Do you pay for your children to attend Birthday Parties?

[DVC Sadie]

I agree, birthday parties can be expensive when everyone is trying to do "one up" on the last party. We have done home parties (fun for the kids but stressful for me) and the last 2 years we have done bowling parties. I would never even THINK about having people pay for even the shoe rental!

The bowling party was a great deal IMO, $12 per child which included bowling, pizza and beverages. They also do all the paper goods, even the invites! I brought homemade cupcakes (easier to deal with than cake) and a cooler with hoodsie cup ice cream, and all was good.

As my kids get older, I will give them the option to do something a bit more pricey (movies and dinner or a laser tag/minigolf/climbing wall place with just a few of their friends).

I'm just waiting to see a jar at the local 7/11 asking for donations to sponsor a childs birthday party.

As for goody bags....I HATE getting all that chachki brought home after a party. They end up being clutter and then tossed. I have been making t-shirts for our "goody bags". The kids and I create a "logo" based on the theme of the party or something they like (guitars or princesses or whatnot) and I buy white shirts (on sale, of course) and print the logos on the computer paper, iron them on, and the kids have a nice keepsake. It's also great when they all wear them for a photo, and I include that as a postcard/thank you.

If my kids get invited to a party where they have to pay....OY VEY! And, out of all the parties my kids have gone to in the past 2 years (twins), more than half have been AT HOME parties, and the kids have a blast!

DD went to a sleepover where they had slip & slide races, pizza, played a Hannah Montana game, and watched a movie. She was in heaven.

You don't have to break the bank for kids to have fun!

Thanks for affirming that I have not yet become senile.

The families that expect other parents to pay admission so that their child can attend the party is one step away from begging or charging admission/cover charge.

Oh vey is right! Whatever happened to having a childs birthday party that the parents could afford and I wouldn't care if it was cake and ice cream at home without including ANYTHING else.

 

[Karlzmom]

(Note to self: always be sure daughter has plenty of extra spending money when dropping her off at a party, a field trip, whatever!)

This is about as good as a bridal shower I just had the "honor" of throwing. Bride dictated just about everything (even the little details), but the bridesmaids got to arrange & pay for it. Grrrr.

The matron on honor and I just decided that while we cannot control the actions of others, but we can control how we react to them. If we want to say "enough" or "no" we can. We decided not to in this case,to spare hurt feelings. But believe me, I will be more cautious in the future.

Its funny you mention the bridal showers, when I was telling DH about this thread it occurred to me that the rude and tacky brides we are aware of that basically "charge" their attendants for the pleasure of catering to their every whim are the same women who are now having children, and will likely be the ones that will charge their kids' friends for a party...

 

[mjantz]

Just curious though, where do you draw the line? Where does the hosting obligation end? We recently held a birthday party for oldest DD at Rainforest Cafe. About half of the parents said "Great!! An hour and a half to peruse the mall on my own!" And the other half said "Cool! I've always wanted to go to Rainforest Cafe!" And I said "OH CRAP!" I didn't know if these parents were expecting me to pay for them to have lunch or what. Not to be rude but the party was for the kids, not the adults. I can't afford to just hand out menus and say "sure, order whatever you like" What if someone decided to order pricey alcoholic drinks in souvenir glasses and the most expensive entree? I finally just talked to the party planner at RFC and what we ended up doing was ordering some heavier type appetizers and fountain drinks for the adults. We managed to pass along the message that that was what we would be providing and if they wanted anything else they were free to open a tab with the waitress. Hopefully that was a happy medium. No one ordered anything else but I still worry that we offended someone.

Had you invited my child, there's a chance I would have stayed at RFC with her but I would not have expected you to feed me or provide me with anything to drink. You invited my kid, not me.

 

[OceanAnnie]

We've done that too. Oldest DD was invited to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. We brought the entire family and DH went off with the younger two kids and played games and had pizza with them while DD did all the birthday festivities. I stuck around the birthday part for a few minutes but honestly, there were more adults than there was party space so I ended up with DH and the twins. Completely different in my mind though since the one invited to the party was treated as a guest and I'd never presume to bring extra kids to a party on someone else's dime.



Just curious though, where do you draw the line? Where does the hosting obligation end? We recently held a birthday party for oldest DD at Rainforest Cafe. About half of the parents said "Great!! An hour and a half to peruse the mall on my own!" And the other half said "Cool! I've always wanted to go to Rainforest Cafe!" And I said "OH CRAP!" I didn't know if these parents were expecting me to pay for them to have lunch or what. Not to be rude but the party was for the kids, not the adults. I can't afford to just hand out menus and say "sure, order whatever you like" What if someone decided to order pricey alcoholic drinks in souvenir glasses and the most expensive entree? I finally just talked to the party planner at RFC and what we ended up doing was ordering some heavier type appetizers and fountain drinks for the adults. We managed to pass along the message that that was what we would be providing and if they wanted anything else they were free to open a tab with the waitress. Hopefully that was a happy medium. No one ordered anything else but I still worry that we offended someone.

I would have just told the waitress that the children were on the party tab, the adults are not. If/when the adults tried to order they would've been informed. If an adult tried to pull a stunt like that they should be embarrassed. It's crossing the line. I'd be so miffed I wouldn't care if they were offended. It's not a gravy train. It's a child's party.

If they wanted to order something on their dime in the first place, I wouldn't mind a bit.

 

[ZPT1022]

Had you invited my child, there's a chance I would have stayed at RFC with her but I would not have expected you to feed me or provide me with anything to drink. You invited my kid, not me.

I would have just told the waitress that the children were on the party tab, the adults are not. If/when the adults tried to order they would've been informed. If an adult tried to pull a stunt like that they should be embarrassed. It's crossing the line. I'd be so miffed I wouldn't care if they were offended. It's not a gravy train. It's a child's party.

If they wanted to order something on their dime in the first place, I wouldn't mind a bit.

thanks guys. Glad to see I'm not the only one who was a little bit surprised. I don't mind if the parents wanted to stay close to the kids, I was just a bit shocked by the whole "Oh, I've always wanted to go there!!" mindset

 

[bdcp]

Giving your child a party means "giving YOUR child a party" not expecting others to pay for it. I just dont' get people who think that way. I'm still convinced this kind of thinking comes out of parenting of the now adults/parents where they were the absolute center of the universe and had everything given to them and don't understand hosting anyone. One more example of extreme selfish behavior. If you don't want to pay for a party, don't have one, just don't expect everyone else to pay for you.

 

[Abbeysmom]

WOW some of these stories are awful!! Unfortunately, I have one that can almost top it. We have a relative who (a few years back) invited a small group to Chuck E. Cheese for her child's 2nd birthday (the birthday girl was too little to really play any of the games to begin with.. but anyway.). Now, I know others do it differently, but when we host Chuck E. Cheese we get two or three of their large specials (you know the large pizza plus four drinks to split for the parents who come with the children and stays~ and then split the extra tokens among the cups of tokens that I get when I purchase a birthday package the provides pizza, drink, and tokens for each child attending the party for 9.99 per child.. My daughter's BD is in May and it gets hot here.. I don't want them having to buy their own drink and if we host a party we provide food for everyone.Well.. imagine my surprise when we arrive for the "party" and have the mother let us know that everyone is responsible for their own food AND TOKENS... I mean nothing was provided for any of the guests!!! She said you "can order your own meal or maybe find someone else to go in with and order a pizza" which we ended up doing.
To make the matter worse... she just grabbed an empty table, brought in a store bought cake... tried to get extra plates and forks from the manager to serve HER CAKE and then got mad when he refused.. I could barely hold it together when she said in a rather indignant voice...'I am not ever coming to another birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese again" I so wanted to ask her WHAT birthday party???
In a side note... she did end up coming to my daughter's bd party at Chuck E. Cheese and had the nerve to insult the food and cake that we provided!! She also made a point to let me know she needed 2 cups of tokens for her family as she has 2 children!! The nerve of some people!!!

 

[solfan68]

DS wanted to do a roller skating party for his birthday back in May. That was fine, and we paid for it, but he had to choose which of his friends were invited (the package from the local rink included admission and pizza for 12 + Birthday Boy). It was fun, but we would never have asked the guests to pony up so that they could come.

 

[tina95]

I hope!
This year my son had his party at the YMCA pool. We homeschool and have not seen some of the kids all summer. During the year they get together monthly for teen activities. Anyway, we had a Birthday/ teen pool party for 75 people. Some families and younger sibs attended as well. I paid for the pool rental, ice, paper products, cupcakes, and asked the kids to bring 1 bottle of drink to share per family. My son did not want gifts and we made that known on the invite. No gifts were brought. Did I mess up by asking the kids to bring drinks?

 

[Nie0214]

I hope!
This year my son had his party at the YMCA pool. We homeschool and have not seen some of the kids all summer. During the year they get together monthly for teen activities. Anyway, we had a Birthday/ teen pool party for 75 people. Some families and younger sibs attended as well. I paid for the pool rental, ice, paper products, cupcakes, and asked the kids to bring 1 bottle of drink to share per family. My son did not want gifts and we made that known on the invite. No gifts were brought. Did I mess up by asking the kids to bring drinks?

I don't think so, especially since nobody brought a gift. Sounds like it was a good pool party.

 

[mdsouth]

Which reminds me of another pet peeve - parents who send party invites for only some of the kids in the class and ask the teacher to hand them out. I can understand this in a big, public school classroom if you have your child give invites to friends personally. But this was a small daycare class of about 8 kids and the poor teacher got the dirty job of trying to explain to some kids why they didn't get an invitation. (Off topic, I know, but still another example of tackiness IMHO.)

I totally agree with this! It is extremely tacky to send party invitations to school. Just bite the bullet and buy stamps and mail them or perhaps call them on the phone. It really bothers me that invitations are sent to school and of course many kids are left out.

For example, this year at my DD's preschool, a parent left a RSVP reminder on the parent sign-out sheet which the kids see since it is on the same table with their sign out sheet. Only some of the kids had been invited to a party and the host parent put out a sheet with only a list of names of kids that had been invited. The sheet asked the parents to check whether or not their child would be attending the party. I wrote a big note on the bottom of the sheet stating that this was a very rude thing to do since many of the kids in the class had not been invited!

I couldn't believe it! Fortunately, the director of the preschool came up to me the next day and told me that the teachers were unaware that the parent had put the list on the sign out sheet. The director apologized for the incidence and agreed with me that it was rude. I just hope the host parent saw my note and possibly a few other parents before the sheet was removed by the teacher.

 

[Tinkermommy]

I hope!
...Did I mess up by asking the kids to bring drinks?

I think you did. As a host/hostess you never put a burden on your guests --even if it is just asking for drinks. If you couldn't afford to pay for juiceboxes and water then narrow down your guest list. Regardless of whether you asked them not bring gifts (which is also tacky in my opinion).

Duties of a host/hostess are to provide the party experience in total (and that means whatever you can afford). So if it is a backyard party with fruit punch and cake then that is what it is.

As a guest, you should show up on time and be gracious. You should also not burden the host with anything either (dropping off extra kids, asking for more of this or that).

Now I am not talking about having your friends over for dinner and when they ASK if they could bring anything. You can certainly suggest they bring over any special beverage they would like or any other thing they would like to bring. But a birthday party, wedding, bridal shower to me that is a no no.

 

[stsomewhere]

My DS-9 wanted to go the THE AIRZOO for his party.
He picked 3 friendsto come with him. DH took them and asked one other parent to chaperone. We paid for admission, lunch, dinner on the way home, etc.
I did tell the parents there was a gift shop, if they wanted they could send in money for that.
We covered everthing else even other parent.

 

[maggiew]

I would have just told the waitress that the children were on the party tab, the adults are not. If/when the adults tried to order they would've been informed. If an adult tried to pull a stunt like that they should be embarrassed. It's crossing the line. I'd be so miffed I wouldn't care if they were offended. It's not a gravy train. It's a child's party.

If they wanted to order something on their dime in the first place, I wouldn't mind a bit.

I remember reading a thread on here about a year ago where a lady said she had a Chuck E Cheese party and at the end of the party, she found out that some of the parents went up and were ordering whole pizzas for their group and charging it to the birthday party mom (who had provided pizza, etc. for the party kids). So the Rainforest Cafe mom was right to be worried! I would have done like you said and just told the waitress that only the kids were included in the party.

Luckily, I've never had parents assume they were included at a kids birthday party. And I did a Rainforest Cafe/movie party too. I never even thought about this type of thing before!!

Maggie

 

[Juliegirl1]

I had a birthday party for my son this year at my house. It was limited to ten kids because there was an additional $100 charge for the entertainer for 11-20 kids. I specifically asked parents to drop off their kids because I have a small house and didn't have the room for everyone. Some of the parents dropped off the siblings of the child that had been invited which put the total number of children in my home for the party at 13 (the parents didn't even come to the door so I couldn't say no). I had to pay the extra $100 plus an extra $15 for additional goody bags. If I had known that I would be hosting extra kids I would have let my son invite everyone he wanted to invite. Unfortunately I couldn't really do anything about it so I just sucked it up. It wasn't those poor kids' fault and since I really didn't know any of the kids my son had invited from school I didn't realize what was going on until it was too late.

 

[Grumpy'sWife4Ever]

Now I've heard of everything - a "no host" birthday party!

Seriously, this makes me very happy we live in the sticks - here the backyard party is pretty much the norm, although I have gone "crazy" and had parties at McDonalds. I always put on the invite that we would provide a Happy Meal for each child (no goody bag, whatever toy came with the meal was the prize) and drinks for all the adults. We have also done Chuck E. Cheese - but we had to drive almost two hours to get there so we kept it immediate family only. Our kids never mind having a "small" party - heck, just our household is six people so everywhere we go is a party!! I also always make homemade cakes or cupcakes, I think I would choke and die paying $40 for a cake.....
My kids' schools also have the policy of no invites at school unless it is for the whole class. I think it is excellent, I can't imagine kids seeing bright shiny invites floating around but not getting one. How sad.

 

[nena]

WOW some of these stories are awful!! Unfortunately, I have one that can almost top it. We have a relative who (a few years back) invited a small group to Chuck E. Cheese for her child's 2nd birthday (the birthday girl was too little to really play any of the games to begin with.. but anyway.). Now, I know others do it differently, but when we host Chuck E. Cheese we get two or three of their large specials (you know the large pizza plus four drinks to split for the parents who come with the children and stays~ and then split the extra tokens among the cups of tokens that I get when I purchase a birthday package the provides pizza, drink, and tokens for each child attending the party for 9.99 per child.. My daughter's BD is in May and it gets hot here.. I don't want them having to buy their own drink and if we host a party we provide food for everyone.Well.. imagine my surprise when we arrive for the "party" and have the mother let us know that everyone is responsible for their own food AND TOKENS... I mean nothing was provided for any of the guests!!! She said you "can order your own meal or maybe find someone else to go in with and order a pizza" which we ended up doing.
To make the matter worse... she just grabbed an empty table, brought in a store bought cake... tried to get extra plates and forks from the manager to serve HER CAKE and then got mad when he refused.. I could barely hold it together when she said in a rather indignant voice...'I am not ever coming to another birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese again" I so wanted to ask her WHAT birthday party???
In a side note... she did end up coming to my daughter's bd party at Chuck E. Cheese and had the nerve to insult the food and cake that we provided!! She also made a point to let me know she needed 2 cups of tokens for her family as she has 2 children!! The nerve of some people!!!

Some people are so tight, that they want everything for free. INCLUDING a Birthday Party!!!

 

[DVC Sadie]

WOW some of these stories are awful!! Unfortunately, I have one that can almost top it. We have a relative who (a few years back) invited a small group to Chuck E. Cheese for her child's 2nd birthday (the birthday girl was too little to really play any of the games to begin with.. but anyway.). Now, I know others do it differently, but when we host Chuck E. Cheese we get two or three of their large specials (you know the large pizza plus four drinks to split for the parents who come with the children and stays~ and then split the extra tokens among the cups of tokens that I get when I purchase a birthday package the provides pizza, drink, and tokens for each child attending the party for 9.99 per child.. My daughter's BD is in May and it gets hot here.. I don't want them having to buy their own drink and if we host a party we provide food for everyone.Well.. imagine my surprise when we arrive for the "party" and have the mother let us know that everyone is responsible for their own food AND TOKENS... I mean nothing was provided for any of the guests!!! She said you "can order your own meal or maybe find someone else to go in with and order a pizza" which we ended up doing.
To make the matter worse... she just grabbed an empty table, brought in a store bought cake... tried to get extra plates and forks from the manager to serve HER CAKE and then got mad when he refused.. I could barely hold it together when she said in a rather indignant voice...'I am not ever coming to another birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese again" I so wanted to ask her WHAT birthday party???
In a side note... she did end up coming to my daughter's bd party at Chuck E. Cheese and had the nerve to insult the food and cake that we provided!! She also made a point to let me know she needed 2 cups of tokens for her family as she has 2 children!! The nerve of some people!!!

Oh, He11 no! You have more patience than I.

Some of these stories are just too much. Why would any parent drop off siblings to a birthday party in which they were not invited? That makes absolutely no sense at all.

 

[musclemouse]

Are you serious?! lol. Oh what nerve! Jeez if they can't afford to throw a party then they shouldn't throw such a part. Good grief!

 

[tina95]

Well I guess as an after thought maybe I should not have asked the kids to bring drinks. Not all did! I did have a couple gallons of juice and water. I think it is tacky for people to invite kids that are not close friends to a party for the gift alone.
Since out of the 75 kids that came, only 55 were invited, and only 25 are close friends, my son did not want people thinking he only wanted gifts. It was more important to him to have the teens connect during the summer.