Preschool Birthday Politics

We had drama at preschool yesterday. A little girl in Emily's class had handed out invitations in cubby holes at school. The drama came when some of the little girls realized that not everyone was invited. Emily was one of the girls that didn't get invited. Surprisingly the school does not have a policy on this issue. In my experience most schools have a policy that it is all or nothing with bringing invitations to school.

I understand the need/want to not invite 17 four years olds to a birthday party. We neither have the money or the space to do so (but we probably will anyways with a July bday we can have it outside but that is beside the point). However we (the mighty PTA) created a contact sheet for the entire school for situations like this. If you do only want to invite close friends you should mail the invitation to the home and speak to the parents invited directly to make sure that they too are aware of limited number of invitations.

It really is sad. Emily searched HIGH and low for this invitation that she was sure would be in her box SOMEWHERE. I too thought of course no mom would only bring invitations to a select few so I asked the teacher and her response was "yes, unfortunately that has been happening a lot more lately". UGH.

This is not the first time this has happened to Emily. Last year Emily had a very close friend at her school. Her mom was very reserved and quiet and not very "hey, how ya doin?" sort of person. Emily came home for a week telling me about this little girls princess birthday party that was coming up and I had no idea what she was talking about. We never got an invitation but Emily had so many details about what was going to happen that even I started to wonder if maybe an invite got lost. So I called another mommy from the class that is a good friend and asked her if her daughter got invited (I know this is a lot of running around for a silly birthday but you have to understand that a birthday party is almost as good as going to Disney to a 4 year old little girl...this is serious people). This mommy said that yes her daughter got invited but that she knew that only one other little boy from the class was invited and that was because the mom's were all old friends. While this made me feel a little better (it wasn't that most of the girls got invited and Em didn't) I still wasn't sure how to explain the situation to Emily.

I don't like to explain to my child the unfairness of life at such a young age. I teach her that everyone is her friend and that it is not nice to exclude people. I am not sure if I would even let her choose one friend at this age because I don't want her to think that hurting other people's feelings is not nice either. I learned this direct. When I was 3rd grade I wanted to have a sleep over for a bunch of girls. I went to a pretty small school and I wanted to invite all of the girls except one. (I think there were 9 girls in my class). The girl I didn't want to invite was very poor and worse yet she smelled. My mom was adamant that everyone or no one was to be invited. The only compromise my mom gave me was I could have one girl over instead. I really wanted a real slumber party (and one friend was not going to cut it) so I invited everyone and hoped for all that was holy that the one girl couldn't come.

Much to my dismay she came. I. WAS. HORRIFIED. Third grade is a rough year and I just knew that this was going to ruin me. Long story short I realized that the girl was nice and SUPER quiet/shy. I felt sorry for her and so did a couple of the other girls. Don't get me wrong in no way did she become my BFF and I am sure that this was not a life changing event for her but it made me a better person and taught me that as a mom it is our job to teach our kids to be considerate. As I step down from my soapbox I digress.

Luckily I am an active member of the school's mighty PTA and you better believe that this will be a subject we talk about. We have new students to add to the contact roster and there will be a note addressing the new invitation policy. Who knew that it would start this soon? Sometime I will tell you about a little girl that brought another little girl in the class to tears talking about how fat she was. I am not sure that Emily even knows what fat means.

Don't forget to vote for your birthday party theme. One of the activities planned for the dinosaur party would be to decorate papermache eggs (that are stuffed with their goodie bag stuff) and for the train party they will get to decorate a train shaped cupcakes with frosting and candy and things.

Also in light of my birthday post a fellow PA blogger is celebrating his birthday today and his only wish (probably not his only but...) is for some crazy traffic on his blog. So stop by Dr. Zibb's blog That Blue Yak and wish him a happy birthday from the fans of From KS to PA (all two of you :).

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Even though Bret had to work for part of this weekend...it was a really nice weekend. On Saturday Emily had a birthday party in the morning then after nap time we had one of her little friends and her brother over to decorate Christmas cookies with us. This is something that we have done every year and one of our family favorite activities. I have perfected the art of rolling and cutting out the cookies so that it is no longer the dreaded part of the job and I have the icing recipe down so that it firms up enough to not stick once it dries and still tastes quite yummy. This was Palmer's first year and he yet again reminded me that he is his father's child. While Emily relished the art of "decorating" each cookie, Palmer felt as though it was a very important job. Don't get me wrong he loved doing it but it was a very simple process in his mind. Pick out a cookie, tell mom which color frosting, choose a color of sprinkle, sprinkle, tell mom done. That was it. He was very methodical about it and was more interested in getting them all decorated than in the decorating itself. Just an observation.

So about the birthday party. This was one of Emily's friends from the school she went to last year. Side note...when we first moved to PA we thought that I would go to work right away and the kids would attend the child development center at the hospital. We had their names on the list right away and had even made a couple of visits to the facility. When we realized that a job was not going to happen right away (an there was no way to afford the CDC without it) it was mid August and I needed to find a preschool ASAP. I called every preschool within a 30 mile radius and everyone was full and had a waiting list already. The week before school started a school about 15 minutes away called to say that they had an opening (a little boy wasn't potty trained in time.. we are in). Something about Berks county that I learned very quickly is that people never leave this town. They were born here and will die here. So it was very interesting for Emily to become part of this little group of kids whose parents all went to high school together and were still BFF.

I am not exaggerating here when I say that this group of parents are the most clickish group of adults I have ever met. When we first started school I asked one of the mom's about her play group that I had heard about and she replied that it was just her and some of her friends that got their kids together to play but that she thought there was a couple of national organizations that she could go online and get the contact info for me. NOT KIDDING! Last year was rough already but every attempt I made to become friends with some of these moms was met with cold shoulders. They had their group and were not interested in new playmates. UNTIL THEY MET EMILY.

Bret and I joke that Emily has been our salvation when it comes to a social life more than once in this town. Kids love her and beg for her to be included. I got calls from moms for play dates, birthday parties, etc that their kids INSISTED that Emily Heskett be included. In fact twice this summer mom's called b/c Emily was going to be the only girl invited b/c her little boyfriends said it was Emily or no one. Even though Emily has changed schools she still gets calls from her previous school friends. I laugh because I wonder if eventually these kids will follow their parent's lead and choose to be friends with "the right kids". In the meantime I once again was in the gossip girl's version of "the in mom's" and was glad that we no longer are forced to run in that circle.

Emily's friends are all very different and that makes me glad that she likes people for who they are. Whether it is her little friend J-whose dad picks him up and drops him off everyday in a new H4, S-who is the most homily child I have ever seen and she worships Emily, O-whose is full of energy and walks her own path in life, C-whose mom is the VP of students at the school I work at, or I-whose mom is a whole other post in itself. I never would have guessed that the whole mom thing would feel like high school all over again but at least Em has no idea.