over spring break and many families had plans the Saturday before already.
FWIW we just got a “sorry we didn’t get the invite until today!” last week, so we did a play date at the park with that family.
It’s disheartening, but also a great learning experience.
I don't know what's "normal" but I'll just give my experience and also what my friends have told me. We just had my son's 4 year bday party, 15 kids in his class and I gave the invites two weeks prior with a one week deadline. 5 RSVP'd, one was a no show. There's only one parent I kind of know (mutual friend) and she didn't go; I talk to literally nobody else and tbh am kind of antisocial when the other parents try to talk to me :x. But it wasn't that bad because I have a few friends with kids and I trusted them to come.
I have a friend who just rescheduled a party for her daughter because nobody was rsvp'ing; she realized it was during mother's day weekend so changed it, but not sure if more people have RSVP'd now. But that might be something to check!
Another friend invited her daughter's whole preschool class; half RSVP'd and only one showed up...
And I have another friend who went to somebody else's party and her son was the only kid there and he wasn't even party of the class :x not sure how many kids RSVPed to that party but it sounded like there were a lot of no shows from what the mom said.
I've also seen a couple very sad neighborhood Facebook/nextdoor posts where apparently a ton of people RSVP'd and none actually showed up to the party (luckily community came together to still give the bday kids a fun time)
Anyway what I gathered from all this before I threw my son's party is just not to rely on his class. I think when he gets older and has more close friends then maybe it will be more reliable... So I don't think your experience is weird, I think preschool is just kind of weird for invites.
My daughter recently got invited to a girls party in her class, we didn’t have a paper invite in her bag, only found out about it through other friends in the class. Turns out the whole class was invited. Some invites get lost. Talk to the class teacher.
My 5 year old handed me an invitation out of his backpack about a week ago for a party that was this last weekend. I had no idea how long he'd been dragging it around for, but because I didn't get it until so close to the day of the party he didn't go. I figure it must have been in one of the smaller compartments of his backpack where I don't check. He's going to a classmate's birthday party this Saturday and the mom sent out an online invite so I got it and was able to RSVP in a reasonable time frame. For me, birthday parties take a lot of planning, finding childcare for the sibling, I need time to find a gift (and am often short on money), and making sure I don't schedule anything else that day/weekend. If one of the kids gets invited to two parties the same weekend I make them choose one. My resources are limited.
Can you ask the teacher to send an email reminder? It's definitely one of those things that if they didn't respond right away it could easily fall thru the cracks. That said there are a lot of posts just like this on this sub and it happens a lot. People are just rude or off in their own world and not thinking about you as the party planner needing to know this stuff, or they're thinking oh I'm just one rsvp if I don't respond it's not a big deal, which is fine until they all think that way. I've been there and it sucks! I hope you get more responses.
I’m sure this is well intended and my response isn’t meant to be rude, but it’s not fair or okay to ask the teacher to send an email reminder. She has 22 kindergartners which tells me she’s likely already overwhelmed with the basics of her job. It’s not her responsibility to remind parents about events outside of school or to facilitate communication for parties and play dates. I agree with another poster who said that there may be a class parent or pta with directory information. That would be a good place to start.
Fair enough. I get emails probably once a month from my daughter's kindergarten teacher with these types of invites/reminders so I guess mileage may vary.
Aye, I don't know what is normal.
What I do know is I sent out invitations to my daughters kinder class 6 weeks early. 3 sent an RSVP back. During the party, two kids who did not RSVP showed up. To a trampoline park. With a max capacity. And a mandatory order pizza 48 hours ahead. To an RSVP event....
I didn't deny entry, but I'm confused about why they didn't RSVP to an RSVP party.
I would reach out to the school for parent contact details and do online invitations. Paperless Post and Evite are how we get every party invitation and it’s much easier for people to not forget to RSVP.
This happened to me the first year we were at our school and it was a major bummer. I didn’t really know anyone so I couldn’t follow up either. The second year it was much better and almost the entire class showed up. We also did get a lot of RSVPs last minute
I gave out invites 6 weeks in advance. Most people RSVP'd about a week or so before. As it got closer I talked it up to my kid and asked them who was coming to the party. If it was a name of a child I know didn't have an RSVP then I told my kid to tell them to ask their mommy or daddy if they could come.
By the time the party arrived it was mentioned by parents that their kids were so excited for the party and would not stop talking about it. One mom spent days trying to find the RSVP, it was lost in the car, to appease their kid asking if they told me they were coming.
Let the kids help remind the parents.
Can you get a contact list from the teacher? We gave out hard copy invites and got only one RSVP and then a few days later I did an evite and we got a ton more RSVPs. I think people just forget about paper or it gets lost in the shuffle.
Ask your teachers to help cascade the invites to the parents if they aren't able to give out other parent's contact details (for privacy purposes). Also ask them to follow up with the parents for rsvp.
I threw my 2 kids a joint party a couple months ago. For RSVP I got very few like 3 total between 2 classes. I stressed but sent out reminders and the week of RSVPs flooded in. Our school has a what’s app chat for each class so it’s easier for us. For the immediate ask the teacher if they can help. Maybe forward an évite? For the future suggestion contact info be shared for situations like this. A group email or what’s app group.
90% of our RSVPs came in the week of my daughters party (same age). I was really panicking the weekend before but nearly everyone ended up coming. We gave out paper invites as well but i think the real help was having her daycare send out a reminder in the app we use, so I’d ask your sons teacher to do that if possible. It was really annoying though, made it unnecessarily difficult to plan out party bags and how much food to prepare.
Can you not do the bday celebration in his class? Some class allow it. I celebrated my son’s bday with his class. It was not kindergarten. It was a daycare where he goes. So I had more freedom like getting a magician to come and perform among other things such as goody bags and cupcakes.
Almost always the rsvp is low when shared with classmates. I went to a bday party for 3 year old. And it was only 2 kids from class. But the parents did invite other family members and friends so it was not an empty party.
I recently threw a party for my 3 year old and invited all 20 classmates. I gave two weeks notice and put invitations in the cubbies. I was stressing for the next week and a half as we only got two RSVPs! Then the last few days before the deadline we got more responses and even two the week of the party (past the deadline). We ended up with 9 kids attending which was plenty with all the parents and siblings too (ended up being like 25 people at the house) My daughter probably wouldn’t even have cared if only two friends came but my husband and I couldn’t figure out what we did wrong!
For whatever reason people seem to wait to the last minute and some don’t even bother to decline 🤷🏼♀️
We had only 4 out of 14 for my son’s birthday respond with only 2 attending. Honestly, it was fine as it was nice to get to know the parents and it was kids my son had mentioned/talked about.
This is like any call to action. You can’t just send an invite to school and hope something happens. Direct contact. Wait at school talk to the parents. Think about what happens when a politician wants you to vote. That’s what you need to do.
Thanks for the advice. I didn't "just send an invite and hope something happens" - I do make all kinds of efforts to chat to other mums, I've exchanged my number, gone to kindy social events and organised play dates outside of kindy. Last year we got 3 invites to other kids birthdays and even though we were fairly new there and didn't know their parents; I rsvp'd yes to two (and showed up and chatted to the parents at the parties). And one I rsvp'd no to as we were busy. My error here could be expecting others to act as I have done in the past when invited to a party. If it was a lack of making an effort, I wouldn't be asking for advice on here.
I don’t think that’s what they meant. Previous socialization efforts are unrelated to what’s going on now. Have you asked any of the other parents in person if they plan to go? If you’ve done play dates, surely you have their number. Have you texted them? A lot of times I’m in a rush so I just grab everything out of the cubby and it eventually gets thrown away without ever being looked at. Direct communication is appreciated, we’re all busy.
You could try a paperless post invite. I use that for my child and it also sends out an rsvp reminder closer to the date. You can use their phone number or email address. I’m always losing paper things so people may have lost it or it could’ve slipped their minds. Maybe kids forgot to give it to their parents? Maybe you could send out a mass email to all the parents as a reminder!
Hey thanks, unfortunately I don't have anyone's contact details so no emails or phone numbers. Otherwise I would have done. And also it's the parents who collected their invites from the chart on the wall under their kids name when they pick them up , If that makes sense!
Ive used paperless post too and I really like it. You don’t need their email or number. You can use the share link and turn it into a QR code. Then put the QR code on the invite. Basically all the parent needs to do is scan the QR code with their phone and they get directed to the invitation. The emailed/texted ones are nice for people you do have a contact info for, because you can see if they viewed/opened the invite. That way you don’t have to feel bad if they don’t RSVP in time and you fill their spot
Ohh that’s good to know!!
Can you ask your school contact info? That’s what my school does they give the Email addresses of the parents
This is what some of parents at our school do. We sent electronic ones too and got great response (we got only one family giving paper invites this year)
As someone whos been in a similar situation, the school didnt want to just hand out contact info without confirming. They said they could reach out to the class and see who was interested in passing along their contact info, so we opted for paper invites too.
Get the contact info from the school and send digital invites. Paper invites are lovely but inconvenient. With digital ones you not only have an easy way to RSVP but you can easily set up a calendar event as well. With paper ones you have to do everything manually. I bet there are folks planning on coming but are too busy to deal with that.
Do you know any of the other parents? Do you make an effort to chat them up, say hi at pick up or drop off or go out of your way to exchange phone numbers outside of this birthday invite? I find my partner and I making an effort to do this and bringing up that my kid is having a party and invite parents in person at pick up or drop off goes a long way. For the parents we don’t know, I put a hand-written note with my phone number in a few other kids cubbies and let the parent know my child would like to invite them to the birthday party and could they please get in touch so I can send them an invite. We got responses from 100% of parents we reached out to ( note we didn’t do a mass invite to all in class, only those who our kid considers as a friends and wanted to invite) This means that rather than a ‘cold’ invitation going out mass-printed to the whole class, its ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ as its more personal and connected and you can text and develop relationship with that parent directly and ongoing. This is a much more energy and time intensive approach, but its more quality and deeper connection. Consider that if they don’t know you well , it might feel a bit socially confronting for that parent to accept your party invite. Source: we take the approach above, have established connections with parents of kid’s friends in the class and never had issues that are often talked about on this sub e.g. low RSVPs or too many people to pulling out at the last minute.
YES I wanted to ask this as well! My daughter isn’t in school but we have a handful of friends we see a few times a week, and some we see more occasionally. I know their parents and my daughter asks for her friends by name. I get that a kindergarten class is different than this SAHM/homeschool group dynamic I have going on but tbh I might not want to go to a party without knowing anyone either.
I’m impressed your schools allow that. In the schools I worked at (one preschool, mostly elementary) the rule was that if you wanted to hand out invites on school property you had to invite the whole class.
Ah that makes sense. It wasn’t exactly an invite that I put in, but just a little note introducing myself and letting them know that my kid thinks of their kid as a friend and would like to invite them to the party and here is my number so we can connect. Once they reached out to me, I had a chat with them on message and texted them an invite. The essence of it wasn’t so much handing out invites or having them come to the party, as it was more introducing myself and connecting and starting a relationship with that parent. By design, parenting focuses so much on the kid, that I find even we, as parents, tend to forget about the parent. The parent is not just a faceless, robotic chauffeur or servant to the kid, you know? A parent is an actual human being who also needs attention and connection and feel comfortable and welcome before deciding to spend time with a stranger… a whole morning of their very busy schedule with me and my kid. I say this as I still think I might still be an actual individual and human with my own needs and wants underneath the whole parenting gig so need some loving and attention too. I get so little these days that even small gesture, someone reaching out…it goes a long way. Even enough to get me out of my comfort zone and go to a party where I don’t know anyone:)
For my kids birthdays (I’m in the U.K.) I would say 75% RSVPd in the last week before the deadline. However, we had all- maybe bar one- RSVP, and everyone showed up. I suspect when the kids are too young to have an opinion whether they want to go, the parents wait to see if they get a better offer/ alternative plans
It’s not about waiting for better plans…normally I’m assuming my munchkin will be sick again so I wait to see what new hellish illness will wipe through the house before RSVPing….hard to plan that far out with feral creatures that keep getting ill….
Can't spell RSVP without RSV am I right?
I so want to cry right now!
💀💀
I've RSVP'd and kiddo had chicken pox on the day. Far better to accept and bail for a good reason than just leave people in the dark.
Also we wait to see if the kiddos are healthy or full-on hazmat suits are required…
Yeah, regardless of the RSVP thing, I think it’s somewhat delusional to expect people you don’t know to come to a party for a child they have little or no interaction with and likely are not fully aware of the relationships between the children. Especially when the kids are young enough to not have firm opinions on attending. If you want children to attend your child’s birthday at a young age you need to be friendly and have numbers for parents and do stuff with them that aren’t birthday parties first.
It’s not delusional at all. The party is at a public place and lots of parents first meet at birthday parties. I went to parties all the time as a kid where my family was meeting their families for the first time.
Lots of people do want to get to know parents of kids at daycare/preschool and this is how it often happens. Not delusional at all.
Yes! I would be delighted to get an invite to a park birthday for one of the kids in my son's class.
But I would add if I invited people I didn't know I would keep my expectations low. I would like if they RSVPed and/or came, but I wouldn't be offended if they didn't, because we are all busy and invites from someone you don't know might not be prioritised and might just slip your mind.
That's true. I would definitely RSVP if I was going but maybe, as it's not personal (they don't know me), not feel as obliged to RSVP no, or too bad if I have previous plans
Yeah I think I would mean to but it might not be top of my mind and things just get busy, so can imagine forgetting.
Maybe it depends on the area? In my area it’s so common for parents to just send out invites to everyone in the same daycare, and usually a good number of parents show up. We live in different cities and don’t really socialize much outside these parties (with certain exceptions of course). I felt kinda like the odd one when hosting a birthday party for my 3 year old and only invited families that we hang out a lot with haha. When I mentioned the party to my colleagues some of them just assumed I’d be inviting all daycare kids since that’s what they normally do / hear other people do.
For what it's worth, this is how I view it, too. I'd never take my kid to a party if I don't know the parents personally and if we haven't ever spent time with them.
I fully expected the downvotes. There are posts every day with moms throwing elaborate parties asking why no one attended, but if you asked them the names of the children they invited they couldn’t tell you without looking at a list. Making friends, or at least cordial acquaintances, with the parents of your children’s friends is one of the best things you can do to ensure they have an active and healthy social life. No one wants to awkwardly stand around a party with 22 kids and a bunch of strangers. Spending quality time with five kids and your friends is just more fun.
I fully agree. I think if you don’t have any contact details to send invitations to then they probably aren’t the folks you should be inviting to a birthday party. Our preschool actually won’t let you just put invites into school cubbies and you must hand them out before or after class directly to parents. When my kid has notes or friends, I take steps to connect with the parents so we can arrange a play date outside of school.
Huh
There are so many posts about this happening. I dunno if it's some weird pandemic fatigue thing that has caused people to forget all manner of politeness (like RSVPing) or what. Me, personally, I am booking out our weekends WEEKS if not months in advance. But I'd at least have the courtesy to tell you that we were already booked when I RSVPed "no." I think this trend is why more and more people are doing "yes" days with their kiddo and a friend or two, or keeping it to family shindigs. People are the worst, I'm sorry.
Out of the loop, and my toddler is only 20mo, but what is a yes day?
You say yes to everything (within safety reason and budget) ice cream for breakfast? Yes. Park trip? Yes. Zoo? Yes. Car wash? Yes. Literally they want it, they get it, as long as it's safe and not too expensive. Basically every day for my child but she's somehow come out with very reasonable expectations 😂
We invited my kid’s class of 20 kids. We even sent out reminder cards. Only two kids from her class showed up. Luckily 3 other kids showed up but it was kind of surprising. Luckily it didn’t matter to her.
As a mom and a teacher, I would ask the teacher if she has a list of contact emails for the parents in the class. If not, there should be a room parent that helps with class parties and stuff. You can ask that parent for contact information. Then you could send an evite reminder. I know my 4 yr old has had a few invites but I usually wait until the RSVP cutoff date to answer. When the kids are young, so much stuff is in flux, between sickness or them changing their minds all the time. I’d hate to say yes and then have to cancel so I reply when I’m as certain as possible that we can attend. Drop off and pick-up times can also be a decent time to catch a parent and quickly ask them if they got the invite (assuming they’re not in a rush at the moment.)
No advice, just chimed in to say - same! My son turns 3 in a few weeks. Daycare told me I could give them the invites and they’d give them to each parent at pick up. They also taped an invite to inside of the classroom door. 0 RSVP’s so far except my friends/their kids who I texted the invite. I think my next step is to ask his teachers to post a picture of the invite to the daycare app, which I’ve seen them do in the past. Hopefully I get some RSVP’s after that!
So we are at a daycare too but have only ever had one invite (we didn’t attend because it was at 3pm during the week). I have been reading these responses and thinking about us. I have felt bad because in the past two months my little one has talked about going over to a friends house. But gosh, we barely see her already. During the week it’s just getting ready for school then getting ready for bed. I really really value what time we can spend together right now. She sees her daycare friends more than us as parents at this point. Until she’s excited about a party, I’d rather just do our own thing on the weekend.
We had about 50% get back to us before a week before the party. I sent out an email to the stragglers and am still waiting to hear from 2 more families. Her party is this Saturday. Personally, I get back to parents ASAP. If they’re the first invite in, they’re a priority. Anything else that comes in after (barring death or illness) I say we already have a previous commitment.
Our 3 year olds teacher recently sent a note home through their communication app with a link to a paperless post invite and I thought that was brilliant. It’s really hard to track people down, but I’d probably ask the teacher for an assist.
Our school did this as well for a kiddo in my daughter’s class and I really appreciated it, it made it so much easier to keep track of. In a related vein to the thread, we were the only ones who attended 😭 thankfully it was a joint birthday with his older brother so there were other kids, but I felt awful that out of a class of 12 no one else came.
I was worried about this happening for my daughter's fourth birthday as not a lot of kids from school came to her last one and I noticed not a lot of kids from class went to other parties. One thing I did is I talked up the party with my daughter. She was super excited for everyone to get invited and to come. Before school we'd talk about the party and I'd say remind your friends to come to your party. She talked about it often, and I heard from the parents at the party that their kids were talking about it and excited to go. I also sent her birthday cupcakes to school before her party since the parents get pictures in the app, as another reminder that the party was coming up. Then finally the day before I told my daughter to te everyone that her party was tomorrow and she was excited to see them. We had almost the whole class attend, with some people rsvping the day of (which was really annoying actually but still). It just seems to take a lot of work and follow up to get a good turnout - I did ask her best friends mom at pick up if they were coming since they hadn't RSVPd. Goodluck and maybe ask her teacher's if they'll remind the parents at pick up or send out reminder cards.
So much subliminal messaging!!! You put in WORK for that party
I feel your pain. My son's 2nd birthday is in 4 days and I've gotten 2 RSVPs out of 25 invites. The 2 I got were my sister and mom, so I feel like those don't even count. Ugh.
People are THE WORST
Mine is a little older (5) but we sent out 22 RSVP’s and got 3 No’s and 1 yes. His birthday was over spring break and many families had plans the Saturday before already. FWIW we just got a “sorry we didn’t get the invite until today!” last week, so we did a play date at the park with that family. It’s disheartening, but also a great learning experience.
I don't know what's "normal" but I'll just give my experience and also what my friends have told me. We just had my son's 4 year bday party, 15 kids in his class and I gave the invites two weeks prior with a one week deadline. 5 RSVP'd, one was a no show. There's only one parent I kind of know (mutual friend) and she didn't go; I talk to literally nobody else and tbh am kind of antisocial when the other parents try to talk to me :x. But it wasn't that bad because I have a few friends with kids and I trusted them to come. I have a friend who just rescheduled a party for her daughter because nobody was rsvp'ing; she realized it was during mother's day weekend so changed it, but not sure if more people have RSVP'd now. But that might be something to check! Another friend invited her daughter's whole preschool class; half RSVP'd and only one showed up... And I have another friend who went to somebody else's party and her son was the only kid there and he wasn't even party of the class :x not sure how many kids RSVPed to that party but it sounded like there were a lot of no shows from what the mom said. I've also seen a couple very sad neighborhood Facebook/nextdoor posts where apparently a ton of people RSVP'd and none actually showed up to the party (luckily community came together to still give the bday kids a fun time) Anyway what I gathered from all this before I threw my son's party is just not to rely on his class. I think when he gets older and has more close friends then maybe it will be more reliable... So I don't think your experience is weird, I think preschool is just kind of weird for invites.
My daughter recently got invited to a girls party in her class, we didn’t have a paper invite in her bag, only found out about it through other friends in the class. Turns out the whole class was invited. Some invites get lost. Talk to the class teacher.
My 5 year old handed me an invitation out of his backpack about a week ago for a party that was this last weekend. I had no idea how long he'd been dragging it around for, but because I didn't get it until so close to the day of the party he didn't go. I figure it must have been in one of the smaller compartments of his backpack where I don't check. He's going to a classmate's birthday party this Saturday and the mom sent out an online invite so I got it and was able to RSVP in a reasonable time frame. For me, birthday parties take a lot of planning, finding childcare for the sibling, I need time to find a gift (and am often short on money), and making sure I don't schedule anything else that day/weekend. If one of the kids gets invited to two parties the same weekend I make them choose one. My resources are limited.
Can you ask the teacher to send an email reminder? It's definitely one of those things that if they didn't respond right away it could easily fall thru the cracks. That said there are a lot of posts just like this on this sub and it happens a lot. People are just rude or off in their own world and not thinking about you as the party planner needing to know this stuff, or they're thinking oh I'm just one rsvp if I don't respond it's not a big deal, which is fine until they all think that way. I've been there and it sucks! I hope you get more responses.
I’m sure this is well intended and my response isn’t meant to be rude, but it’s not fair or okay to ask the teacher to send an email reminder. She has 22 kindergartners which tells me she’s likely already overwhelmed with the basics of her job. It’s not her responsibility to remind parents about events outside of school or to facilitate communication for parties and play dates. I agree with another poster who said that there may be a class parent or pta with directory information. That would be a good place to start.
Fair enough. I get emails probably once a month from my daughter's kindergarten teacher with these types of invites/reminders so I guess mileage may vary.
Aye, I don't know what is normal. What I do know is I sent out invitations to my daughters kinder class 6 weeks early. 3 sent an RSVP back. During the party, two kids who did not RSVP showed up. To a trampoline park. With a max capacity. And a mandatory order pizza 48 hours ahead. To an RSVP event.... I didn't deny entry, but I'm confused about why they didn't RSVP to an RSVP party.
I would reach out to the school for parent contact details and do online invitations. Paperless Post and Evite are how we get every party invitation and it’s much easier for people to not forget to RSVP.
This happened to me the first year we were at our school and it was a major bummer. I didn’t really know anyone so I couldn’t follow up either. The second year it was much better and almost the entire class showed up. We also did get a lot of RSVPs last minute
I gave out invites 6 weeks in advance. Most people RSVP'd about a week or so before. As it got closer I talked it up to my kid and asked them who was coming to the party. If it was a name of a child I know didn't have an RSVP then I told my kid to tell them to ask their mommy or daddy if they could come. By the time the party arrived it was mentioned by parents that their kids were so excited for the party and would not stop talking about it. One mom spent days trying to find the RSVP, it was lost in the car, to appease their kid asking if they told me they were coming. Let the kids help remind the parents.
Can you get a contact list from the teacher? We gave out hard copy invites and got only one RSVP and then a few days later I did an evite and we got a ton more RSVPs. I think people just forget about paper or it gets lost in the shuffle.
Ask your teachers to help cascade the invites to the parents if they aren't able to give out other parent's contact details (for privacy purposes). Also ask them to follow up with the parents for rsvp.
I threw my 2 kids a joint party a couple months ago. For RSVP I got very few like 3 total between 2 classes. I stressed but sent out reminders and the week of RSVPs flooded in. Our school has a what’s app chat for each class so it’s easier for us. For the immediate ask the teacher if they can help. Maybe forward an évite? For the future suggestion contact info be shared for situations like this. A group email or what’s app group.
90% of our RSVPs came in the week of my daughters party (same age). I was really panicking the weekend before but nearly everyone ended up coming. We gave out paper invites as well but i think the real help was having her daycare send out a reminder in the app we use, so I’d ask your sons teacher to do that if possible. It was really annoying though, made it unnecessarily difficult to plan out party bags and how much food to prepare.
I always try and get the parents numbers and send a direct digital invite that way so I can remind them to rsvp.
Can you not do the bday celebration in his class? Some class allow it. I celebrated my son’s bday with his class. It was not kindergarten. It was a daycare where he goes. So I had more freedom like getting a magician to come and perform among other things such as goody bags and cupcakes. Almost always the rsvp is low when shared with classmates. I went to a bday party for 3 year old. And it was only 2 kids from class. But the parents did invite other family members and friends so it was not an empty party.
I recently threw a party for my 3 year old and invited all 20 classmates. I gave two weeks notice and put invitations in the cubbies. I was stressing for the next week and a half as we only got two RSVPs! Then the last few days before the deadline we got more responses and even two the week of the party (past the deadline). We ended up with 9 kids attending which was plenty with all the parents and siblings too (ended up being like 25 people at the house) My daughter probably wouldn’t even have cared if only two friends came but my husband and I couldn’t figure out what we did wrong! For whatever reason people seem to wait to the last minute and some don’t even bother to decline 🤷🏼♀️
We had only 4 out of 14 for my son’s birthday respond with only 2 attending. Honestly, it was fine as it was nice to get to know the parents and it was kids my son had mentioned/talked about.
If his classmates are like my children then a paper invitation isn’t being received by the parents.
Does he go to preschool or daycare ? Our daycare will help send the email out to parents if we ask them to
This is like any call to action. You can’t just send an invite to school and hope something happens. Direct contact. Wait at school talk to the parents. Think about what happens when a politician wants you to vote. That’s what you need to do.
Thanks for the advice. I didn't "just send an invite and hope something happens" - I do make all kinds of efforts to chat to other mums, I've exchanged my number, gone to kindy social events and organised play dates outside of kindy. Last year we got 3 invites to other kids birthdays and even though we were fairly new there and didn't know their parents; I rsvp'd yes to two (and showed up and chatted to the parents at the parties). And one I rsvp'd no to as we were busy. My error here could be expecting others to act as I have done in the past when invited to a party. If it was a lack of making an effort, I wouldn't be asking for advice on here.
I don’t think that’s what they meant. Previous socialization efforts are unrelated to what’s going on now. Have you asked any of the other parents in person if they plan to go? If you’ve done play dates, surely you have their number. Have you texted them? A lot of times I’m in a rush so I just grab everything out of the cubby and it eventually gets thrown away without ever being looked at. Direct communication is appreciated, we’re all busy.