Kids' parties

I don't think I'd quite grasped the politics surrounding children's parties once they start school. Not that the kids themselves are political, it's the parents. Several people have invited the whole class to their child's party, which is all very well, but costs a fortune. If you have a party at a soft play centre, for example, it's around £10 per child, and extra for cake and party bags, so you could quite easily spend north of £300 entertaining the little tikes. If you do a joint party that works out OK, but if you're doing one on your own it's a bit more difficult.

Other parents have gone the other way and invited a small select group, but that lands parents of the invited children with the problem of accidentally saying to another parent, "Are you going to Little Jimmy's party?" only for them to say no. The questioner feels terribly awkward, and the questionnee wonders why their child hasn't been invited.

We're taking a middle road, and inviting about half the class to Isabel's party. I don't really want to mix school and non-school friends though, so we'll probably also have a birthday BBQ nearer the date, since it's slap bang in the middle of the holidays. And she wants to go to Legoland and McDonald's on the day itself - that's nice and affordable though, since we have annual passes to Legoland, phew! Oh for the days when she didn't really know it was her birthday, and we were able to get away with a picnic with some friends with similar birthdays!