Some FAQs About Planning Your Child's Birthday Party

Every year, when I start planning the birthday parties for my daughters, I find myself agonizing over their invitation lists. After all, they have classmates from school, friends from gymnastics or music or dance classes, and playgroup friends. Include the siblings of the invited children and children of my own mom friends, and we end up with a list that's larger than the armies of some small countries!

I started to try to work through a criteria: "If I don't invite their friends from school, then I could invite their playgroup friends. But they see their friends from school at least three times a week, and some of playgroup friends they see only every few months. But they were invited to the birthday parties of the playgroup friends, so should we invite them back? Are we expected to reciprocate? What if I hang out with the moms? Does that mean I need to invite their kids? What about siblings? Should I invite them? Will people assume that siblings are invited even if I decide that siblings aren't invited?" and on and on. It was enough to make my head spin! Then I decided to ask my girls what they wanted. I started to go through the list and ask "Do you want her at your birthday party? How about him?" Of course, they generally replied "yes" to everyone. So that didn't help. Maybe that will work better when tney're older.

While I was working and reworking the list for the umpteenth time, I mentioned my dilemma to other moms, and guess what? It seems that EVERYONE was having the same issue! The problem is that many outside locations have a limit to the number of children that you can have at their birthday parties. (Or there are space limitations if you're having it at your own house.) If you invite more children, will you have enough goody bags? So I started to wonder if there were any "official" guidelines for birthday etiquette, like an "Emily Post on Children's Birthdays," as it seems we could all use some help in that arena, so that we don't inadvertently commit a "birthday faux-pas."