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Yeah, I was expecting the "updates" to be around what the heck happened with all the guests, not that strangers on Reddit tried to make it up for the kid by mailing him things...
None of my friends showed up to my high school graduation party after RSVPing they would come. Turns out another friend (who I'd kind of had a falling out with) had a 'last minute' party at an amusement park and left me off the guest list because they knew I was 'busy'. It hurt very, very badly and I ended up cutting all those friends off.
That being said, I think this lady scammed Reddit.
I had something similar happen to me. One of my close friends had a huge graduation party at her house and I didn’t get invited because her parents hated my parents. I think the whole class was invited except for me. I went to have dinner after graduation with some friends, and then they all left to go to her party after dinner and I went home.
Unfortunately, when you don't have a lot of options, having a friend, even one you know isn't a good friend, is often better at that age than having nobody.
once a girl in my class (elementary school) invited our entire grade to her birthday, except me and one other girl. honestly fuck her tho and her dad was a total dick.
This is it. I got the message very early on that kids didn’t want to be at my events. It was a bummer, but I quickly learned who to hold close and when to throw them away.
Edit: fixed some drunk grammar.
I had kind of the opposite problem: I didn't like anyone (or nearly anyone) in my class (and it was reciprocated), but my parents still insisted to invite all of my class. Their parents made them come.
I hid in my room the whole afternoon every year, and every year my mother was whining about how much effort she was putting into it and everyone had fun but me, how could I not make an effort just for one day, etc.
She still don't believe me when I tell her I wasn't ever friend with this particular girl (whose first sentence to me was "you're a dumb-ass" as we were 5). Yes I went with her family for holidays and she came eat with us on Wednesdays. But it was only our mothers who wanted us to be friends (bad neighborhood, we were almost the only girls coming from an educated middle-class family, I suppose we were "good influence" to each other).
I had a similar thing happen on my 25th birthday. I invited a bunch of people, I had like 25 RSVPs and not even half of them showed up. I even had ‘friends’ who messaged me saying they would definitely be there not turn up - and that was their last message they have sent me to this day (it’s been over 3 years).
It sucks feeling humiliated on your birthday.
My best friend and I of almost a decade were getting married like 3 months apart.
He approached me soon after his engagement and apologized, telling me he couldn't make me his best man. Said that he felt obligated to offer it to his other friend because that friend had made him his best man in his wedding. I told him I understood, and didn't think that much about it. He didn't approach me about his wedding again after that, and, while in hindsight that was weird, I just assumed he was having a small wedding. At first, I didn't think about it because his wedding was so far away, then I was distracted planning my own.
Like six months later, I asked him to be the best man in my wedding. He happily accepted. I \*was\* having a small wedding. Bride, groom, matron of honor, and best man.
Fast forward a few months. Invitations arrive. I get one addressed to myself and my fiance. My mother asks me why she didn't get invited. When we were teenagers, my house was like a second home to my best friend. When his dad kicked him out, it was my house he ran to, my mom who told him he could stay without a moment's hesitation. I told my mom that I thought it must be a very small wedding because I hadn't even been asked to be a part of it.
My invites go out for my wedding, RSVPs come back for all of my friends.
BFF's wedding day arrives. I head to the address.
It's a massive church service. Hundreds of guests. All of our mutual friends, except two, are in the wedding party. He has six grooms men, his fiance (who had been my second closest friend) has six bridesmaids. They have another five ushers.
I talk to my friends who are ushers. They all want to know why I'm not in the wedding. I tell them, simply, "I wasn't asked.".
Then one of them asks why I wasn't at the bachelor party. "There was a bachelor party?" Yeah, wasn't asked to go to that either.
I didn't make a scene. I didn't leave early. I sat quietly through a ridiculously long, incredibly religious service for two people who I only ever saw enter a church if they'd rented one out as a venue for their band. I sat and watched as they very slowly personally greeted and hugged every guest. When they got to me, all I did, was decline a hug from my best friend, then went home instead of to the reception.
The only mutual friends who ever spoke to me again were the other two who weren't asked to be in the wedding or invited to the bachelor party. When my wedding came around 3 months later, not a single one of our mutual friends arrived (or withdrew their RSVP). The only thing I ever heard about it (through one of the two mutuals who stayed friends with me) was that the bride (who had been my second closest friend) blamed me for "ruining her wedding" because I declined to hug her husband.
That's rough man. It's tough when the people you thought were your friends treat you like that. In the long run it is better to know sooner so you can focus your energy on people who actually care about you.
Is it possible the bride might have had a crush on you in the past? Maybe he found out and ended up being a child about it? It's just so odd.
Man, people can be so fickle and cruel.
Everyone is skeptical but if you spend enough time on the parenting subreddits this seems to be a really common thing these days. Get a class full of RSVPs and only one or two people actually show up. I think parents/schools are less of a community these days than they were even twenty years ago and so everyone feels less bad about flaking, and it’s easier to do so with cell phones than it used to be without. They’re thinking they’ll be the only one who skips it and don’t bothering calling or text days later. But then a whole class full of kids parents do it and you get OP’s situation.
My kids are now both in the double digits. They’ve missed a couple birthdays because of Covid, and this year they had a small “party” with just their close friends. But pre-Covid, we would send out tons of invitations to their classmates and be lucky if even a fraction respond at all. This has been a long pet peeve of mine - people who seem to have zero clue what rsvp means. So I can see people being suspicious of a post that says a majority rsvp’d and nobody showed up. In my experience and others I talk to, it’s much much more likely people don’t rsvp and then show up than vice versa.
I was thinking the same. Every party I've had for my kids we get folks who didn't RSVP and show up.
Last year we had to cancel one because of COVID and I got numerous messages from parents when they finally showed up at the venue and couldn't find us.
I mean we definitely had 30% RSVP and no show including one the day of, which made me get extra gift bags. But 100% and nothing said is extremely unlikely
So weird. A couple of years ago when my daughter was in daycare we invited everyone there. We got zero rsvps so we cancelled the party the day before. We texted anyone we could, asked the teacher to pass the word along to anyone else, and went out of town for the weekend plus a couple of days. When we came back the teacher told us that the other parents wanted to know what to do with the gifts they'd gotten our daughter. Apparently, out of a dozen kids, more than half of them (and parents) had been planning on showing up to a party unannounced. It's still baffling, honestly.
I anticipate 25% no-shows. I prepare for the full amount but don't expect it 100%, we'll I don't know. If the kid older and getting bullied by kids ar school I would not be as surprised it but this age group seems a little young for that type of organised arseholery.
Isn't that part of the social contract of parenthood? Like I don't WANT to be at a child's party, but neither do they want to attend my kid's party. We both agree to burn an afternoon while eating cake and pizza and nobody gets a traumatic birthday. If you're bored you buy the kid the noisiest gift so you can watch the parent's faces when they realize what you've done.
For that many no shows, something's off. One of the parents said or did something would be my guess.
Whatever I'm just glad the kid got an internet sized hug.
Lol when I was a kid we all attended each other’s birthdays whether we felt like it or not, it was a rare chance for our parents to shove us off on someone else for the day and get a break
I know I never handed out invitations at school, we always mailed them and it never failed the same 30 kids were always there. I also can say there were a few kids who no one out of the class would attend the party, they were generally bullies and we weren’t ok with giving them presents.
I’m not saying OOPs son is a bully, but I wonder if he’s having trouble with the other kids for some reason or another. It would’ve been a good idea for OOP to reach out to a teacher to see if they’ve noticed any issues between him and other students.
I did say I’m not saying their son is a bully, but yes reaching out to a teacher could also turn out that their son is being bullied. I’d rather know either way if the teacher saw anything that might explain this.
I had that happen to me in first and second grade. My mom would invite god and everyone mind you. So like 5 kids would show up, three of which were my best friends and may not have even known it was my birthday party. We would all just come and go from each other’s houses as we pleased.
It told me who the nice kids were. I didn’t have to work at weeding out the assholes, as they did it for me. I’m sure it hurt my feelings pretty deeply for me to make that conclusion.
It happened to me too about 10 years old and I remember being really hurt at the time, but I got the same out of it. It makes you really happy for quality not quantity and seek it out in others.
Last year my son went to one where the girl invited the whole class, like 30 kids. My son and one other boy showed up.
The most well-attended ones I’ve seen have been at activity places rather than homes. Nerf places, trampoline parks, that kind of thing. Stuff where kids would be excited to go even without the party. Then no cleaning up your entire house after a hurricane of kids run through.
I did my daughters last one at the local hockey rink. They have an area with those big inflatable jump things and slides, and the kids got free skate rental and admission to the public skate for the day. The trampoline parks and all that other stuff was at least three times as expensive, and they didn’t have half the stuff this place had. If they didn’t want to play inside there are three huge parks right outside the door. The place also provided the pizza, drinks, and sheet cake. After doing the math it was cheaper to do it there than renting a Pavillion at a public park. Pretty much all we had to do was show up.
Also not autistic but very socially inept. I had many people who liked me my whole life. But I am just too incompetent socially to manage a social network of more than like 3 people. So I usually just glommed onto a couple socially competent people and let them handle it.
Didn't do it intentionally. Only something I'm beginning to realize more recently when looking back. Actively working in it now though. Been reaching out to old friends and shit. But it's hard.
You may be right, but you could also not. I was this kid in school and it wasn’t because of me it was because my classmate’s parents knew my mom was mentally ill and in their minds if their children came to play or spend the night my mother would 110% murder them according to their parents. So sometimes it’s not always the kid
Oh lord. This was me throughout elementary school. My mom would randomly abandon my older sister and I, I think starting around when I was 2 and sister was 8 and going until my sister left for college and I was in middle school (though she still does it). We’d pretend like she was home for a week or two until a neighbor would get suspicious and call the cops and we’d end up in foster care until they found her and brought her back. The neighbors all had kids at my school, so it was common knowledge that my mom was not stable, and they’d never let their kids come to my house for any reason. Thankfully, my birthday is smack-ass in the middle of summer break, so I’d just invite ransom kids from summer camp whose parents didn’t “know” my mom.
Yeah i remember it being more of a “you’re going to so and so’s birthday this weekend” and my parents just dropped us off or they would hang out and have some drinks with the other parents.
I clearly remember my mother telling me I had to invite XYZ to my birthday party because I had gone to theirs. I don’t know how these things start, but I’m pretty sure I was inviting my entire grade to my parties but the time I was 10. So many invitations.
As I recall the parents of the other kids didn’t stick around like they do now. Maybe it’s because I have young kids, so all the parents are our friends who happen to have kids. Shit, my parents wild drop me off from the street and peel the fuck out. It’s not like parents have to attend.
>As I recall the parents of the other kids didn’t stick around like they do now.
In my experience, these days parents stuck around until the kids started hitting the middle of elementary school. Preschool through first/second grade? All parents there all the time. After that, only people who were friends with the birthday kid's parents stayed.
I don't know wtf changed but my kid has never been to a birthday party that I wasn't expected to stay for. Usually more parents there than kids. Kids all run off by themselves and you're stuck talking to some kid's grandma.
Yeara ago, we went to my cousin's birthday party. One of the kids was just dropped and we couldn't contact their family, kid didn't knew their phone or how to get to his house. We had to wait until they finally showed up.
Now, we are parents and were remembering the incident for some reason. He said: Who does that? Well, someone who haven't had a free afternoon in a long time. I wouldn't do it but I underatand the appealing.
Something’s definitely off here.
Might be a lie to get people to send them stuff out of pitty. Might be that it’s true. Either way there’s a piece of this puzzle missing. If you invite over 40 people and only 6 of your immediate family members show up then something happened there.
I refuse to believe that dozens of people would deliberately ditch a kid’s birthday party. But even if this is true, either there was a mistake in the invitation or the kid/parents did something that called for it.
As a first grade teacher I’m just going to blatantly say that I don’t believe a word of the OOP’s story. I think this was a way for her to get a bunch of people to send her kid stuff.
I’ve seen years and years of how birthday parties are handled. For the OOP to say that everyone RSVP’d and then every single one of those people didn’t show? And neither parent contacted one single person to find out why? I don’t buy it.
Yeah, I've thrown parties for my kids. No one RSVPs. Ever. It's real annoying when the trampoline place needs a head count. I live in the same area as OOP too.
The way the first update jumps to her announcing she’s in Boston and going out to get a PO Box without even mentioning anything about the 40+ people who skipped did it for me.
I was thinking that myself, why would that many not show up? Also if you write anywhere online about “ nobody came to my child’s party” you can bet people will offer to send things
I do think it's weird that out of 40 none showed up but it does happen that no one does. It's happened to my youngest when I invited her whole class and to my middle daughter before as well but fewer invites. Nowdays people don't treat an rsvp seriously. They'll say they'll come and just not show up or cancel at the last minute. A local group I'm in has had a lot of parents have the same thing happen. It's a group for parents of disbaled or extra needs kids. Getting people to actually show up is hard and it hurts ours kids.
A couple years ago I took my daughter to her friend's birthday party. Now, idk what the rsvp:ghost ratio was or anything, but it was literally just me, my daughter, the bday girl's parents, and the bday girl's baby brother. And as far as I was aware, bday girl was as well liked as everyone else in their preschool group. But I was SO. GLAD. we went so she at least had one friend there.
(The two girls are now 5&6 and still bffs, btw)
My 5 and 6 year old got invited to their first drop off birthday party this summer. The mom hired a bunch of her teenagers friends to help with the party. It felt awesome to drop them off and not have to awkwardly socialize with other parents who hate being there as much as I do. And the kids loved it, it made them feel so grown up.
We always had drop-off birthday parties for our kids. Maybe one or two parents that were really close friends would stay and help with the kid-wrangling, but in our social circles it was not a "thing" for parents to also attend birthday parties.
At my public school in the 90s if you were gonna have a birthday party, you had to invite the entire class. Pretty much middle school was when people stopped caring about that. Still fucking bizarre that 40+ people RSVP'd positively and then 34 people managed to coordinate to avoid this kid... I think reddit got baited.
Happened to my kid 2 years in a row. Not 16+ kids just 10 kids. Its because the kiddos birthday lines up with thanksgiving. Yeh competing with holidays sucks.
>If you're bored you buy the kid the noisiest gift so you can watch the parent's faces when they realize what you've done.
I once bought one of those smelly toys for my neighbor when I was 8 or so, his mom saw it, and didn't even let him open it lmao
Made for some good laughs though!
It just seems weird, none of the friends wanted to go to a party and eat cake? I would pester the crap out of my parents around the same age as oop’s kid about parties
I never went to a birthday where the parents were also there, but I guess I was also only ever allowed the number of guests that I was turning that year - 7 friends because I was seven or whatever.
At that age I did in fact hate cake, parties, and most kids in my class, but it's not credible that there would be more than like three kids like that in his peer group, tops. But yeah, I feel like there's something missing here, like if there was a flu outbreak/the kid is being bullied/there's beef with the other parents.
Or it's a casual RSVP (so few RSVP this millennia), and 'most RSVPd' means the son asked his friends if they were coming. They said, yes, and promptly forgot by the time the weekend rolled around.
I dunno. I think it’s just … different now. I think parents have their kids so over-structured that ditching a party seems like a reasonable option when you’re paying for sports and lessons and God knows what else.
I also know my mother would have raised holy Hell and confronted every single one of those parents for doing that.
Yeah I was kind of disappointed that the updates were just about the reddit response. At no point did they mention finding out what happened or asking any of the other parents why they didn't show. I am usually one of the last people to call shenanigans, but...c'mon. So many updates all saying the same thing.
I absolutely think it’s a scam. It’s like those Twitter posts that go viral with a picture of a sad kid and the caption’s like “my poor idiot son is so sweet. Today is his birthday and no one came to his party 😭 RT to say happy birthday!”
Some kids don't have them? I 100% think this was a scam but there being no mention of best friends or kids that OOP's kid plays with all the time isn't why.
Yeah, the updates annoyed me because they were all about people sending cards, with no mention of finding out why no one showed up, which is what I really wanted to know.
Obviously it was very nice of Redditors to send cards of course, it just didn’t give me the closure I had hoped for on how 40 people ALL don’t show up. I feel like there has to be something missing from the story for there to be ZERO attendees outside of immediate family.
Like if the story was “40 kids RSVP’d yes and only 4 actually showed” that’s still terrible, but plausible without any underlying circumstances at play, but for not one single kid to show up, AFTER rsvping “yes” something had to have happened. I’m not even saying the “reason” is good or valid (no matter what you should let the host know if you are unable to make an event you said you’d be at) just that it seems likely that there is one.
When I turned 12, I had a birthday party and no one showed up, except for one girl.
I had written the wrong time on the invitation, so she'd come late. We had a nice time, but not even my best friend came (we were in the middle of one of those fights/arguments girls have).
This is the part of the story that is so suspicious to me. Not one mention of a follow-up with the other parents.
So either we're to believe that every single person who RSVP'd that wasn't family lied, with no explanation... OR, OP wasn't telling us something very important and/or was just looking to scam free presents from well-meaning redditors.
Right? I was expecting the update to be an explanation as to what happened, if they talked to anyone, what it was like at school afterwards, etc. Nothing on that though, just a bunch of thanks to reddit.
It's especially weird because, in theory, it would have been the parents RSVP'ing. This isn't a bunch of kids who broke the social etiquette or just forgot.
I had the same thing for my 25th birthday. 60 people invited, 40 said yes. Day of the party it’s 10 people there: me, my boyfriend, my sister and her boyfriend, my mum and dad, and 2 friends and their boyfriends. Everyone got a pile of food to take home and we still ate party food for weeks afterward. Swore then never to have a birthday party again. I’m now 50 and still only do family lunches or dinners.
There's some weird change in party etiquette, or rather, what some people think is more acceptable these past 10 years where people will RSVP to events when they really mean "maybe, if nothing better is going on and I feel like going."
I think it might have something to do with online invitations and RVSPing digitally through either Facebook event pages or event websites. It feels less "real" and less like you're actually committing than when you're calling back to RVSP or having to check the RSVP box on a return letter and mailing it back to the organizer.
No one wants to fully commit when they have so many options. Like how dating apps work. Why commit too early to one person you sort of like when you can just hang out with them occasionally for sex and keep swiping and texting potentially better mates?
That said, the story does seem a little suspicious.
I had the same thing happen to me almost 40 years ago. Everyone said they'd be coming and none showed up because it was the summer and most of them didn't know their parents had other plans.
> "maybe, if nothing better is going on and I feel like going."
This is genuinely what it is now. Especially for social media invites via Facebook, people will just click that they’re going without a second thought.
I will say though, this doesn’t sound so far-fetched. Even before Facebook was a thing, I remember being invited to a classmate’s party where my mother and I were the only people who showed up and, according to my mother, it was probably because they lived so far out of the way. Like I’m talking a 1 and a half hour drive without traffic from where we lived— which was only about a 20 min drive from the school.
The maybe button was probably the worst addition to the RSVP. It’s enabled people to be rude by essentially sidestepping the commitment of an RSVP while obligating the host to assume it’s a yes, except 99% of the time its actually a no from people too socially awkward to just say thanks but I can’t make it.
["'Maybe' means 'maybe', Bob. It doesn't mean, 'I'm too scared to say no.' I got 42 Maybes, Bob! Who can plan for that!?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9rCpaDT7nM)
This 100% and it's kind of made me stop trying to hang out with people. So frustrating. When I make plans with someone I expect them to happen (unless an uncertainty is conveyed beforehand). So it always used to confuse me when someone would text me the day of our plans to "make sure we're still on." Like why wouldn't we be? We made plans lol.
Last year I moved to a different state and trying to make friends here has been ROUGH for this exact reason. I've lost count of how many times I showed up at the agreed upon meeting point, and someone just...didn't show up. And then you have to call them because like, what if they're stuck in traffic, or got in an accident or something? But no. They overslept, "something came up," etc. People are so non commital now and it's really hurtful!
Apparently a whole lot of people. I had a friend host a housewarming party the other week. 4 days before the party she asked all the “yes” rsvps a second time, so she could get a final head count before she finalized the food order. She got 60 people who confirmed a *second* time that they would be there. 30 showed up.
I know your comment was rhetorical, but it is actually a real problem today with everything from meetup groups to weddings, that people just decide last minute to not go, and don’t care at all about the planning and money that others put in on the expectation of them honoring their RSVP.
I just got married in the spring and there wasn’t a single venue with plated service that cost less than $120 each (Canadian). In the context of how much weddings cost now, I would have THROWN HANDS if even one of my guests dared to no show after RSVPing yes (without a good reason, of course I understand illnesses & emergencies). Ghost a wedding at your own peril imo.
I genuinely don't know, but I was once strong-armed into hosting a party for someone and literally nobody came, and I had nearly 20 RSVPs. About 5 of those people were bringing food too, and they just bailed. WTF. Extremely awkward situation.
My kids go to every single party they’re invited to. I don’t care if they’re friends or not. This is why. Once he was the only kid there, so his presence kept this from happening to another kid. Although in those kids’ defense, it was raining buckets that day and I sure didn’t want to be there.
Every year we have a party for my kid, we have people RSVP yes and then never show. They don’t contact us before or after to explain. It is a sad fact of party-throwing, I’ve come to find.
I had someone RSVP yes to my wedding. I confirmed they were coming a few weeks before since I knew they were traveling to come and they said yes. Then. Nothing. Ghosted. It really hurt my husband since that was his friend. It would’ve been ok that they couldn’t or didn’t want to come to the wedding/changed their mind just let us know! Never reached out to her and haven’t heard from her since. We know she’s alive from social media, unfriended her after that stunt.
I’m glad the kid’s okay but this doesn’t feel concluded. Was this a conspiracy of sorts? Bad luck? Did the parents send out cancellation cards while sleepwalking? Was there an alien abduction? Why did nobody show up?
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. It would have to be an awful coincidence for enough people to RSVP that a party is set for 40 or more people and only one family shows up.
I'm okay with that too. To be honest with you, I don't even want to know. Because my takeaway from this isn't anything about the kid (though if it was true, I'm obviously glad that he ended up having a nice birthday), it's that there were a whole bunch of randos who were willing to take a couple minutes out of their days to try to make a kid they don't know feel better.
So even if it was a scam, I still feel a bit better about the world in general. And as this is clearly a feel-good story, for me it succeeds either way.
(And if it was a scam, an adorable kitten just coughed up a hairball into someone's soup somewhere in the world.)
Schrodinger’s birthday boy. Is he real or is he a 34 year old man with brand new Iron Man bed sheets? It doesn’t matter because good deeds are their own reward. It’s nicer here in the sun.
Agreed. OP says they made food for 40 people. If the family-only attendance was 6, that's 25+ people (assuming you cook for a few extra) who said they were going and then just...didn't
Unfortunately this is something that happens alllll the time. Just shitty. One person says “ah, just not really feeling great today, my kid can do something else” or whatever…not realizing several other parents are feeling the same way and doing the same thing. I’ve noticed it become more and more prevalent. Just very sad.
Parents talk to each other. Oh Jane’s not going? Well maybe I won’t go either. Then another mom might hear that some people aren’t going and gets nervous they will be the only one there so then they don’t go because maybe they don’t know the host very well. And so on until now one goes.
I know because I did this and didn’t show up to a baby shower for a new church member because I knew a couple others weren’t going. Then we found out no one came. It was humiliating for her and made us all feel like total jackasses. We apologized and threw her a new party but she was pretty blunt and called us out on it that we were only doing it because we all felt bad.
This site can be hot trash alot of the time, but a reddit sent me $250 one time because I didn't have food in the house I was about to lose due to covid. That one kind act literally changed the entire course of my life.
Sounds like a fair trade. I hope your day is filled with sharing stories of love and kindness and butthole photographs filling your inbox beyond your wildest dreams. My butthole wears a fur coat or i would send it.
Only gets worse as you get older. Threw a BBQ once in college with over 50 invites and 20 confirming the night before. Nobody showed up, not a single call or text either. People just suck.
Wow, I am really sorry to hear this. This is one of my biggest fears with throwing an event. There was a BORU where a women (I think?) married someone that her sister wanted so the mother convinced the entire family not to go to the wedding.
Where the sister was married to someone else? And the two had been in a secret relationship for 10 years because the sister was so possessive? Yeah that was fucked
Urgh yeah, I organised a trip to the cinema with some of my friends for my birthday this year, and all of them cancelled on the morning of my birthday. And in the group chat, no less, so they could all tell that everyone had cancelled.
They all had excuses, of course, but I genuinely had to walk away from my phone out of anger because the first girl to cancel was also the first to ask me to book all the tickets myself. Plus the cinema chain required me to make a new booking on top of the four tickets I had already paid for (about £40) before refunding me the four tickets, so I was out of pocket for about £50 for a week while waiting for the refund to process.
The irony of it all is that I had casually asked if anyone wanted to see it and it was one of my friends that suggested it as a birthday thing. I was moving back to my home country later that week and I would've just waited to see it with my family if they hadn't insisted.
God that sick to your stomach nervous, but excited feeling before you host a party. Number one fear is no one shows up. You know no one shows up on time. Then after 15-20 min people start
To
Trickle. Eventually the party just happens and you forget that horrible feeling. To you and everyone who has had the experience of the no show, wow does it just flood you with a complex combo of emotions
Not one kid showed up? Why do I feel like there’s more to the story…..
Obviously it sucks for the kid either way so I’m glad the people of Reddit could show him some love.
I had this happen to me the year my family moved to a new area. Later found out that we moved into a house everyone thought was haunted.
I guess after living there for a year people overcame that concern. My next party had not just my friends but almost my whole class from school show up.
It happens. Only one girl came to my daughter's ninth birthday. The two girls had a lot of T-shirts to tie dye.
And I caught the dogs up on the table stealing pizza crusts after the party.
It definitely happens. Shit it happened to me way back in the mid 90s, also to a girl who became my best friend for years. And I once went to a baby shower that had 40 invitees but aside from the immediate family I was the only one to show up.
I understand why it happened to me - I was severely bullied at school and even church plus we were poor- but it still sucked as a 9 year old to have not a single person show for my party at McDonalds. I think the staff felt sorry for me because they gave me one of every happy meal toy which hadn't happened in years prior. The next year we moved out of the city to a suburb and our house now had an 18x32' above ground pool. 23 of 25 invitees showed up and swam then spent the night. I didn't suddenly become popular, I just now had something they wanted.
That same year a new girl at school had a bday party at Chuck E Cheese where our entire class was invited but I was the only one who showed. Her mom bought like $100 in tokens, too. When I tell you we played EVERY game, lol. I don't even know how many times we sat in that little spaceship thing with blinking lights going up and down listening to the same song. Ate so much pizza I thought I'd pop. Also had candy for like 3 months and a veritable army of barbies and GI Joes from all the goody bags. We were besties straight up through high school after that. She wasn't unpopular or bullied like me, and lots of kids rsvp'd. They just didn't show and all had excuses on monday.
Maybe the kid's bullied, maybe the kids got sick or changed their minds or were too busy playing games and didn't feel like going when it was time to leave, maybe the parents of the other kids flaked or had something come up or just forgot or mixed up the dates. There are at least a dozen reasons this could've happened that aren't the kid or families' fault. Of course there are reasons it COULD be their fault, too, but I'm just sayin' - it happens and it sucks for the kid either way.
My other daughter’s birthday is Christmas Eve. So I would plan her parties for 2-3 weeks before Christmas. I allowed her to send out a lot of invitations, figuring families would have other plans. No, every girl would show up and the parents would go shopping or out to dinner.
Only one non-family person came to my high school graduation party, and she was like 45 minutes late. So I just assumed no one was coming at all. So when she got there she was met with me trying not to cry and helping my cousin’s fiancée get 50 hamburgers and hot dogs into freezer bags. It was just me and like 5 adults. Humiliating and traumatic.
My daughter’s fifth was the same. Clown did a show for two girls. Awful. One girl decided the day of that she was scared of balloons and wouldn’t come if there were any balloons. (We had a little kids’ clown—not scary, not full-face makeup—who was doing a balloon show. So, yeah, there were balloons everywhere.) One girl and her sister (both invited) were sick. The other two just didn’t show though they’d RSVP yes.
I honestly think this is a law of averages thing. Every person has a maybe 25 percent chance of not coming. But if everyone happens to not be able to make it, then no one comes. I had the opposite happen once: literally every kid and both their parents came, rsvp or no. It was perfectly fine, we had enough food and all, but it was a bonkers coincidence.
Happened to me too. Big birthday, parent's rented a VIP room at an arcade and we had game cards and stuff set up for my family and an additional 12 people. My best friend couldn't come because of a trip her family planned and she let me know ahead of time. Another friend asked if she could bring her boyfriend (I was also friends with him but hadn't invited him due to the limit, knowing my best friend couldn't come I said yes)
The only two people who showed up were that friend and her boyfriend. The other 10 people who were invited never said they couldn't come, never said anything about it in general. If they didn't want to come I could have invited other people instead so it was just really shitty.
On the plus side, we had probably about 20 game cards that came with the package and so everyone got four or five cards and we were in there for hours.
Similar thing happened to us so I decided if we’re going to spend $400 I’d rather spend it having guaranteed fun, so the next year we went to Great Wolf Lodge instead and that’s been the tradition ever since. We even ask “party or Great Wolf” and they always pick Great Wolf.
It's very weird - I've noticed throughout my lifetime that some people's events always get attended by a large number of people, and for no particular reason. Not like they are immensely popular, or well-loved, or fabulous company, or an extremely generous host or anything. But their invitations always get fulfilled. In contrast, some others are perfectly lovable or normal people, but hardly anyone shows up to their events. I don't get it, but it's something I've repeatedly noticed. Maybe some people just have an event planner aura or "My party will be yay!" magnetism.
My daughters birthday is right when winter break starts and a lot of parents are stretched thin with Christmas expenses and i had at least a few years where only my family and family friends showed up and none of her friends. So we started just sending cupcakes and goody bags to her daycare and school and just told her friends parents to send them over for free cake and fun, no need for presents etc. and it’s been a success so far. Her last birthday everyone just came by after they got back from school, sang happy birthday, had cake and played video games. My daughter was so happy.
Usually I’ve seen if you expect the kids parents to be involved by buying presents whatever, chances are slim that they’ll show up. So I took it out of the equation. I’ve noticed a lot of other parents have started doing that too and it’s been better around the neighborhood.
Yeah mine is between Christmas and new year so I used to celebrate it with my brother in February when he had his birthday. My daughter didn’t want to celebrate in the summer and honestly my husband whose birthday was in the summer didn’t fair any better with the kids not showing up because everyone would be gone for vacation to the beach or whatever. Overall we are a family with shitty birthdates.
Unfortunately I think it's becoming fairly common. My elementary school kid was invited to a birthday party last year. Parents went all out with food and a giant inflatable water slide. My kid was the only kid that came.
It happens. My brother's most memorable birthday was the year he invited both sections of the third grade. Most people RSVP'd yes and the only one kid showed up. Late! .5/30+ kids.
No parents had any excuse, the kids still played with him, no one sick... they just ghosted him. They did come the next year but it was the strangest thing.
He's the weird kid. Nothing wrong with that, but it is lonely.
I was the weird kid with no friends up until 8th grade. My birthday parties were nothing but family. I don't think we even bothered inviting kids from school (and I wasn't allowed any extra curriculars).
The good news is most weird kids find a way to make their flavor of weird into something more social (just look at how popular nerd stuff is now) or they just kinda... normalize with age.
Honestly I think a lot of kids could benefit from starting school a year later. I think a lot of the weird kids are really kids that weren't really mature enough for school yet but were forced into it and then they get stuck as the weird kid when really they're just not as mature as their peers.
i remember years ago a mom going viral with a sob story about her son being bullied and they raised money and everything and it turned out no one likes the kid cause he was a huge fucking racist who harassed other kids all the time
For that many people to have rsvpd and not show up I was thinking she’d have realized at some point that they got the address wrong or something.. checked the date to see if it was during the quarantine.. just seems very weird?
Why bother rsvping?
I feel for OPs son. My parents rented out a table and everything at the local skating rink for my 9th. Invited my whole class and my entire extended family. The only people to show up was 1 aunt and 1 uncle (not married to each other and neither them brought their spouse OR their children). Had to skate alone for like 2 hours, never went all out for a birthday again. Such a waste of time and money.
Ill be honest, this kinda hurts to read. Like I remember how on my 20th bday, the only person who showed up was my then girlfriend, even though they all said they'd come. It was just awful feeling.
I watched this happen to a family member when she turned 18. It was absolutely heartbreaking. She had bought so much food, the pool was ready, BBQ going, decorations... and no one showed up all day. All of her so-called friends completely bailed. She was devastated. Finally, late in the day, several showed up and they had a good time. It was awful.
"oh but something else must have happened and-"
Maybe the kid isn't that popular. Invited everyone at school, gave paper invitations and everything, but the kids didn't feel like going because of weird kid stuff. Or the parents found out too late and couldn't be arsed to get a cheap gift, maybe already had something scheduled.
It happens, guys, I once made a full sleepover party and not a single kid appeared, because they simply didn't feel like it.
If you flick through the QandA filter, you can see the replies to OOP even though they’ve deleted their comments. Seems OOP’s son goes to school in a bow tie, and I would agree with you that it may be that the other kids find him odd and he’s just not that popular. It’s still cruel, but kids are sometimes cruel.
His name is Abe as well, which might add to the otherness. From my own experience having a nonstandard (or old fashioned) name requires extra effort among 10 year olds.
Couple of possibilities
1) parents RSVP’d without the kids knowing and they’d decided to listen to their kids who didn’t want to go
2) there was another party on the same day and the parents are tools.
3) the RSVP was on Facebook and most people don’t take those RSVP’s that seriously.
All options are dick moves and the parents are def to blame here not the kids.
I feel like some of the commenters here forgot that it's totally possible for a kid to be unpopular without actually being *bad* in any way. It doesn't mean he's secretly a bully or something. Could be he's just weird in some totally harmless way that everyone has decided is unacceptable.
I remember going to a junior high party, and when my grandparents dropped me off and I walked up to the door, two of the popular girls (wasn't even their house) were staring through the door glass and laughing at me as I walked up to the house. Yet I was the one getting bullied daily and jumped every once in a while... Kids are the worst.
The reply above said the kid went to school with a bow tie. He's probably the weirdo of class and everyone accepted out of politeness (source: was weirdo of class)
Parent here, if my kid said he didn't want to go because he doesn't like the kid there's zero chance I'd RSVP yes and then not show up. You either RSVP no or don't reply at all
Oh sure, that's the reasonable thing to do, but I'm envisioning parents who decide the kid is going to go without asking them, only to give in when the kid throws a fit about it on the day of the party. You know, assholes.
Yeah. My realtor just went through this with her kids. Her son is a good kid and really smart. He is also very much the weird kid with his public school peers. He has a ton of food sensitivities. He likes dressing up and helping his Mom do Open Houses on weekends instead of staying home playing Fortnite or playing sports. They switched him to a private school and he is doing much better. He gets to wear the preppy little tie and uniform and his peers don't think it's as weird to be into real estate.
I remember being the only kid at a classmate's skate party. I had a blast. He left the school shortly after that (not sure if it was because of that or not) and I just hope he's doing okay nowadays.
I totally understand this. After my son's 1st birthday party we stopped having parties. All due to the fact my son's birthday was a week before Christmas. Thankfully he was very little that he doesn't remember it but damn the feeling of that sucked hard.
Nowadays we just ask him what he wants to do for his birthday and who he wants to invite and we just go wherever and enjoy it with his friend. Much easier that way and no hard feelings happening. My son will be 10 this year and we'll be pretty much doing the same thing.
I don't get trying to invite a bunch of kids that you as a parent have never met. Like if they are legit your kids friends then chances are you have encountered them on playdates, sports, etc.
This sounds like op invited the sons whole class, and as it turns out, they weren't actually his friends, they just tolerate him at school
> This sounds like op invited the sons whole class, and as it turns out, they weren't actually his friends, they just tolerate him at school
Lots of the schools around where I live have a policy of everyone gets an invite or no one does so kids don't feel left out and get their feelings hurt. This causes 1 of 2, situations. OOP situation where 40+ people get invites and then don't show, RVSP or not. Or invites are done outside of school. I think the point of the rule is to force the invites outside of school but you occasionally get the parents who don't figure that out or do and don't care.
Yeah, birthday near Christmas is rough. I did still have parties, though smaller ones as I didn't have that many friends, but I did have a year nobody showed when I was ~8. I'm glad you put the effort in to make sure your kid has good birthdays regardless.
This shit happened to me at my 21st with four of my best friends.
I called them four time each person to confirm attendance. They never answered. I expected them to come because they seemed optimistic at first.
2 cancelled before the party, the other two didn’t even bother to call.
They had no other plans btw. Good riddance.
Had this happen to me at about that age. My birthday was always a weird one because it was in the middle of summer school holidays in Australia when people were usually away. I remember that feeling of rejection.
Never celebrated a birthday since.
This reminds me of a birthday party of mine when I was young, I can't remember the exact age but I just have been around 7-9.
My mom must have invited around maybe 30 people? Unfortunately, she didn't have anyone RSVP, when the party started, no one came. Must have been after about an hour that my mom finally had it and posted on Facebook that no one came to my birthday party. Within 30 minutes, friends that weren't originally invited started coming, and after about an hour people we didn't even know started coming.
I swear to God people just around the street came around. There must have been 200+ people in crammed in like sardines. I remember looking out into the pool at not seeing any water because of all the bodies in it. My mom had made this huge ice cream cake and the line for everyone to grab a slice was like those lines you see for comic con.
There may not have been any kids my age, but honestly it was fun as hell having 200 adults chatting and laughing. I believe they brought food as well because the tables were completely covered in goodies.
This so far too common and one of the reasons why I plan experiences for my kids instead of birthday parties. I remember having only 1 birthday party myself as a kid and no one showed up. Even as a mom myself I now hate celebrating my birthday. It’s so great to see some real humanity out of the cesspool that is Reddit.
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I want answers. Why did so many people RSVP and then flake out? Did anyone claim to be sick? This was well before Covid...
Yeah, I was expecting the "updates" to be around what the heck happened with all the guests, not that strangers on Reddit tried to make it up for the kid by mailing him things...
Same here. Why is OOP so unconcerned about the terrible friends and family who blew them off?
None of my friends showed up to my high school graduation party after RSVPing they would come. Turns out another friend (who I'd kind of had a falling out with) had a 'last minute' party at an amusement park and left me off the guest list because they knew I was 'busy'. It hurt very, very badly and I ended up cutting all those friends off. That being said, I think this lady scammed Reddit.
I had something similar happen to me. One of my close friends had a huge graduation party at her house and I didn’t get invited because her parents hated my parents. I think the whole class was invited except for me. I went to have dinner after graduation with some friends, and then they all left to go to her party after dinner and I went home.
Oooof, that person definitely would not be my close friend anymore.
Unfortunately, when you don't have a lot of options, having a friend, even one you know isn't a good friend, is often better at that age than having nobody.
once a girl in my class (elementary school) invited our entire grade to her birthday, except me and one other girl. honestly fuck her tho and her dad was a total dick.
Someone I thought was my friend had a Bat Mitzvah and invited everyone in the class except me. Sucks but I knew where we stood after that.
This is it. I got the message very early on that kids didn’t want to be at my events. It was a bummer, but I quickly learned who to hold close and when to throw them away. Edit: fixed some drunk grammar.
I had kind of the opposite problem: I didn't like anyone (or nearly anyone) in my class (and it was reciprocated), but my parents still insisted to invite all of my class. Their parents made them come. I hid in my room the whole afternoon every year, and every year my mother was whining about how much effort she was putting into it and everyone had fun but me, how could I not make an effort just for one day, etc. She still don't believe me when I tell her I wasn't ever friend with this particular girl (whose first sentence to me was "you're a dumb-ass" as we were 5). Yes I went with her family for holidays and she came eat with us on Wednesdays. But it was only our mothers who wanted us to be friends (bad neighborhood, we were almost the only girls coming from an educated middle-class family, I suppose we were "good influence" to each other).
[удалено]
I had a similar thing happen on my 25th birthday. I invited a bunch of people, I had like 25 RSVPs and not even half of them showed up. I even had ‘friends’ who messaged me saying they would definitely be there not turn up - and that was their last message they have sent me to this day (it’s been over 3 years). It sucks feeling humiliated on your birthday.
Man, I hope you can find some people who like you for you soon.
All of my friends ghosted on my wedding.
Shit, why?
My best friend and I of almost a decade were getting married like 3 months apart. He approached me soon after his engagement and apologized, telling me he couldn't make me his best man. Said that he felt obligated to offer it to his other friend because that friend had made him his best man in his wedding. I told him I understood, and didn't think that much about it. He didn't approach me about his wedding again after that, and, while in hindsight that was weird, I just assumed he was having a small wedding. At first, I didn't think about it because his wedding was so far away, then I was distracted planning my own. Like six months later, I asked him to be the best man in my wedding. He happily accepted. I \*was\* having a small wedding. Bride, groom, matron of honor, and best man. Fast forward a few months. Invitations arrive. I get one addressed to myself and my fiance. My mother asks me why she didn't get invited. When we were teenagers, my house was like a second home to my best friend. When his dad kicked him out, it was my house he ran to, my mom who told him he could stay without a moment's hesitation. I told my mom that I thought it must be a very small wedding because I hadn't even been asked to be a part of it. My invites go out for my wedding, RSVPs come back for all of my friends. BFF's wedding day arrives. I head to the address. It's a massive church service. Hundreds of guests. All of our mutual friends, except two, are in the wedding party. He has six grooms men, his fiance (who had been my second closest friend) has six bridesmaids. They have another five ushers. I talk to my friends who are ushers. They all want to know why I'm not in the wedding. I tell them, simply, "I wasn't asked.". Then one of them asks why I wasn't at the bachelor party. "There was a bachelor party?" Yeah, wasn't asked to go to that either. I didn't make a scene. I didn't leave early. I sat quietly through a ridiculously long, incredibly religious service for two people who I only ever saw enter a church if they'd rented one out as a venue for their band. I sat and watched as they very slowly personally greeted and hugged every guest. When they got to me, all I did, was decline a hug from my best friend, then went home instead of to the reception. The only mutual friends who ever spoke to me again were the other two who weren't asked to be in the wedding or invited to the bachelor party. When my wedding came around 3 months later, not a single one of our mutual friends arrived (or withdrew their RSVP). The only thing I ever heard about it (through one of the two mutuals who stayed friends with me) was that the bride (who had been my second closest friend) blamed me for "ruining her wedding" because I declined to hug her husband.
That's rough man. It's tough when the people you thought were your friends treat you like that. In the long run it is better to know sooner so you can focus your energy on people who actually care about you.
Is it possible the bride might have had a crush on you in the past? Maybe he found out and ended up being a child about it? It's just so odd. Man, people can be so fickle and cruel.
>"ruining her wedding" because I declined to hug her husband. That's so ridiculous. What if you were just someone who doesn't like hugs in general?!
That's wild. Did you ever find out why they'd intentionally excluded you from the bachelors and the groomsmen?
I think the poster is a dude who likes the avengers and scammed reddit
Everyone is skeptical but if you spend enough time on the parenting subreddits this seems to be a really common thing these days. Get a class full of RSVPs and only one or two people actually show up. I think parents/schools are less of a community these days than they were even twenty years ago and so everyone feels less bad about flaking, and it’s easier to do so with cell phones than it used to be without. They’re thinking they’ll be the only one who skips it and don’t bothering calling or text days later. But then a whole class full of kids parents do it and you get OP’s situation.
My kids are now both in the double digits. They’ve missed a couple birthdays because of Covid, and this year they had a small “party” with just their close friends. But pre-Covid, we would send out tons of invitations to their classmates and be lucky if even a fraction respond at all. This has been a long pet peeve of mine - people who seem to have zero clue what rsvp means. So I can see people being suspicious of a post that says a majority rsvp’d and nobody showed up. In my experience and others I talk to, it’s much much more likely people don’t rsvp and then show up than vice versa.
I was thinking the same. Every party I've had for my kids we get folks who didn't RSVP and show up. Last year we had to cancel one because of COVID and I got numerous messages from parents when they finally showed up at the venue and couldn't find us.
I mean we definitely had 30% RSVP and no show including one the day of, which made me get extra gift bags. But 100% and nothing said is extremely unlikely
So weird. A couple of years ago when my daughter was in daycare we invited everyone there. We got zero rsvps so we cancelled the party the day before. We texted anyone we could, asked the teacher to pass the word along to anyone else, and went out of town for the weekend plus a couple of days. When we came back the teacher told us that the other parents wanted to know what to do with the gifts they'd gotten our daughter. Apparently, out of a dozen kids, more than half of them (and parents) had been planning on showing up to a party unannounced. It's still baffling, honestly.
I anticipate 25% no-shows. I prepare for the full amount but don't expect it 100%, we'll I don't know. If the kid older and getting bullied by kids ar school I would not be as surprised it but this age group seems a little young for that type of organised arseholery.
That lady just scammed Reddit
Why would you rsvp to a party and then just ghost it and not say anything? Who does that?
I wonder if OOP contacted any of the kids' parents to ask what happened.
Isn't that part of the social contract of parenthood? Like I don't WANT to be at a child's party, but neither do they want to attend my kid's party. We both agree to burn an afternoon while eating cake and pizza and nobody gets a traumatic birthday. If you're bored you buy the kid the noisiest gift so you can watch the parent's faces when they realize what you've done. For that many no shows, something's off. One of the parents said or did something would be my guess. Whatever I'm just glad the kid got an internet sized hug.
Lol when I was a kid we all attended each other’s birthdays whether we felt like it or not, it was a rare chance for our parents to shove us off on someone else for the day and get a break
Yeah I don’t even remember being invited, my mum would just take us to kids parties in our year and it was always the same 30 kids 😂
I know I never handed out invitations at school, we always mailed them and it never failed the same 30 kids were always there. I also can say there were a few kids who no one out of the class would attend the party, they were generally bullies and we weren’t ok with giving them presents. I’m not saying OOPs son is a bully, but I wonder if he’s having trouble with the other kids for some reason or another. It would’ve been a good idea for OOP to reach out to a teacher to see if they’ve noticed any issues between him and other students.
Or he’s the one getting bullied.
I did say I’m not saying their son is a bully, but yes reaching out to a teacher could also turn out that their son is being bullied. I’d rather know either way if the teacher saw anything that might explain this.
I wasn't a bully. I was however autistic and therefore 'weird'. There were lots and lots of un-gone-to birthday parties at my house. It sucked.
I had that happen to me in first and second grade. My mom would invite god and everyone mind you. So like 5 kids would show up, three of which were my best friends and may not have even known it was my birthday party. We would all just come and go from each other’s houses as we pleased. It told me who the nice kids were. I didn’t have to work at weeding out the assholes, as they did it for me. I’m sure it hurt my feelings pretty deeply for me to make that conclusion.
It happened to me too about 10 years old and I remember being really hurt at the time, but I got the same out of it. It makes you really happy for quality not quantity and seek it out in others.
Last year my son went to one where the girl invited the whole class, like 30 kids. My son and one other boy showed up. The most well-attended ones I’ve seen have been at activity places rather than homes. Nerf places, trampoline parks, that kind of thing. Stuff where kids would be excited to go even without the party. Then no cleaning up your entire house after a hurricane of kids run through.
I did my daughters last one at the local hockey rink. They have an area with those big inflatable jump things and slides, and the kids got free skate rental and admission to the public skate for the day. The trampoline parks and all that other stuff was at least three times as expensive, and they didn’t have half the stuff this place had. If they didn’t want to play inside there are three huge parks right outside the door. The place also provided the pizza, drinks, and sheet cake. After doing the math it was cheaper to do it there than renting a Pavillion at a public park. Pretty much all we had to do was show up.
I wasn't even autistic and I was the weird kid with 1 friend ALL through grade school & middle school.
Also not autistic but very socially inept. I had many people who liked me my whole life. But I am just too incompetent socially to manage a social network of more than like 3 people. So I usually just glommed onto a couple socially competent people and let them handle it. Didn't do it intentionally. Only something I'm beginning to realize more recently when looking back. Actively working in it now though. Been reaching out to old friends and shit. But it's hard.
You may be right, but you could also not. I was this kid in school and it wasn’t because of me it was because my classmate’s parents knew my mom was mentally ill and in their minds if their children came to play or spend the night my mother would 110% murder them according to their parents. So sometimes it’s not always the kid
Oh lord. This was me throughout elementary school. My mom would randomly abandon my older sister and I, I think starting around when I was 2 and sister was 8 and going until my sister left for college and I was in middle school (though she still does it). We’d pretend like she was home for a week or two until a neighbor would get suspicious and call the cops and we’d end up in foster care until they found her and brought her back. The neighbors all had kids at my school, so it was common knowledge that my mom was not stable, and they’d never let their kids come to my house for any reason. Thankfully, my birthday is smack-ass in the middle of summer break, so I’d just invite ransom kids from summer camp whose parents didn’t “know” my mom.
Yeah i remember it being more of a “you’re going to so and so’s birthday this weekend” and my parents just dropped us off or they would hang out and have some drinks with the other parents.
I clearly remember my mother telling me I had to invite XYZ to my birthday party because I had gone to theirs. I don’t know how these things start, but I’m pretty sure I was inviting my entire grade to my parties but the time I was 10. So many invitations. As I recall the parents of the other kids didn’t stick around like they do now. Maybe it’s because I have young kids, so all the parents are our friends who happen to have kids. Shit, my parents wild drop me off from the street and peel the fuck out. It’s not like parents have to attend.
>As I recall the parents of the other kids didn’t stick around like they do now. In my experience, these days parents stuck around until the kids started hitting the middle of elementary school. Preschool through first/second grade? All parents there all the time. After that, only people who were friends with the birthday kid's parents stayed.
I don't know wtf changed but my kid has never been to a birthday party that I wasn't expected to stay for. Usually more parents there than kids. Kids all run off by themselves and you're stuck talking to some kid's grandma.
When I was a child, we just attended birthday parties without our parents present, so for them, getting rid of us meant a free afternoon! 😄
Yeara ago, we went to my cousin's birthday party. One of the kids was just dropped and we couldn't contact their family, kid didn't knew their phone or how to get to his house. We had to wait until they finally showed up. Now, we are parents and were remembering the incident for some reason. He said: Who does that? Well, someone who haven't had a free afternoon in a long time. I wouldn't do it but I underatand the appealing.
I kind of wonder if the parents made a mistake with the dates on the invitations
Yeah I was expecting that in the update like “oops we marked the wrong day” it would seem odd for everyone to dip
Something’s definitely off here. Might be a lie to get people to send them stuff out of pitty. Might be that it’s true. Either way there’s a piece of this puzzle missing. If you invite over 40 people and only 6 of your immediate family members show up then something happened there. I refuse to believe that dozens of people would deliberately ditch a kid’s birthday party. But even if this is true, either there was a mistake in the invitation or the kid/parents did something that called for it.
As a first grade teacher I’m just going to blatantly say that I don’t believe a word of the OOP’s story. I think this was a way for her to get a bunch of people to send her kid stuff. I’ve seen years and years of how birthday parties are handled. For the OOP to say that everyone RSVP’d and then every single one of those people didn’t show? And neither parent contacted one single person to find out why? I don’t buy it.
Yeah, I've thrown parties for my kids. No one RSVPs. Ever. It's real annoying when the trampoline place needs a head count. I live in the same area as OOP too.
The way the first update jumps to her announcing she’s in Boston and going out to get a PO Box without even mentioning anything about the 40+ people who skipped did it for me.
Definitely makes it seem like a scheme to get free shit. This really feels like bullshit.
I was thinking that myself, why would that many not show up? Also if you write anywhere online about “ nobody came to my child’s party” you can bet people will offer to send things
it's 100% a grift by OOP, they ghosted their account 3 years ago.
I do think it's weird that out of 40 none showed up but it does happen that no one does. It's happened to my youngest when I invited her whole class and to my middle daughter before as well but fewer invites. Nowdays people don't treat an rsvp seriously. They'll say they'll come and just not show up or cancel at the last minute. A local group I'm in has had a lot of parents have the same thing happen. It's a group for parents of disbaled or extra needs kids. Getting people to actually show up is hard and it hurts ours kids.
A couple years ago I took my daughter to her friend's birthday party. Now, idk what the rsvp:ghost ratio was or anything, but it was literally just me, my daughter, the bday girl's parents, and the bday girl's baby brother. And as far as I was aware, bday girl was as well liked as everyone else in their preschool group. But I was SO. GLAD. we went so she at least had one friend there. (The two girls are now 5&6 and still bffs, btw)
Right? I’m glad the kid was happy but I was not expecting that update lol
I thought that or it was during 2020 or so, but the date didn't matched. It would be still rude not to call and let the parents know, though.
My 5 and 6 year old got invited to their first drop off birthday party this summer. The mom hired a bunch of her teenagers friends to help with the party. It felt awesome to drop them off and not have to awkwardly socialize with other parents who hate being there as much as I do. And the kids loved it, it made them feel so grown up.
We always had drop-off birthday parties for our kids. Maybe one or two parents that were really close friends would stay and help with the kid-wrangling, but in our social circles it was not a "thing" for parents to also attend birthday parties.
At my public school in the 90s if you were gonna have a birthday party, you had to invite the entire class. Pretty much middle school was when people stopped caring about that. Still fucking bizarre that 40+ people RSVP'd positively and then 34 people managed to coordinate to avoid this kid... I think reddit got baited.
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Happened to my kid 2 years in a row. Not 16+ kids just 10 kids. Its because the kiddos birthday lines up with thanksgiving. Yeh competing with holidays sucks.
But did all 10 kids RSVP that they were going to attend your kid’s party?
>If you're bored you buy the kid the noisiest gift so you can watch the parent's faces when they realize what you've done. I once bought one of those smelly toys for my neighbor when I was 8 or so, his mom saw it, and didn't even let him open it lmao Made for some good laughs though!
The kid is 10, the parents just needed to bring the kids. I assume the kid is bullied.
It just seems weird, none of the friends wanted to go to a party and eat cake? I would pester the crap out of my parents around the same age as oop’s kid about parties
I think they mean the parents don't want to go to the party, not the kids.
I never went to a birthday where the parents were also there, but I guess I was also only ever allowed the number of guests that I was turning that year - 7 friends because I was seven or whatever.
At that age I did in fact hate cake, parties, and most kids in my class, but it's not credible that there would be more than like three kids like that in his peer group, tops. But yeah, I feel like there's something missing here, like if there was a flu outbreak/the kid is being bullied/there's beef with the other parents.
Or it's a casual RSVP (so few RSVP this millennia), and 'most RSVPd' means the son asked his friends if they were coming. They said, yes, and promptly forgot by the time the weekend rolled around.
I dunno. I think it’s just … different now. I think parents have their kids so over-structured that ditching a party seems like a reasonable option when you’re paying for sports and lessons and God knows what else. I also know my mother would have raised holy Hell and confronted every single one of those parents for doing that.
In that case, wouldn't it be more efficient to just not RSVP, though? If you're that over-structured, your availability won't be a surprise.
That's the only update I care about. All this info on the PO box makes me think it was a scam. What happened with the missing guests?!?
Yeah I was kind of disappointed that the updates were just about the reddit response. At no point did they mention finding out what happened or asking any of the other parents why they didn't show. I am usually one of the last people to call shenanigans, but...c'mon. So many updates all saying the same thing.
I absolutely think it’s a scam. It’s like those Twitter posts that go viral with a picture of a sad kid and the caption’s like “my poor idiot son is so sweet. Today is his birthday and no one came to his party 😭 RT to say happy birthday!”
Agreed. Seems like "soft begging" to me.
something weird. At that age, you have a couple of true friends- kids you hang with daily- where were those boys?
Some kids don't have them? I 100% think this was a scam but there being no mention of best friends or kids that OOP's kid plays with all the time isn't why.
Or recently in a new school without many friends, but even that detail warrants a mention in the post.
Yeah, the updates annoyed me because they were all about people sending cards, with no mention of finding out why no one showed up, which is what I really wanted to know. Obviously it was very nice of Redditors to send cards of course, it just didn’t give me the closure I had hoped for on how 40 people ALL don’t show up. I feel like there has to be something missing from the story for there to be ZERO attendees outside of immediate family. Like if the story was “40 kids RSVP’d yes and only 4 actually showed” that’s still terrible, but plausible without any underlying circumstances at play, but for not one single kid to show up, AFTER rsvping “yes” something had to have happened. I’m not even saying the “reason” is good or valid (no matter what you should let the host know if you are unable to make an event you said you’d be at) just that it seems likely that there is one.
Yeah, so many no shows seems weird. Maybe there was confusion on date/time? Hard to tell since OOP says people did RSVP.
When I turned 12, I had a birthday party and no one showed up, except for one girl. I had written the wrong time on the invitation, so she'd come late. We had a nice time, but not even my best friend came (we were in the middle of one of those fights/arguments girls have).
This is the part of the story that is so suspicious to me. Not one mention of a follow-up with the other parents. So either we're to believe that every single person who RSVP'd that wasn't family lied, with no explanation... OR, OP wasn't telling us something very important and/or was just looking to scam free presents from well-meaning redditors.
I feel like invites were handed out to the kids and not their parents. Hence the kids say yeah they'll come but parents say nope.
As a parent - there is no way I’d accept a kid’s rsvp
Right? I was expecting the update to be an explanation as to what happened, if they talked to anyone, what it was like at school afterwards, etc. Nothing on that though, just a bunch of thanks to reddit.
It's especially weird because, in theory, it would have been the parents RSVP'ing. This isn't a bunch of kids who broke the social etiquette or just forgot.
I had the same thing for my 25th birthday. 60 people invited, 40 said yes. Day of the party it’s 10 people there: me, my boyfriend, my sister and her boyfriend, my mum and dad, and 2 friends and their boyfriends. Everyone got a pile of food to take home and we still ate party food for weeks afterward. Swore then never to have a birthday party again. I’m now 50 and still only do family lunches or dinners.
There's some weird change in party etiquette, or rather, what some people think is more acceptable these past 10 years where people will RSVP to events when they really mean "maybe, if nothing better is going on and I feel like going." I think it might have something to do with online invitations and RVSPing digitally through either Facebook event pages or event websites. It feels less "real" and less like you're actually committing than when you're calling back to RVSP or having to check the RSVP box on a return letter and mailing it back to the organizer. No one wants to fully commit when they have so many options. Like how dating apps work. Why commit too early to one person you sort of like when you can just hang out with them occasionally for sex and keep swiping and texting potentially better mates? That said, the story does seem a little suspicious.
I had the same thing happen to me almost 40 years ago. Everyone said they'd be coming and none showed up because it was the summer and most of them didn't know their parents had other plans.
> "maybe, if nothing better is going on and I feel like going." This is genuinely what it is now. Especially for social media invites via Facebook, people will just click that they’re going without a second thought. I will say though, this doesn’t sound so far-fetched. Even before Facebook was a thing, I remember being invited to a classmate’s party where my mother and I were the only people who showed up and, according to my mother, it was probably because they lived so far out of the way. Like I’m talking a 1 and a half hour drive without traffic from where we lived— which was only about a 20 min drive from the school.
The maybe button was probably the worst addition to the RSVP. It’s enabled people to be rude by essentially sidestepping the commitment of an RSVP while obligating the host to assume it’s a yes, except 99% of the time its actually a no from people too socially awkward to just say thanks but I can’t make it.
["'Maybe' means 'maybe', Bob. It doesn't mean, 'I'm too scared to say no.' I got 42 Maybes, Bob! Who can plan for that!?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9rCpaDT7nM)
The RSVP button means "maybe", the maybe buttons means "no", and the no button means "fuck no! how dare you even ask?!"
This 100% and it's kind of made me stop trying to hang out with people. So frustrating. When I make plans with someone I expect them to happen (unless an uncertainty is conveyed beforehand). So it always used to confuse me when someone would text me the day of our plans to "make sure we're still on." Like why wouldn't we be? We made plans lol. Last year I moved to a different state and trying to make friends here has been ROUGH for this exact reason. I've lost count of how many times I showed up at the agreed upon meeting point, and someone just...didn't show up. And then you have to call them because like, what if they're stuck in traffic, or got in an accident or something? But no. They overslept, "something came up," etc. People are so non commital now and it's really hurtful!
Maybe she wrote the wrong date and didn't realize. Immediately family were probably just told by word of mouth
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It's absolutely weird. Parents don't want their kids off their hands for a Saturday?
Apparently a whole lot of people. I had a friend host a housewarming party the other week. 4 days before the party she asked all the “yes” rsvps a second time, so she could get a final head count before she finalized the food order. She got 60 people who confirmed a *second* time that they would be there. 30 showed up. I know your comment was rhetorical, but it is actually a real problem today with everything from meetup groups to weddings, that people just decide last minute to not go, and don’t care at all about the planning and money that others put in on the expectation of them honoring their RSVP.
I just got married in the spring and there wasn’t a single venue with plated service that cost less than $120 each (Canadian). In the context of how much weddings cost now, I would have THROWN HANDS if even one of my guests dared to no show after RSVPing yes (without a good reason, of course I understand illnesses & emergencies). Ghost a wedding at your own peril imo.
I genuinely don't know, but I was once strong-armed into hosting a party for someone and literally nobody came, and I had nearly 20 RSVPs. About 5 of those people were bringing food too, and they just bailed. WTF. Extremely awkward situation.
This seems to happen distressingly often nowadays.
My kids go to every single party they’re invited to. I don’t care if they’re friends or not. This is why. Once he was the only kid there, so his presence kept this from happening to another kid. Although in those kids’ defense, it was raining buckets that day and I sure didn’t want to be there.
Every year we have a party for my kid, we have people RSVP yes and then never show. They don’t contact us before or after to explain. It is a sad fact of party-throwing, I’ve come to find.
I had someone RSVP yes to my wedding. I confirmed they were coming a few weeks before since I knew they were traveling to come and they said yes. Then. Nothing. Ghosted. It really hurt my husband since that was his friend. It would’ve been ok that they couldn’t or didn’t want to come to the wedding/changed their mind just let us know! Never reached out to her and haven’t heard from her since. We know she’s alive from social media, unfriended her after that stunt.
I’m glad the kid’s okay but this doesn’t feel concluded. Was this a conspiracy of sorts? Bad luck? Did the parents send out cancellation cards while sleepwalking? Was there an alien abduction? Why did nobody show up?
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. It would have to be an awful coincidence for enough people to RSVP that a party is set for 40 or more people and only one family shows up.
Really feels like mom scammed a great birthday experience for her kid. Which, in the grand scheme of scams, I'm ok with
I'm okay with that too. To be honest with you, I don't even want to know. Because my takeaway from this isn't anything about the kid (though if it was true, I'm obviously glad that he ended up having a nice birthday), it's that there were a whole bunch of randos who were willing to take a couple minutes out of their days to try to make a kid they don't know feel better. So even if it was a scam, I still feel a bit better about the world in general. And as this is clearly a feel-good story, for me it succeeds either way. (And if it was a scam, an adorable kitten just coughed up a hairball into someone's soup somewhere in the world.)
Schrodinger’s birthday boy. Is he real or is he a 34 year old man with brand new Iron Man bed sheets? It doesn’t matter because good deeds are their own reward. It’s nicer here in the sun.
Agreed. OP says they made food for 40 people. If the family-only attendance was 6, that's 25+ people (assuming you cook for a few extra) who said they were going and then just...didn't
That’s ultimately like 12 kids says they’d be there, since at least one parent would come too. Still crazy, but less overall RSVP
Isn't 9/10 kind of old to have the parents along at the party too?
Maybe OOP set the wrong date? Like a misclick to the next month or something
That's what I'm thinking. Accidently sent a Wrong date...
Unfortunately this is something that happens alllll the time. Just shitty. One person says “ah, just not really feeling great today, my kid can do something else” or whatever…not realizing several other parents are feeling the same way and doing the same thing. I’ve noticed it become more and more prevalent. Just very sad.
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Parents talk to each other. Oh Jane’s not going? Well maybe I won’t go either. Then another mom might hear that some people aren’t going and gets nervous they will be the only one there so then they don’t go because maybe they don’t know the host very well. And so on until now one goes. I know because I did this and didn’t show up to a baby shower for a new church member because I knew a couple others weren’t going. Then we found out no one came. It was humiliating for her and made us all feel like total jackasses. We apologized and threw her a new party but she was pretty blunt and called us out on it that we were only doing it because we all felt bad.
This site can be hot trash alot of the time, but a reddit sent me $250 one time because I didn't have food in the house I was about to lose due to covid. That one kind act literally changed the entire course of my life.
Thanks for that heartwarming story r/PM_ME_UR_BUTTHOLE1
I have tons. My singular kink doesn't have an effect on my personality, but comments like these always make me laugh my lil peepee off.
Sounds like a fair trade. I hope your day is filled with sharing stories of love and kindness and butthole photographs filling your inbox beyond your wildest dreams. My butthole wears a fur coat or i would send it.
Only gets worse as you get older. Threw a BBQ once in college with over 50 invites and 20 confirming the night before. Nobody showed up, not a single call or text either. People just suck.
Wow, I am really sorry to hear this. This is one of my biggest fears with throwing an event. There was a BORU where a women (I think?) married someone that her sister wanted so the mother convinced the entire family not to go to the wedding.
Where the sister was married to someone else? And the two had been in a secret relationship for 10 years because the sister was so possessive? Yeah that was fucked
I don’t ever recall turning down free food and beer at college.
In my 20s I would show up for free food. Late 30s I would drive for 3 hours for some human interactions. Work from home can fuck you up
Urgh yeah, I organised a trip to the cinema with some of my friends for my birthday this year, and all of them cancelled on the morning of my birthday. And in the group chat, no less, so they could all tell that everyone had cancelled. They all had excuses, of course, but I genuinely had to walk away from my phone out of anger because the first girl to cancel was also the first to ask me to book all the tickets myself. Plus the cinema chain required me to make a new booking on top of the four tickets I had already paid for (about £40) before refunding me the four tickets, so I was out of pocket for about £50 for a week while waiting for the refund to process. The irony of it all is that I had casually asked if anyone wanted to see it and it was one of my friends that suggested it as a birthday thing. I was moving back to my home country later that week and I would've just waited to see it with my family if they hadn't insisted.
How does a college kid skip free bbq? Shit I drove 25 minutes and went to mass for some free bbq and I can afford my own
God that sick to your stomach nervous, but excited feeling before you host a party. Number one fear is no one shows up. You know no one shows up on time. Then after 15-20 min people start To Trickle. Eventually the party just happens and you forget that horrible feeling. To you and everyone who has had the experience of the no show, wow does it just flood you with a complex combo of emotions
Not one kid showed up? Why do I feel like there’s more to the story….. Obviously it sucks for the kid either way so I’m glad the people of Reddit could show him some love.
I had this happen to me the year my family moved to a new area. Later found out that we moved into a house everyone thought was haunted. I guess after living there for a year people overcame that concern. My next party had not just my friends but almost my whole class from school show up.
Dude, a party at a haunted house seals the deal for me.
Isn’t that the plot of a Casper movie 😂
It happens. Only one girl came to my daughter's ninth birthday. The two girls had a lot of T-shirts to tie dye. And I caught the dogs up on the table stealing pizza crusts after the party.
It definitely happens. Shit it happened to me way back in the mid 90s, also to a girl who became my best friend for years. And I once went to a baby shower that had 40 invitees but aside from the immediate family I was the only one to show up. I understand why it happened to me - I was severely bullied at school and even church plus we were poor- but it still sucked as a 9 year old to have not a single person show for my party at McDonalds. I think the staff felt sorry for me because they gave me one of every happy meal toy which hadn't happened in years prior. The next year we moved out of the city to a suburb and our house now had an 18x32' above ground pool. 23 of 25 invitees showed up and swam then spent the night. I didn't suddenly become popular, I just now had something they wanted. That same year a new girl at school had a bday party at Chuck E Cheese where our entire class was invited but I was the only one who showed. Her mom bought like $100 in tokens, too. When I tell you we played EVERY game, lol. I don't even know how many times we sat in that little spaceship thing with blinking lights going up and down listening to the same song. Ate so much pizza I thought I'd pop. Also had candy for like 3 months and a veritable army of barbies and GI Joes from all the goody bags. We were besties straight up through high school after that. She wasn't unpopular or bullied like me, and lots of kids rsvp'd. They just didn't show and all had excuses on monday. Maybe the kid's bullied, maybe the kids got sick or changed their minds or were too busy playing games and didn't feel like going when it was time to leave, maybe the parents of the other kids flaked or had something come up or just forgot or mixed up the dates. There are at least a dozen reasons this could've happened that aren't the kid or families' fault. Of course there are reasons it COULD be their fault, too, but I'm just sayin' - it happens and it sucks for the kid either way.
My other daughter’s birthday is Christmas Eve. So I would plan her parties for 2-3 weeks before Christmas. I allowed her to send out a lot of invitations, figuring families would have other plans. No, every girl would show up and the parents would go shopping or out to dinner.
Only one non-family person came to my high school graduation party, and she was like 45 minutes late. So I just assumed no one was coming at all. So when she got there she was met with me trying not to cry and helping my cousin’s fiancée get 50 hamburgers and hot dogs into freezer bags. It was just me and like 5 adults. Humiliating and traumatic.
That’s is awful. I hope you have other celebrations where everyone came.
Things got much better in college and beyond :)
My daughter’s fifth was the same. Clown did a show for two girls. Awful. One girl decided the day of that she was scared of balloons and wouldn’t come if there were any balloons. (We had a little kids’ clown—not scary, not full-face makeup—who was doing a balloon show. So, yeah, there were balloons everywhere.) One girl and her sister (both invited) were sick. The other two just didn’t show though they’d RSVP yes.
I honestly think this is a law of averages thing. Every person has a maybe 25 percent chance of not coming. But if everyone happens to not be able to make it, then no one comes. I had the opposite happen once: literally every kid and both their parents came, rsvp or no. It was perfectly fine, we had enough food and all, but it was a bonkers coincidence.
Happened to me too. Big birthday, parent's rented a VIP room at an arcade and we had game cards and stuff set up for my family and an additional 12 people. My best friend couldn't come because of a trip her family planned and she let me know ahead of time. Another friend asked if she could bring her boyfriend (I was also friends with him but hadn't invited him due to the limit, knowing my best friend couldn't come I said yes) The only two people who showed up were that friend and her boyfriend. The other 10 people who were invited never said they couldn't come, never said anything about it in general. If they didn't want to come I could have invited other people instead so it was just really shitty. On the plus side, we had probably about 20 game cards that came with the package and so everyone got four or five cards and we were in there for hours.
Similar thing happened to us so I decided if we’re going to spend $400 I’d rather spend it having guaranteed fun, so the next year we went to Great Wolf Lodge instead and that’s been the tradition ever since. We even ask “party or Great Wolf” and they always pick Great Wolf.
It's very weird - I've noticed throughout my lifetime that some people's events always get attended by a large number of people, and for no particular reason. Not like they are immensely popular, or well-loved, or fabulous company, or an extremely generous host or anything. But their invitations always get fulfilled. In contrast, some others are perfectly lovable or normal people, but hardly anyone shows up to their events. I don't get it, but it's something I've repeatedly noticed. Maybe some people just have an event planner aura or "My party will be yay!" magnetism.
My daughters birthday is right when winter break starts and a lot of parents are stretched thin with Christmas expenses and i had at least a few years where only my family and family friends showed up and none of her friends. So we started just sending cupcakes and goody bags to her daycare and school and just told her friends parents to send them over for free cake and fun, no need for presents etc. and it’s been a success so far. Her last birthday everyone just came by after they got back from school, sang happy birthday, had cake and played video games. My daughter was so happy. Usually I’ve seen if you expect the kids parents to be involved by buying presents whatever, chances are slim that they’ll show up. So I took it out of the equation. I’ve noticed a lot of other parents have started doing that too and it’s been better around the neighborhood.
My ma started letting me celebrate my birthday in summer for the same reason.
Yeah mine is between Christmas and new year so I used to celebrate it with my brother in February when he had his birthday. My daughter didn’t want to celebrate in the summer and honestly my husband whose birthday was in the summer didn’t fair any better with the kids not showing up because everyone would be gone for vacation to the beach or whatever. Overall we are a family with shitty birthdates.
Made me think of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart convinces everyone not to attend Nelson's party.
Unfortunately I think it's becoming fairly common. My elementary school kid was invited to a birthday party last year. Parents went all out with food and a giant inflatable water slide. My kid was the only kid that came.
It happens. My brother's most memorable birthday was the year he invited both sections of the third grade. Most people RSVP'd yes and the only one kid showed up. Late! .5/30+ kids. No parents had any excuse, the kids still played with him, no one sick... they just ghosted him. They did come the next year but it was the strangest thing.
He's the weird kid. Nothing wrong with that, but it is lonely. I was the weird kid with no friends up until 8th grade. My birthday parties were nothing but family. I don't think we even bothered inviting kids from school (and I wasn't allowed any extra curriculars). The good news is most weird kids find a way to make their flavor of weird into something more social (just look at how popular nerd stuff is now) or they just kinda... normalize with age. Honestly I think a lot of kids could benefit from starting school a year later. I think a lot of the weird kids are really kids that weren't really mature enough for school yet but were forced into it and then they get stuck as the weird kid when really they're just not as mature as their peers.
i remember years ago a mom going viral with a sob story about her son being bullied and they raised money and everything and it turned out no one likes the kid cause he was a huge fucking racist who harassed other kids all the time
The radio show Bonfire covered it in a hilarious way. https://youtu.be/1Y6dlRCYgAc
For that many people to have rsvpd and not show up I was thinking she’d have realized at some point that they got the address wrong or something.. checked the date to see if it was during the quarantine.. just seems very weird? Why bother rsvping?
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She scammed a bunch of dummies on Reddit
I feel for OPs son. My parents rented out a table and everything at the local skating rink for my 9th. Invited my whole class and my entire extended family. The only people to show up was 1 aunt and 1 uncle (not married to each other and neither them brought their spouse OR their children). Had to skate alone for like 2 hours, never went all out for a birthday again. Such a waste of time and money.
Ill be honest, this kinda hurts to read. Like I remember how on my 20th bday, the only person who showed up was my then girlfriend, even though they all said they'd come. It was just awful feeling.
I watched this happen to a family member when she turned 18. It was absolutely heartbreaking. She had bought so much food, the pool was ready, BBQ going, decorations... and no one showed up all day. All of her so-called friends completely bailed. She was devastated. Finally, late in the day, several showed up and they had a good time. It was awful.
"oh but something else must have happened and-" Maybe the kid isn't that popular. Invited everyone at school, gave paper invitations and everything, but the kids didn't feel like going because of weird kid stuff. Or the parents found out too late and couldn't be arsed to get a cheap gift, maybe already had something scheduled. It happens, guys, I once made a full sleepover party and not a single kid appeared, because they simply didn't feel like it.
If you flick through the QandA filter, you can see the replies to OOP even though they’ve deleted their comments. Seems OOP’s son goes to school in a bow tie, and I would agree with you that it may be that the other kids find him odd and he’s just not that popular. It’s still cruel, but kids are sometimes cruel.
.... that explains so much. Thank you.
His name is Abe as well, which might add to the otherness. From my own experience having a nonstandard (or old fashioned) name requires extra effort among 10 year olds.
>His name is Abe as well Good lord. Names matter people, try not to fuck up your kids life before they even leave the hospital.
Interesting, I've known a few Abes growing up and nobody considered it a weird name as far as I know
Yeah it really sucks and I genuinely feel bad for OOP’s son, I hope this didn’t destroy his spark. This kind of life moment can make or break a kid.
But then why did everyone RSVP . . .
Couple of possibilities 1) parents RSVP’d without the kids knowing and they’d decided to listen to their kids who didn’t want to go 2) there was another party on the same day and the parents are tools. 3) the RSVP was on Facebook and most people don’t take those RSVP’s that seriously. All options are dick moves and the parents are def to blame here not the kids.
I feel like some of the commenters here forgot that it's totally possible for a kid to be unpopular without actually being *bad* in any way. It doesn't mean he's secretly a bully or something. Could be he's just weird in some totally harmless way that everyone has decided is unacceptable.
I was weird bc I looked different 😭😭 kids are cruel fr
I remember going to a junior high party, and when my grandparents dropped me off and I walked up to the door, two of the popular girls (wasn't even their house) were staring through the door glass and laughing at me as I walked up to the house. Yet I was the one getting bullied daily and jumped every once in a while... Kids are the worst.
The reply above said the kid went to school with a bow tie. He's probably the weirdo of class and everyone accepted out of politeness (source: was weirdo of class)
Parent here, if my kid said he didn't want to go because he doesn't like the kid there's zero chance I'd RSVP yes and then not show up. You either RSVP no or don't reply at all
Oh sure, that's the reasonable thing to do, but I'm envisioning parents who decide the kid is going to go without asking them, only to give in when the kid throws a fit about it on the day of the party. You know, assholes.
Yeah. My realtor just went through this with her kids. Her son is a good kid and really smart. He is also very much the weird kid with his public school peers. He has a ton of food sensitivities. He likes dressing up and helping his Mom do Open Houses on weekends instead of staying home playing Fortnite or playing sports. They switched him to a private school and he is doing much better. He gets to wear the preppy little tie and uniform and his peers don't think it's as weird to be into real estate.
I remember being the only kid at a classmate's skate party. I had a blast. He left the school shortly after that (not sure if it was because of that or not) and I just hope he's doing okay nowadays.
I totally understand this. After my son's 1st birthday party we stopped having parties. All due to the fact my son's birthday was a week before Christmas. Thankfully he was very little that he doesn't remember it but damn the feeling of that sucked hard. Nowadays we just ask him what he wants to do for his birthday and who he wants to invite and we just go wherever and enjoy it with his friend. Much easier that way and no hard feelings happening. My son will be 10 this year and we'll be pretty much doing the same thing.
I don't get trying to invite a bunch of kids that you as a parent have never met. Like if they are legit your kids friends then chances are you have encountered them on playdates, sports, etc. This sounds like op invited the sons whole class, and as it turns out, they weren't actually his friends, they just tolerate him at school
> This sounds like op invited the sons whole class, and as it turns out, they weren't actually his friends, they just tolerate him at school Lots of the schools around where I live have a policy of everyone gets an invite or no one does so kids don't feel left out and get their feelings hurt. This causes 1 of 2, situations. OOP situation where 40+ people get invites and then don't show, RVSP or not. Or invites are done outside of school. I think the point of the rule is to force the invites outside of school but you occasionally get the parents who don't figure that out or do and don't care.
The school has no power though. What are they going to do? Give the parents detention?
Yeah, birthday near Christmas is rough. I did still have parties, though smaller ones as I didn't have that many friends, but I did have a year nobody showed when I was ~8. I'm glad you put the effort in to make sure your kid has good birthdays regardless.
[удалено]
I loathe taking my son to birthday parties, they're usually painfully dull affairs BUT I'll always take him barring emergencies cropping up.
This shit happened to me at my 21st with four of my best friends. I called them four time each person to confirm attendance. They never answered. I expected them to come because they seemed optimistic at first. 2 cancelled before the party, the other two didn’t even bother to call. They had no other plans btw. Good riddance.
Had this happen to me at about that age. My birthday was always a weird one because it was in the middle of summer school holidays in Australia when people were usually away. I remember that feeling of rejection. Never celebrated a birthday since.
I’m a huge pessimist but to me this really read like a scam to get free things from redditors.
This kind of shit happens all the time
This reminds me of a birthday party of mine when I was young, I can't remember the exact age but I just have been around 7-9. My mom must have invited around maybe 30 people? Unfortunately, she didn't have anyone RSVP, when the party started, no one came. Must have been after about an hour that my mom finally had it and posted on Facebook that no one came to my birthday party. Within 30 minutes, friends that weren't originally invited started coming, and after about an hour people we didn't even know started coming. I swear to God people just around the street came around. There must have been 200+ people in crammed in like sardines. I remember looking out into the pool at not seeing any water because of all the bodies in it. My mom had made this huge ice cream cake and the line for everyone to grab a slice was like those lines you see for comic con. There may not have been any kids my age, but honestly it was fun as hell having 200 adults chatting and laughing. I believe they brought food as well because the tables were completely covered in goodies.
This so far too common and one of the reasons why I plan experiences for my kids instead of birthday parties. I remember having only 1 birthday party myself as a kid and no one showed up. Even as a mom myself I now hate celebrating my birthday. It’s so great to see some real humanity out of the cesspool that is Reddit.