Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to allow my son not to invite a mean boy to his party?

356 replies

Busyworkingmumof4 · 05/03/2018 05:46

My oldest is turning 9 and normally we have only ever had family birthday parties. This year we have allowed him to have a friends birthday party for the first time.

I asked him who he wanted to invite and he listed eight names, which are all the boys from his class except one. When I asked why he did not want to invite that one boy, he said that he is mean to him all the time and gave me some examples. Given this boy's behaviour, I didn't see any reason to encourage my son to invite him.

This morning, after my son handed out the party invitations yesterday afternoon, I received an email from the class teacher telling me that to have one boy excluded from the party is "not fair" and has "created tension" and "goes against the school motto".

Should 9 year olds be expected to invite kids who are mean to them to their own parties, just to not 'create tension' in the classroom?

OP posts:
Aeroflotgirl · 05/03/2018 14:32

I agree, the handing out invites in front of kids is mean, I hand them out to parents after drop off, or before we collect them discretely.

abigailsnan · 05/03/2018 14:32

Uncalled for drama which has not been helped by a teacher who should not be involved,the boys will probably be best friends in the near future if my experience with my sons and grandsons is anything to go by over the years.

MadMaryBoddington · 05/03/2018 14:34

Well done for trying to get to the bottom of the ‘mean’ behaviour op. My dd recently had a spat with a boy in her class; came home in tears claiming boy had kicked her. Dd is a quiet, introverted, law-abiding type and the boy in question is a bit ‘naughty’. So it was easy to take this at face value and console dd as the injured party, till I spoke to the boy’s mum - it turned out that the full version of events was that the boy had pinched something belonging to dd’s friend. Dd had leapt to friend’s defence and kicked the boy. Boy then kicked her back.

So it wasn’t as black and white as it first appeared - dd had started the violence. She sheepishly admitted this when questioned further. I learnt an important lesson about getting both sides of a story.

SandyY2K · 05/03/2018 14:34

I don't think you were unreasonable...but it would have been better to hand out the invitations outside of school to avoid this kind of thing.

Some schools have a policy of no invitations at school, unless the whole class is invited.

Amazingly some of these kids who behave horribly never quite seem to understand why they aren't invited to parties.

It's madness to invite a person your son doesn't like.

cleoowen · 05/03/2018 14:45

One of the parents in reception did this recently with another child in ds class. It caused lots of tension and controversy. No one could understand why someone would do that in the first year of school and to a 4/5 year old. She is now really disliked by several of the other parents. I don't know if the excluded parent knows or she doesn't seem to care.

It's really horrible though. You will find yourself disliked I think. I would have told him ok but you can only invite 4/5 of the boys then not all of them but him. It's too late now you've given out the invite so I would invite him anyway no and pretend his invite was mislaid.

DalekDalekDalek · 05/03/2018 14:54

Completely understandable that you didn't want this boy at the party however, knowing that you were inviting all the boys but one, I think you should have been sensitive to how the invites were handed out and gone directly to the parents rather than letting your son hand them out in school. That does sound like this "mean boy's" face was rubbed in it a bit.

By handing them out in school it has involved the teacher in the issue. Of course the "mean boy" was upset in that situation. Just because he is a "mean boy" doesn't mean he is a monster. As pp have suggested, he might just be lacking in social skills or have SN.

I think you could have anticipated this being a problem and handled it better. This really isn't going to help their relationship (which is in both of their best interest to maintain as they spend six hours a day together). It might sound horrible, but to this "mean boy" it might be your son who is the mean one. Children (and adults) interpret things differently.

Hormonequeen · 05/03/2018 14:55

DD had a smaller party last year and there was 1 girl she didn’t want to invite because she is mean. We negotiated that she would invite her closest friends from class plus some friends from out of school so that this 1 girl wasn’t the only one not invited.
YANBU to leave this boy out but you may now have to face the fall out, think the teacher needs to mind her own business!

millymae · 05/03/2018 15:02

Apologies in advance if I upset anyone but this all seems a bit odd to me this. Today is Monday - OP said the invites were handed out yesterday, so Sunday afternoon. Even if this is a typing error and she meant Friday I don't see how a teacher would know who was given invitations. I'm 99% certain that unless the teacher was given the invitations to hand out at the end of the school day he or she would neither know or care who they had been given to.
Unless I've missed something surely there has got to be more to this story than meets the eye.

EllieMe · 05/03/2018 15:14

OP is overseas as you'd know if you'd read the thread properly @millymae

Bogmoppit · 05/03/2018 15:15

For goodness sake don't approach the mum.

Talk to the school - if he is actually being aggressive with your son then it needs sorting out. However if i was a a one off occasion, maybe you should look at why it happened?

If it is such a bad situation, why do you and the school not know?

Willow2017 · 05/03/2018 15:16

milly
Rtt.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 05/03/2018 15:34

Bogmoppit too... Smile

wakemeupbefore · 05/03/2018 15:55

A mean child must be made to understand that such behaviour comes with consequences; feeling left out and not getting a party invite is a clear signal that being mean doesn't pay. Hmm.
Bugger the inclusiveness and pity-party, you act like a shit, you'll be treated as one.

BitOutOfPractice · 05/03/2018 15:58

Except it hasn't been resolved has it. OP hasn't heard back from the other mom who will probably say her son hasn't been mean. In fact, she'll probably say the OP's DS has been...

Iamagreyhoundhearmeroar · 05/03/2018 16:03

This is why both primary's my kids attended refused point blank to allow invitations to be given out on school grounds.
He's 9, not a Reception child. Surely you know who his friends are by now, op? Doesn't he ever have / go to play dates?
You sound like you haven't a clue who these kids are, which is quite odd given your child is 9.

PorkFlute · 05/03/2018 16:06

Well it’s pretty mean to invite every other boy in front of the one who isn’t invited so presumably everyone else is now ok to only leave the ops son out of parties since he has been mean.
As someone who has worked in many schools most children are occasionally boisterous and sometimes mean. This isn’t a serious bullying situation where the ops son has been fearful of going to school or anything. Maybe he has had a few run ins with this boy. That doesn’t justify an adult (the op) encouraging him to overtly exclude him and rub the fact he’s the only boy left out of his party in his face by inviting everyone in front of him. Even if the ops son felt like doing that the op should not have allowed it.
I had a similar situation on ds’s last Birthday. There was one boy he didn’t want to invite because he had been mean to him. I had seen this a few times but also some days they were friends. He invited a few of the boys from his class and some children from outside of school. There isn’t no need to leave one child out to ‘teach them a lesson’ the op doesn’t know what’s gone on at school.

Spikeyball · 05/03/2018 16:08

EllieMe the invitations would still have been given out on Sunday afternoon. Perhaps her child's school has Sunday sessions.

Iamagreyhoundhearmeroar · 05/03/2018 16:10

It's Tuesday in Australia.

CaMePlaitPas · 05/03/2018 16:13

I wouldn't have invited him, he wouldn't be welcome in my home if he had been giving my son a hard time. It seems harsh giving a 9 year old a life lesson but you know what, it won't do him any harm - your actions have consequences, he should be old enough to realise that. Maybe it'll make him think about being nicer next time.

MistressDeeCee · 05/03/2018 16:21

No way would an adult invite someone who treated them badly to a party and the same should apply to children. Only on Mumsnet do people think a bully should be invited. Bot any of the teacher's business. Tell her the tension was there already in the way this boy treated your son

I agree with this. People are so concerned about "how things look" that they teach their children their own upsetting experiences don't matter. Resentment and/or a lifetime of people pleasing and internalising hurt and slights can easily be the end result.

Have your own parties as adults and be sure to invite anyone around that treats you like shit, since it's so important to be seen to do the "right thing".

Contesse · 05/03/2018 16:25

Pointed exclusion is nasty. That's what this is. The boy was 'mean' and the other child was nasty back. You don't invite everybody 'except one' and then rub their face in it.

EllieMe · 05/03/2018 16:28

@Spikeyball keep up, it's Tuesday in Oz.

Spikeyball · 05/03/2018 16:32

It wasn't when the thread started and the op lives somewhere 3 hours ahead not 12.

springtimeforall · 05/03/2018 16:47

Glad you have spoken to the other mum, hope it gets sorted out. My DC would be really hurt if this happened to them so I would encourage them not to do it to others. To be honest if I was working in an office and this happened to me I would still feel pretty bad about it. By handing out the invites at school you unintentionally made it a school issue. You also don't want to be known as the mother did that. We are overseas and it really wouldn't be socially acceptable were we are. Hopefully it will get sorted for you all.

EllieMe · 05/03/2018 16:56

Troll hunting @Spikeyball?