Hellobee Boards

@gestalt: in daycare we went to all parties but now in elementary school there are just so many we only go to the ones that DD is very close to or that work with our schedule. Skipping lessons for parties just isnt something I would do

I wouldn't come up with a hard and fast position on this. I would see how it goes. I guess I see it as a compliment that people wanted to include my child and I would try to make it work. I don't know how old your child is but I can't see my kiddo being in too many "lessons" that are more important than being with his friends. But overall, I'd just try to make it work and figure it out on a case by case basis - does my child like this child a lot? what do I do with my other child? what is the activity? etc. etc.

ETA - not meant to be judgey sounding about the lessons. I get it, I took 983 lessons as a kid and they were $$ and time consuming for my family so I completely understand! My kid is also 4 so no real lessons yet.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Oh yeah, I completely understand - former international figure skater here (and horeseback rider/gymnastic/flute player until my parents made me pick one expensive hobby) - but I did a lot of my hardcore stuff on the weekdays. I also guess I tend to forget that not everyone here on the Bee has little kids anymore - I was pretty deeply into my lessons by 10 or 11 (but not at 5-6 years old). Of course, I also didn't have many friends outside my little skating world!

My older daughter is only 5, and I know her well enough that I know she can’t handle too much in one day. So in a case where she was invited to two bday parties in one day, one morning and one afternoon, we only went to the morning one. She would have been a disaster if we tried both. But it’s easier since it was summer and she didn’t see the other girl often so I just didn’t mention the party after we got the invitation.

And I agree it depends on what type of lessons. We don’t have many activities on the weekends so it hasn’t come up yet.

@gestalt: I hear you on this and glad you posted about it. I think we'll have to approach it on a case by case basis as they get older. My DD is four and is in a language school on Saturdays from 9AM-12.30PM. We actually had to move her weekend ballet lessons to weekdays to accommodate this (which was a MAJOR pain because we both work FT outside the home). The language school is also important to us, but we know there will be conflicts. Since it runs the same calendar year as school and is very cost effective (Aug-May), we'd be OK with her missing a few classes throughout the school year as long as she gets the homework assignments ahead of time. For ballet (when it used to be on the weekends), we luckily didn't have many conflicts which was a good thing because the lessons are pricey. Once you miss a few, you sort of have to ask yourself why she's even in ballet class. I feel ya, I think it will be harder as they get older but for now, we are approaching it on a case-by-case basis.

ETA: We also did swim lessons for both LOs over the summer and they were pricey. Make-up classes were a pain to schedule so we really tried not to skip any. Luckily their lesson time was set for later in the afternoon so there were no conflicts usually (4pm).

My son is in a class of 24 kids, and nearly all of them had birthday parties where they invited the entire class. It got to the point where we had no weekend time to do anything but birthday parties, so we started to pick and choose based on how close our son was to the kid in question / how much he wanted to go to a particular party. I definitely don't feel an obligation to go to every whole-class-invited type party we are invited to, especially because the parties we attended had at least 15-20 or so kids attending.

@gestalt: Uh yeah, 4 in one weekend sounds overwhelming! I definitely would not want to do 4 kids birthday parties in one weekend!

@gestalt: My kiddos have dance on saturday mornings, and now my oldest has soccer on Saturdays as well. We pay a lot for dance, so we don't miss for birthday parties. Usually birthday parties are in the afternoon anyway, but once we had a birthday that was 11-1, and we went directly from dance and arrived around 12 and were there basically just in time for the pizza/cake/singing part. But if a birthday were 10-12 and we had to miss the entire dance class, I would probably RSVP no and just say we are sorry to miss but we already have plans. We already miss occasionally for our own vacations, and saturdays are better than weekdays for us, plus we get invited to a ton of birthdays (it seems like one almost every week), so I don't feel bad saying no to some of them. If it's a close friend or a favorite classmate, we still buy a little gift and deliver later.

My LO is still too little for any of this, so just speaking from my own experience as a kid...

I agree that four birthday parties in one weekend sounds insane. The only thing I would be careful about is not to make her resent the lessons. My husband had to attend Chinese school as a kid - he didn't enjoy it so found ways to be lazy, i.e. in copying the characters, and didn't retain much in the long run since he didn't want to do it and resented it taking the place of other activities or social events on the weekends. Similar issue with my parents making me take piano. I'd say the exception is swim lessons, since drowning is a leading cause of death so more a safety thing.