Parents of elementary school-age children:

[Orrex]

When your child is invited to a birthday party, and the invitation includes a phone number to rizvip, do you call to confirm whether your child will or won't attend?

I ask because my son, now in kindergarten, has been invited to a fair number of parties, and in every case the parents have told me that I was the first or only person to call them. This is true even when I forget to call until the day before the party.

What gives? I realize that these aren't black-tie affairs, but don't lots of birthday venues calculate the cost based (in part) on a head-count? It seems to me that if my son is going to be treated to a pizza and videogame extravaganza on another parent's dime, the least I can do is call to say that he'll be joining in the bacchanalia.

What do you think?

[elleng]

1. My daughters and I are well past those years,

but I recall that many if not most did NOT respond. I agree that they/we SHOULD do so.

[AwakeAtLast]

2. I try my best to call

I lost one invitation and I'm not familiar with the family, so I wrote a note for my daughter to give to her classmate at school.

[Fleshdancer]

3. I RSVP because it's very rude not to

Almost everyone does gift bags for the guests now and the party host needs to know how much food to order, etc so it's very rude not to rsvp. I don't care if someone contacts me the day before the event, but don't show up without giving me any notice.

I find that including my email address along with my phone number on the invites gets me more responses. Another thing some parents are doing now is sending out evites, but that only works when you know the email addresses of the other parents.

[tigereye]

4. yes, I always did...

seemed kind of rude not to.. and most of my son's friends' parents always called, too, or emailed. A lot of people send emails now, though, it's just easier.

[petronius]

5. I have no kids, but I would certainly RSVP - why wouldn't someone?

Do people just generally not RSVP for things these days? :shrug: