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Who to invite. Whether to send thank-you cards. What ?no gifts? really means. My kids are only four and six and I?m already suffering birthday party burnout! So I turned to the experts and other parents in the trenches for insight into the level of junior social etiquette required to survive these complicated yearly rites of passage.
The dilemma: The invite list

I was dropping my four-year-old daughter, Maia, off at kindergarten when one of her classmates ran by with a fistful of pink envelopes. ?I?m giving these out to all my friends,? she called over her shoulder. Maia didn?t get one, and, frankly, didn?t seem to notice, but I went into mama-bear mode in anticipation of how she would feel when she did figure it out. Maybe I can talk to the girl?s mom. Maybe I can talk to Maia?s teacher. There should be rules to prevent this from happening! Not so fast, says clinical psychologist Alex Russell, author of Drop the Worry Ball: How to Parent in the Age of Entitlement. ?It?s good to think about children?s emotional worlds, but the idea that the child can?t handle not being invited to a party is actually really disrespectful. And worse, when all the adults act as if the kids can?t handle it, we lower the bar on what we expect of them. This is what the child comes to believe about himself.?
Plus, the rules some schools have in place?the rules I was about to demand?can be downright annoying. Mom-of-two Kara Smith?s* sons, four and six, attend a school...