Not to want DS1 to hand out party invites at school?

[Weta]

He's turning 7 and having a small party for 8 children. He wants to hand out invites at school and insists 'all the other children' do it that way (not strictly true) and that kids don't get upset if they're not invited (having been in this position himself).

I would be fine with it if we were inviting the whole class, or all the boys, but think it's mean to hand out invitations in front of people who aren't invited.

AIBU?

I think that discrete handouts to parents at the school gates are the way to go.

Nasty bullying about party invites unfortunately doesn't require pieces of paper, but it's best to try hard to avoid it.

The problem is maryz that if you're not a very clued in school-gate parent you wouldn't necessarily notice which kids are getting invited to parties and which aren't, so it's easy to just go along with your child's suggestions and ostracise the same children who are ostracised by everyone else - that said, I would never invite eight out of ten boys in a class - eight out of twelve perhaps, but even that's a bit them-and-us for my taste - either have it really small, or invite the lot - they won't all come anyway.

I can't believe that all these children will be unaware of a party unless they see invites handed out.

At the risk of repeating what other people have said, I don't think this is an issue if it's just 8 kids. When I was a child there was never any fuss over this, but I think parties were smaller then, none of this whole class business and hiring a venue. You had who could fit in your living room. So 8 kids was about standard, and more kids would be "uninvited" than invited.

I think now there is an issue with nearly whole class parties that exclude the 2 class vandals/hitters/bullies. There are plenty of threads here about this dilemma: "I want to have a whole class party but there is one little b8st8rd who hits and bullies my DD/all the other kids and she wants to exclude him".

The trouble is, this can exclude little b8st8rds, which is fine by me, it gives them a message. But it can also exclude kids with SN like ADHD who find it difficult in social situations, or have difficulties controlling their temper which may not be their fault.

But if it's 8 out of 25 I wouldn't worry.

It is the 'whole class party' to blame in my view. Dcs are invited to every party going when they are little and get the expectation that parties should involve them. As the DCs get older they have fewer. It would make sense to me to have little tea parties for the 4/5 yr old and go on to the whole class party at 9/10 when DCs are really bothered about it.
I actually loathed parties as a DC!I would have been like rockinhippy if my mother had engineered me an invite.