To think there is a psycho parent in my DC's class?

[Peregrane]

DC had his fourth birthday recently and we invited the children he is friendly with to our house for a small party. There were only two from his class that we invited (won't bore you with the reasons), one of whom was his "best friend" from the start (i.e. when they started at 3 years old, as they do in this country - we have moved abroad).

I had slipped the invitations for the classmates discreetly into their school bags that are hanging outside the classroom. That very day we received the invitation to his "best friend" back through our letterbox, with a message scribbled on it to say that sorry but the child cannot attend the party.

We were a bit sad for my DC but these things can happen. I thought it was weird though that the "best friend"'s mum did not say anything about it when we coincided at drop-off over the next few days. Long story short, it came up in the end after the party actually took place, and the best friend's parents claimed that they never received the invitation! They took the trouble to verify that I really put the invitation into the right schoolbag, walked back to the classroom to check the correct peg etc.

The only alternative explanation I can think of is that another parent saw when I slipped in the invitation, got miffed that their child was not invited, fished out the invitation from the "best friend"'s bag and maliciously replied with the rejection. It sounds too crazy to be true, right? But it also doesn't make sense for the best friend's parents to have rejected the invite and then to lie about it.

AIBU to think that one of the parents in this class is completely nuts? And what do I do if it's the queen bee mother who spends all the time at drop-off and pick-up monopolising the school staff, and generally acting like she runs the place? She does have a slightly deranged look about her (

I used to be friends with someone who would have cheerfully and boastfully done this given half a chance. So I think that Queen Bee sabotage is not as unlikely as it initially appears to be.

I don’t think it’s particularly outrageous to jump to the conclusion that a disgruntled parent has done this.

It sounds like the exact thing an ex friend of mine would do, only difference is, she would actually boast about doing it.

It seems more far fetched that the invitation did actually make it home and the parents going to such lengths to prove they didn’t receive it rather than just say “Sorry we can’t make it this time”

But the dad had a conversation with op about the party, before the party. That's the bit I don't understand

OP you said you arrive at school in the morning after them and their kid goes to after school care/activities while you pick your up. When did you receive the rsvp? You said it was the same day, so was it around the time they’d collect their kid from school, or was it during the day?

If kids’ parents dropped it off it couldn’t have been before they get to school in the afternoon.

Does this child have an older sibling OR the most likely explanation is that parents or child didn't want t to go and found it easier to pretend they didn't get invite forgetting they had posted y the card.

.. or just to shut down an awkward conversation

The husband would definitely have mentioned it to his wife beforehand.

I agree The Stoic. It seems more likely he would have mentioned it.
And it's strange that, if so, the parents sat passively on the knowledge of an apparently lost invite for several days rather than trying to contact the OP via the school to get hold of the party details if they were that keen.

If the parents are telling the truth - a big if - then there's a possibility that some older children at the school stole/acquired the invitation while the invitee was at the after school club and decided to play a prank. Maybe the school could investigate to see if the handwriting on the returned invitation belonged to one of their students? (And at the same time check out the handwriting of invitee's Mum in invitee's Reading Record if such exists.)

Ok, I do realise school has other matters to attend to than sleuthing but Mumsnet needs to know the truth!

I dunno. My husband would have forgotten until it came up again 🤦🏽‍♀️😂

It would have been 50/50 whether my husband mentioned it. We share school runs and don’t communicate well! I’m guessing Dad is a people pleaser and went along with it saying oh yeah sounds great then caught a hold of himself and thought better check the calendar before committing to anything. Might not mean Mum is antisocial or that she was ever aware of the party in advance.

Ooo this is an intriguing mystery! Also very intrigued by the language situation where some children don't know the majority language when they start school, would love to know what country it is.

Does it matter if the invitation was lost or put in someone else’s bag by mistake?
You had told the husband about the party prior so they wanted their child to go could have phoned you / popped to yours asking the details of the party? Or am I confusing myself?

IF they wanted

I just can’t fathom why they would reply no then deny all knowledge rather than just saying “yeah it’s a shame they could come”.

I think it’s not them.

Hey hey! Posters like DownbutnotfullyOut - you know if you want to insult me, it would be a lot more efficient if you read the post/the thread first. Your "top two explanations" - by which I mean your first two theories, out of the three you actually gave - are not plausible.

I am loving the suggestions to compare handwriting. Sadly I appear to have thrown out the reply before I found out that it was apparently not posted by the parents of the invitee.

For those who consider me creepy as fuck for having put the invitations in the schoolbag. Spending a few extra seconds on the corridor IMO stretches the definition of "creepy loitering". I have already explained above why I didn't put them directly in the parents' hands.

As far as I can see the only other option would have been to ask the teacher to put the invites into the bag. I considered that and in the end chose not to because there is one teacher for a class of 20+ kids who, during drop-off, is typically dealing with at least three children at a time who want to show her drawings or are crying after mummy, plus a couple of parents with administrative questions (and please don't tell me that is not plausible because schools disseminate info via smartphone apps these days... ours does not). I reckoned that she had enough people claiming her attention, I could resolve this another way, and if I asked her this in front of other parents and children then I am making it obvious to those parents and children that they are not invited.

Not anybody can access the kids' bags, only the parents from that class (at a push, also the parents from the other classes on the corridor). And if you saw someone whom you know to be a parent simply putting an envelope into a schoolbag (I promise I did not even do a shifty sideways look!) and suspected them of something nefarious, then I bow to your own paranoia ;)

To clarify the dad situation and the sequencing.

I popped off the invites and received the rejection the same day - I can't tell exactly when because we only saw it in the letterbox in the evening (we have an actual box on the inside of the door so you have to open it to see if anything's been delivered).

I saw the dad at drop-off several days later, but before the party. We only exchanged a few sentences as everyone is always in a massive rush in the morning. I did not see either of the parents again before the party, so they did not have the chance to say "hey, we never actually received the invite".

The only way they could have done that is if they had popped a note into my DC's bag (which would have been fine with me ;)), or I guess asked the school but I doubt they would have given out my info and people here I think would be reluctant to pester the school with such matters. The school is crap enough with replying to basic questions like when is the next parent-teacher meeting.

The next time I saw either of the parents was at a school event after the birthday party, where I saw them together, and the mum came back with me to check about the peg and describe the bag to make sure we talked about the same bag, then we walked back together and she reported the mystery to her husband to displays of general bafflement.

But how did the matter come up when you happened to meet them after the party? It's seriously bad form to cross examine someone's non appearance at your child's party after the event, especially as at that point you thought they'd refused, is that correct?
Why did you raise the subject again? They were probably so flabbergasted at your refusal to drop it that they went through the charade you described to ensure you never raised the matter again.

Another possibility -

Bags aren’t particularly safe in the hands of four year olds.

When my DS was four and he was walking home from school for the first time clutching his new book bag, he decided to twirl round and the bag went flying out his hand and into a canal. Luckily he had not had time to borrow War and Peace from the school library and the bag floated so I was able to ask a nearby fisherman to fish it out with his net.

With that experience in mind, I think it’s quite possible that the invitation could have fallen out the bag of a frolicsome four year old. If it happened on school grounds or nearby, I think a passing adult who spotted it would have handed it in to the school or maybe returned it to you at home in a straightforward way. But if it were found by a group of older children, they might have decided to make a little mischief.

Are there older children at this school who walk home on their own without an adult? Would the invitee mix with older children at the after school club? Did the other DC whose invitation arrived safely go straight home after school?

Hanging round the school bags and discreetly inserting invites in the hope you'd apparently not got the right bag is creepy as fuck.

No it's not.

lama, I'm with you that it's bad form to cross-examine someone about their rejection of an invite. I hope I did not do that.

I actually meant to do the opposite - to just simply say with a friendly smile that it's a pity that BestFriendChild can't come, and move right on (really to signal that all is well). It was also the first time that I saw the father, as I only ever saw the mother at drop-off before, so it was a sort-of low pressure introduction.

There is no school-gate chatting here, especially as we don't do pickup at the same time. So these fleeting encounters on the corridor at drop-off are almost the only chance to get to know the parents (plus twice a year there is a school event).

The involved follow-up was initiated by the parents of the best friend afterwards, at one of those rare school events. I had no intention of going up to them to talk there.

I have an update for those who are interested...

It seems like my DC was invited to a birthday party by another child in the meanwhile, and we never received that invitation!!

One of the mums (let's call her child Larry) mentioned to me at the same school event that they were going to invite my DC, and told me the date. She volunteered that she was going to put the invite into our school bag (! nee-nar, for those of you who thought I was creepy ;)), so we (foolishly) did not exchange numbers. The date came and went, without an invitation in sight. (I did not mention this before because I did not want it to seem that I am over-embellishing a conspiracy theory. I also thought there was an innocent explanation for this, because I did not see Larry or his bag for the whole week so I thought he might have fallen ill.)

So I finally saw Larry and his father today morning, arriving massively late in his work van after the school gates had officially closed (which might explain why I did not see Larry in class the past few days). So while they were climbing out of the van I quickly said that I just wanted them to know that we didn't attend the party because we never received that invitation and I had no way of reaching them. And he was really surprised.

I am going to raise this with the teacher after all. The school is closed next week so the soonest I can report back is a week after. Queen Bee was hanging out in the classroom this morning as usual, returning my greeting with a po face and then beaming a sweet good morning at another child while ignoring mine ;)

OP Just send a note home via the teacher with your telephone number asking the any parents who are interested to contact you as you would like to set up a WhatsApp group and/or email group for the class. Then everyone (who wants to) will have other parent’s electronic contact details and what appears (to me) to be a lot of over investment can be stopped. It is very strange for parents to access other kid’s bags and I’m surprised the school allows this and having detailed discussions about invites sounds so stressful and OTT. I would actively avoid all this if I could and a WhatsApp group allows parents who feel similarly to me to opt in or opt out without all this unnecessary hooha.

Intomyarms, that's an interesting suggestion. I don't have much experience with WhatsApp groups. If I did that, and parents wanted then to contact specific other parents, rather than the whole group, would they be able to do that? We also don't know each other's names necessarily - I know a lot of the kids' first names but not their surnames, so one would not necessarily know from a name and telephone number or email address whose parent they are. (I also imagine not everyone is on WhatsApp - some are not tech savvy, some might use different messaging services like Viber or whatever.)

The school itself communicates with the parents via messages printed on paper and put into the schoolbags... which by the way contains nothing else apart from lunchboxes, so I don't see a reason in principle to worry about parents accessing them.

Anyway, I'll ask the teacher what she thinks about an initiative like that.

OP if a WhatsApp group wouldn’t work, you could set up an email group. I would be very surprised if there is anybody without an email address. When you request the contact details, ask specifically for
Email address
Child’s full name (as there will be more than one with the same name)
Parent’s full name.

Don’t ask for telephone numbers as this is too invasive imo.

Then you can create a contact list which you can circulate electronically to all the interested parents so you all each other’s details. The school will not do this for data protection reasons themselves but should facilitate one parent sending a note requesting details. The school won’t have any involvement other than agreeing to the first request note.