Hellobee Boards

I don't agree either. I think if you're not inviting everyone though it's not polite to hand out invitations at school and they should be mailed.

I've only heard of this "invite all or none" on HB if the parent requested the teacher to pass out the invites in school. Depending on the method of the school handing out the invites and age of the students I don't see this policy as unfair.

When I was in school teachers either held certain students after class and the bday boy or girl would tell them they were invited and hand out invites or the kids would slip the invites into their friend's cubbies. By the time this was happening the kids knew to use discretion since these were friend parties with just real friends invited.

Of course invites came in the mail too and parents can invite whomever they want. A school shouldn't dictate who gets invited to a party when they are completely left out of the party logistics.

Our daycare does not have this policy and I am glad. For M's 3rd birthday, we didn't want a ton of kids at the party so we let her invite who she wanted to invite. She picked her friends, kids she wants to play with. She did not pick kids who were mean to her or kids who she doesn't really know.

Also, when they are in daycare or preschool, they are friends with kids in 2 different rooms - the room they are currently in and the room they will be moving up to. Are they supposed to invite all from both? At our daycare, that would be like 35 kids!!!

I don't agree with it, but I also agree you should be discreet!

And I also don't get it...children know when they are being left out. So either you're ignored at the party and feel uncomfortable there, you don't go, or it's obvious you don't want to be there and mom sorta made you.....

@catomd00: agree about being discreet if you aren't inviting everyone! We are actually going to hand out birthday party invites at school tomorrow, but we are inviting everyone (11 kids). If we weren't, I would discreetly hand invites to parents directly.

The policy at my Catholic school growing up was all kids of the same gender must be invited if invitations are passed out at school. I guess that wouldn't fly now.

I think inviting less than a third of the class is fine as long as you do it outside of class. If you invite more than half it seems like it starts to be more exclusionary.

Our daycare parties have been all inclusive (as far as I know). It makes me less excited to have a party since that means kids from babies to 10 yo. The older kids are always bored.

My LOs preschool has this policy but her daycare doesn't. I dont think you should be required to invite everyone, but i don't think you should hand them out at school either. And I also think kids and parents should be discreet if they aren't inviting everyone so that no one gets hurt.

I'll never forget, a few months back i was picking up my LO from daycare and one of the older kids, maybe 5 yrs old, was talking to another child about her upcoming bday party and said outloud: "you aren't invited to my birthday party M" to my daughter. It broke my heart.

In my experience, this is only the policy if invitations are handed out at school--then all kids in the class must be invited. If they're sent out separately, then the rule does not apply. Which seems fair--no one likes to be singled out as the one person who didn't get an invite passed to them.

I don't think invites should be handed out at school, unless everyone is invited. I have the numbers and email addresses of my LO's favorite friends (parents), and we do things selectively a lot.

I don't see how a school could enforce this.

This is one of those things that really excludes people with less money. When I was growing up, there was no way my parents could afford to host a party for 20+ kids and/or parents. If I had a party with friends at all it would be maybe two or three of my friends.

And now I'm really in the same boat. There is zero chance I'm going to have the space and funds to invite the whole class. One of my husband's colleague's just had this discussion because he got in trouble for inviting ONE kid from his kid's class to a birthday party.

The idea of inviting everyone is weird to me in a daycare setting, but mostly because I personally don't feel like kids are ready for "friend" parties outside class until they are older. I'm much more comfortable with family parties with perhaps some family (i.e. me or DH's) friends throw into the mix until the kids are in elementary school. If my son was in daycare, I would just send some treats to the classroom and handle it there.

I think it is fine when the kids are young. I think promoting inclusion when young is a positive thing.

This is so strange to me. No one ever handed out invitations in school when I was growing up. Don't people mail invitations anymore??

@Truth Bombs: Have you seen the policy? I'm wondering if some of the story is getting distorted through rumours. In schools where I've seen this kind of policy, it just refers to handing out invites at school. No one can tell you who you can invite to your house.

I don't think handing out invites at school makes a teachers job easier, I can see how that could easily become drama and hurt feelings and distract from the class. I can understand why they have the policy. No one can tell you who you can have over but don't pass them out at school.

@ElbieKay: I remember an instance where I was not invited to a girl's birthday party and my mom called the mom and got me invited. And I didn't realize that's how it played out until later. So terrible.

Agree with others--I have a hard time thinking a school system would demand that children invite everyone to their party. I've worked in many different school systems, and this policy is ONLY if a student will be handing out invitations in the class. I agree with it b/c I've been in a classroom before when someone is handing out invitations and others have felt left out. Sure, you can say that kids need to be discreet, but try explaining that concept to a kindergarten student!

I think our preschool's policy is if the teachers are putting invitations in their cubbies/bags, you need to invite all. I agree that it's really hard for schools to actually enforce.

So we were invited to a party the second week of school (I think the whole class was). Although I appreciated the invite, we chose not to go. When it was my LO's birthday, we invited one friend from her class who we're close with outside of school (I've met the mom for coffee, we txt all the time, etc).

I think that K-12 schools should have a policy of not assisting in handing out invitations to private events. The proper government agency for that is the Post Office.

@looch: absolutely not. If the roles were reversed and it was my kid who had the birthday, I would also try to explain to him (and school aged kids, I think, are old enough!) that we don't go around bragging. I'm not going to stop him from talking about it though. I mean, part of his lesson may be talking about it and seeing how his words affected another child, maybe he would feel badly that he talked about it and not do it again. At some point we have to let our kids figure these social etiquettes out on their own. I can only guide him so much.