AIBU to exclude 1 child from friendship group from DS party??

It's interesting to read all the comment about a bully child, made by adults who basically recomment OP to behave like an adult bully

I suggest you look up the word "bully" in a dictionary.

It's interesting to read all the comment about a bully child, made by adults who basically recomment OP to behave like an adult bully.

Don't we all live life to learn and grow from each experience? It's a young child. It's the role of adults to teach the child that the what he does is bullying, and bullying is not nice. No one appears to have taken the rigth opportunity to do so.

As I mentioned before, a solution would be to invite the child with OP's son for a separate day out, and this would keep somewhat peace between the two parents, the school, the boy would avoid escalating a situation. And then allow the son to have his party without the bully.

I encountered a similar incident once with a friend's daughter (FD) who was 8 at the time. She had a classmate who was difficult and quite the bully (basically, grew up without much guidance it turned out), which I was not aware of at the time. Yet this one day she was to spend her whole day with the dog and the bully while her mother had to be out of town. We took the dog out to the park. The two were socialising and I made them responsible for walking the dog. Sooner or later the bully did what she normally does, and I could see my FD was getting upset and hurt. I took this as a perfect opportunity (when an incident is fresh and relevant) to take the bully aside, and explain to her what part of her behaviour had hurt and upset FD. The child listened and was quiet. From then onwards she not only treated FD much nicer, but she tried to give her flowers and gifts the rest of the day, even sharing her ice cream and so on. I could see that she didn't actually want to be bad, she was not aware of it. The flowers, gifts was her way of apologising without using words.

So, OP spending a separate day with DS and the boy together could be used as a personal growth moment for the child rather than an adult being made to turn into a judgemental bully.

I voted YABU because of course you shouldn't for your son to invite a boy who is bullying your 9 year old. That is ridiculous. If they were 5 years old it would probably be different - but by 9 years old kids know who is genuinely mean or not and what that means. Let your son have the party he wants.

I would support my son in this situation the other child is bullying him and getting away with it

or equally bad, because there was profit in doing it.

As a parent the OP should be focusing on her child stating he'd rather forgo a party than have this child included.

Could it be ANY clearer.
Poor child.

But you can see where some Mners get their wet lettucery from, if they were brought up by mothers who thought (a) workplace bullying was just a fact of life to be borne and (b) you still had to ensure you invited any colleague who mistreated you to your home parties, wedding etc in case it 'looked bad'.

Put your son first. It's his birthday. He doesn't want the boy who laughs at him, mocks him, belittles him, hits him and pushes him over to be there. It really is not unreasonable for him to be allowed to enjoy his party and not be subjected to the presence of a bully.

this.....and not the kind of life skill that you'd want to or should teach a child.

Well, I assume the union got involved and the frankly ludicrous accusation was fought. There is absolutely no basis for workplace management involvement in how someone socialises in their own home on their own dime.

the managers thought otherwise and then the bully became the victim, this was in the NHS by the way!

I met DH at work. I was quite friendly with a more senior colleague who was horrible to DH and others at his level. Like hell did we invite her to our wedding! Though she was quite put out- she knew why!

I think parties can make it confusing about who your kids friends actually are because even when older it can be a mix of who the parent likes, who the child likes etc

i dont think he should invite him if he feels that strongly however, he is unlikely to get an invite back meaning less time with his friends then.

I voted yabu, which doesn't match your title but I think you are unreasonable to invite this child. Your son doesn't like him, is very clear he doesn't want him there to the extent he'd rather not have a party if he is.

If the boot was on the other foot, I hope you'd tell him that if he's mean to someone they won't invite him to things.

I would probably mention it to the Mum if there's a way to do it kindly. If he's excluded but neither of them know why then nothing can improve.

Yes, I think the issue here is that so many Mners struggle with friendships and see 'cliques' and 'exclusions' everywhere, where more socially-confident people would just see 'people talking to their friends'. So they automatically put themselves into the place of either the child not being invited to the party, or the parent of the child not being invited to the party, and think that the party child should '#bekind', just as they feel that parents on the school run peacefully minding their own business and chatting to their friends should instead be on some kind of mission to include anyone standing alone.

If you push back on this your son will accept and allow this kind of bad behaviour from his peers for the rest of his life.

Support ans teach him now that its absolutely fine to have and hold boundries.

'It looks bad when a whole team goes somewhere bar one person'? Looks bad to whom? To the one person?

I'd be very surprised if they had any particular desire to attend a party given by me if we didn't get along in the workplace beyond the usual collegial rubbing along.

He has no claim whatsoever to be any kind of victim. Who I invite to my house outside of work hours is exclusively my business. This isn't a team away day or bonding exercise. It's quite simply not a workplace issue.

Did she also hit and push people on top of that?

Siblings have to live together so common ground is important. OP's son shouldn't have to find common ground and put up with his behaviour at his birthday party.

Inviting a boss you hate to your wedding isn’t diplomatic. It’s ridiculous. I can’t imagine anything worse than a boss I hated being at my wedding.

“I think the lesson that needs to be taught here is that we all meet people that are annoying in life and have to learn how to deal with and work around them.”

Like OP’s son is already doing, then.

Equally, there are times in life when we don’t have to deal with such people socially, and can say no to them. That is a valuable lesson to learn also.

I think the lesson that needs to be taught here is that we all meet people that are annoying in life and have to learn how to deal with and work around them.
I taught a group of 10-year-old girls a few years ago. There was a girl that was incredibly immature and annoyed everyone. Class clown, mocked everyone, drove everyone nuts and obviously had no real friends. A very happy, well-adjusted girl in the class who had plenty of real friends found her particularly annoying and accused her of bullying. From a teacher's perspective, it was farcical. Yes, she was very irritating to be around but she didn't focus her nuisance behaviour on anyone in particular. She was just very socially immature.
Thankfully, the girl who accused her had reasonable parents. I explained the situation fully to them. As a teacher, you're like a parent to them both. You can see where it's going wrong and why each of them is seeing things the way they do. You feel sorry for the socially maladjusted child because you know they don't mean to be as painful as they are, they're just too immature to understand what they're up to.
If you had 2 children and one was 2 years younger (at least socially and emotionally) you would work harder to get them to see each other's point of view and gain common ground rather than let them just exclude each other from their lives.
This isn't a teacher ignoring 'bullying' , it's a teacher that is trying to navigate two charges, of different maturity levels, through childhood and socialisation.
When a child is actually being bullied in my class, believe me, I would never let it stand.

That’s what you think but it looks bad when a whole team goes somewhere bar one person. If it was just some close friends from the team having a party it’s different. That’s why I think cutting the numbers to make it close friends only is the best solution rather than everyone except one, or else he might claim to be the victim. I don’t think it’s right but I’ve seen it happen so often you have to be sensible about these things. The bully still won’t get to go to the party either way but there’s a way to do it which mean you don’t come across as a bully either

Actually I think a lot of mumsnet are more inclined to over-complicate fairly minor issues, and believe that because they struggle navigating something then that the same must hold true for everyone. It doesn’t. OP’s son doesn’t want this kid at his birthday party, so it’s very simple to not invite him. If he and his mother feel bad because of this then that’s fine. That’s their problem, not OP’s.

By the sounds of it OP’s son is already well versed in playing friendship politics, given what he already tolerates from this kid on a daily basis. He’s, very reasonably, drawing a line at having to tolerate it on his birthday.

I would absolutely NOT force a child to invite their bully to a party.
WTF.

You remind me of a number of teachers we've met along the way, with similarly dismissive attitudes to children who are being victimised and seeking to centre the unkind, shockingly-behaved children as the only ones who matter.

Are you actually saying that, because this boy isn't terrified enough for you of the child who is victimising him, his reports of mistreatment at the other boy's hands must be fairytales and he should run along and just accept being treated that way?

It's interesting that, these days, when it comes to children reporting sexual abuse by an adult, they are always listened to and their reports taken as extremely seriously as they should be and thoroughly investigated; yet when children report physical, emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of other children - which, contrary to what so many schools seem to believe in isolation, the majority of speakers of the English language would class as bullying - they're gaslit and told that they're making it all up, fussing over nothing and should just learn to be resilient and play nicely with their tormenters.