Endless fretting about "School mums" and party invites.

When one of my g’dtrs was 10 she was invited to a party for a girl in her class. This was following a spate of increasingly extravagant parties by parents clearly vying to outdo each other. G’dtr was allowed to go because the invite specified 10 pin bowling and fun, which seemed reasonable.
My no nonsense dil was horrified and angry to later discover that 8 young girls had been loaded into a stretch limo where they had been given mocktails and sugary sweets and were allowed to dance to loud music while unrestrained in a moving car travelling along the motorway to Manchester. They were treated to a burger in the Trafford Centre, then taken to the cinema before being brought by limo to a ten pin bowling venue in our nearest town. Finally they were given a very generous gift bag. To be fair, my g’dtr had a great time.
After that birthday invites seemed to dry up. It seems that, like my dil, there were enough sensible parents around to decide when enough is enough.

Thy - they

Where did "play dates", "date nights" and "sleepovers" come from?

And the wincingly awful "daddy-daughter date".

I've absolutely no idea why, but these phrases make my toes curl. Thy sound so simpering. But then I'm a curmudgeonly old bat anyway.

It never cease to amazed me why we on GN should be expected to be bothered by threads on Mumsnet.

If I wanted to read MN I would have joined but what exercises young mums does not actually float my boat so I remain agog with indifference

I had one birthday party, when I was 6.

I got invited to several, despite this, but am sure was missed out on others, to me that’s quite fair.

My own children had parties until they were 7, I never enjoyed hosting them and was pleased to move on to a family only treat in later years.

My own GC seemed to go to a lot, the birthday gifts seemed to me expensive, and no idea what ‘party bags’ include nowadays.

Childrens parties have changed such a lot ! What happened to a traditional party with traditional party games . My DD has a friend with a two year old , they hired the village hall , paid for an entertainer, and also had a disco, flashing lights the lot!!!and a table groaning with food ( for children and adults) parents stayed and were offered fizzy wine too. I was flabbergasted,!! All this for a two year old who had no idea what it was all about. Am I just an old grump? I couldn't believe - perhaps I am turning into Victor Meldrew!!!!!

I certainly wouldn't want to be bringing up young children now, and feel that parents these days have so much more to cope with than we did back in the 70's. Yes, there were a few birthday parties, but quite simple affairs as regards both refreshments and presents, partly because I suspect that our children had much lower expectations back then. I certainly don't remember any angst related to parties, and the closest any of ours got to any "playdates" was the very occasional sleepover at a close friend's. They all played outside most of the day anyway, so none of us felt the need to make some sort of "date" out of it. Yes, I don't envy the young parents of today. I think they have far more to contend with than we ever did, in so many ways.

TBH I can understand children getting upset if it’s very obvious that many others have been invited, but they’ve been left out.

Dd1 is 44 now, but until she was maybe 9 or 10 she always insisted on inviting the whole class to her birthday parties. I still think of the little boy of maybe 8, who said, ‘Thank you for inviting me to your party, Lucy* - nobody else does.’ 😥

*not her real name.

It must be quite difficult for young parents. We currently have two threads going, one saying young parents are neglectful and another saying they are over involved.

It certainly wasn’t an issue when I was a child - postwar austerity didn’t allow for many parties. I had one, when I was ten. I went to perhaps three at most. My children didn’t have parties often either. I can only remember one when my elder boy was five. After that they didn’t really want parties, but much preferred days out or the money equivalent! Grandchildren were the same. My grandson cried all the way through his fifth birthday party, tolerated his sixth but after that he rebelled.

I think a bit of healthy neglect does no harm. They will organise their own social lives soon enough.

One year when my DD was about 8 or 9 she went to 33 parties. Friends from dancing, Brownies, school, swimming, etc. The only good thing was the presents did not cost a fortune.

One of her parties instead of party bags which usually were a load of rubbish, as the children left I gave them each a 50p coin so they could buy their own sweets/rubbish.

My GS had a party and twins in his class gave him a £25 Argos voucher each!