[waxhawfamily]

I have read books about this with really good suggestions:

A rule of etiquette for kids is that, if you have a kids party, invite as many kids as your child's age plus one. So if your child is 4, you would only invite 5 kids.

This is a GREAT rule to go by. Too many kids at a party is not only hectic to deal with, but the kids don't all enjoy it either. There is no good activity you can do with a large group. Often young kids are intimidated and get left out of activities, it's a lot of work and clean-up, and so on .....

It is often a good idea with younger children, not to open gifts at the party. They want to stop the party and play with whatever gift they have opened. Younger kids actually get tired of opening tons of gifts (yet another reason to severely limit guests). Also, the gift giver often wants to take over the gift they gave, or there are sharing issues.

As for what age to have a party, well they really start to become aware of others having parties and whether or not they have a party by the age of 3 or 4 (at the latest). My personal opinion is to have a party every year between 3 and 5 or 6, then negociate whether they want a big gift, or a party. Or explain that they can have a party every odd or even year, and on the alternate years, invite one best friend out for a special dinner.

Also, there is no need to have 3 parties (school, family, kids). If your family already gets together to celebrate everyone's party, that's one thing. However, if they don't, why clutter up a small kids party with a ton of aunts, babies or older cousins????

If you feel the need to do something at school, you can simply send cookies or cupcakes to school to recognize your child's birthday, without making a party out of it. Their teacher most likely already lets them have a special task or position for the day on their birthday (like line leader, or teacher's helper, etc.).

Another rule of etiquette is that if you open a gift in front of a gift giver, you say thank-you then and don't send a thank-you card. However, if you open the gift without the giver being there to personally thank, you should send a card.

I hope you can get something useful out of my gleanings from etiquette books.