Playground party invites

[Shinyletsbebadguys]

Firstly I do accept maybe I'm being oversensitive about this and I have no intention of bothering the school with such minutaie (I don't rate ds1 teacher very highly but I do believe teachers work extremely hard and it's insane to ask them to police the playground politics)

However

Three times in the last three weeks , discounting half term , I've seen this but today was the most overt

Standing today waiting for the class door to open a mum handed her dd a pack of obvious party invites , she loudly said " go and give them to the lucky ones "

The little girl then went and gave her invites out to a few children then went to one little girl and went to hand an envelope then laughed and said "oh I forgot not you " ...the poor child she had played this trick on was crestfallen , The mother smiled and said " oh sorry not everyone can be chosen and lucky enough"

The little girl approached ds1 and I could see what was coming (please see explanation below and I have never seen her interact with ds1 so they are not friends ) I glared at the mother with an absolute death glare (after years of prison work in my early career my death glare is second to none ) and kept her eyes ...she wisely stepped in and told the little girl another invitee had arrived. I was so angry , Ds1 bless him is oblivious to things a lot and I doubt had seen the interaction or understood it really (He prefers to live in dinosaur land sometimes )

So I am not accused of drip feeding ds1 has extra needs and I fully recognise (not that I would ever ever indicate to him) he isn't the most popular boy in the class, he has struggled making friends and I know the other children find him odd and a bit unusual

He is lovely kind and funny and imaginative but I get the dynamics and I'm teaching him that he's wonderful as he is and doesn't have to be included in everything , it's not an entitlement and to believe in how wonderful he is and play with the friends he wants to play with.

I don't believe people should have to invite everyone in the class at all , I really believe child's choice but whilst this was particularly overt I have seen similar

Aibu in being annoyed that this dynamic is being encourage by some parents ? I guess I feel if ds1 was only inviting a few to the party I would ask him to be considerate on how he gave the invites out and I absolutely would not allow him to play such a trick on another child

It's hard to translate tone but the mother really had an exceptionally nasty tone and thoroughly enjoyed her dd being the purveyor of the special invites publicly excluding certain children.

Of course really what would I do about it ? Nothing is what , I'm not going to make a scene , it's not the little girls fault she's encouraged to behave like that , and it's not the schools problem ,so I will continue teaching ds1 that he is wonderful and lovely and doesn't need others approval but it did make me angry

I'm usually the furthest thing from PFB honestly but perhaps I am being silly being annoyed about this
It's not the biggest issue in the world , hell it's not even the biggest issue for me this hour but it does niggle a bit.

I'm genuinely curious as to perspectives , it's not about the lack of invite but more about the encouraging children to be so exclusive publicly and not just being a tiny bit considerate ?

gives the invites to the class teacher and she pops them in the reading bags. No grandstanding necessary

I have no TA and actually don’t have the time in the working day to go around locating book bags to put invitations into-they might be going to children across several different classes in different parts of the school as well. It would inevitably be done during my lunch break and would be a choice between doing that, hearing a couple of readers, marking books or going to the loo.

I prefer the WhatsApp idea!

The mom is a cunt and her daughter sounds like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I'd be very tempted to do the same to them but it's petty and not fair to involve their nasty child. Next time you see it, call it out; I think I might have actually said something to the little girl about being rude and then to her mother (bet the party's shit anyway)

Perhaps an email to the headteacher, they may be able to advise parents to give invitations to the teacher to hand out instead.

You remember all the shitty horrible kids that you went to school with? Well they grow up to be shitty horrible parents with their own shitty horrible kids.

Hard copy party invites can only be given out at our school if it's whole class, all the boys, all the girls or less than 7 total (i.e. less than one third of the class). Even then they get put in diaries by the TA rather than given out. It's 90% evite here though which avoids the drama and is much kinder.

all the boys, all the girls

I can already hear the uproar from some offended parents about that

I would tell school that this has happened without mentioning names and clarify if they have a school policy. It is horrible and can be very damaging for a young child. As a parent of a child with social difficulties I think you are entitled to ask as you as it directly affects you.

Our school would put a firm comment on the newsletter stating that this had been observed and was not in keeping with the inclusive school ethos. It would then state that if all class are being invited parents were allowed to give these out in school if not, parents were to contact parents via WhatsApp etc. or in younger years teachers would put them in the book bags. I think younger years did have teaching assistants though so not sure a burden.

The mother is vile and is teaching her daughter to be equally so. I would be tempted to tell her to stick her invitation up her arse if my child were invited. A bit of discretion so feelings are not hurt is not a lot to ask.

Again, I think the mother is a bitch, but I disagree about banning invitations entirely.

Of course, your child won't be invited to everything, that's life, and it's not a big deal. I quite like to see which party mine miss so I know who not to invite next time, makes life so much easier.
I very strongly disagree about forcing your children to invite kids they don't like, or made to feel bad because of it. They are kids, they spend all day with them, why should they put up with them on their special day? It's one party, once a year max. Let them enjoy themselves.

I wouldn't invite my work colleagues or my boss to a party, let alone my wedding, why should my kids be made to invite their class mates if they don't want to?

Being rude and nasty about it is different, but you can give away the invitations without making a big fuss, it's no big deal.

"Perhaps I should have said something ...I do recognise I implicitly allowed it to continue"

you were wise not to say something that day I think - emotions bubble up unexpectedly and all that.

I wish you strength in the playground - there was a wonderful piece we used to circulate on the SN board about how the playground is war for parents like us and our weapons are our calmness and smiles and our knowing when to speak and when not... but it's still war.

@amoregentlemanlikemanner

That's very appreciated thank you

It does feel a bit like that sometimes I must admit when ds1 loses out through no fault of his

Absolutely agree with endevo. Revolting behaviour from the children and even more revolting from the parents, who should know better.

I’m surprised you’ve decided to not say anything unless there’s a “next time” OP.

Fact is, your child did not have a trick played on him. Yes it’s of course was extremely likely that was the girl’s intention when she walked towards him - but you don’t know what she’d have specifically said, you’re making an assumption no matter how well founded it is.

What you do know though is that she played this cruel trick on a little girl. And for all you know, this could be part of a pattern of how she treats the little girl - just another way she finds to humiliate and upset the girl. So frankly, I’d be definitely having a quiet word to the teacher about it, as she may be aware of other incidents between those girls and out 2 & 2 together.

I’m sure you’d want another parent to look out for your son this way.

At our school, invites seem to be handed to the teacher and put into the relevant children's bookbags. Pretty sure they've always been in DS' bag. Some he has mentioned because "X invited me to his party" and the birthday child had been taking about a party invite in the bags.

Perhaps a more conspicuous way of the school doing this?

We have 4 reception classes. My son was invited to X's birthday but another child, in the same class was not. Other children from the other 3 classes - so a mix across all 4 classes - were invited. A friend said she was sad when her DS said he wanted to see if he had a party invite in his bag from X and didnt.

So I suppose, some you win, some you lose. As I said to friend, with such a big cohort, it's impossible to invite ALL children... 120 kids at a party?! fuck that.

@stinkycandle

I entirely agree about not being forced to invite people they don't want to , I genuinely don't think anyone should be entitled to an invite and I'm sure the majority of parents are self aware enough to be kind about handing the invites out

However a few doing this don't realise the impact that it can cause to a child who hasn't quite figured out the world just yet

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask to be considerate about it. Just not to be unnessecarily public and exclusive with it .

Actually, your DS is the lucky one in this scenario, to not have to interact with that family any more than is absolutely necessary during school hours.

You didn't do nothing OP, I gather you got your opinion across, well done. No party invites on school grounds is our school policy so no harm in suggesting the "inclusive or discreet" tack a PP mentioned to the school.

Bloody hell what a cow!

I have done paper invitations in the past but told DD to give then discreetly one-to-one or put in trays. These days I use email to avoid anyone getting upset, and so do most others.

I'm really glad you gave her the death stare OP - a perfect response to what she was up to.

YANBU

The mum is clearly a complete twat

There is no scope for misunderstanding or benefit of the doubt here- the mum deliberately set out to make a public display of inviting (or not) the children in child's class.

Who does that??!

What an awful message to send her child and the other children in the class

I'd avoid mother and child like the plague

I totally agree that parents/children have the right to invite whoever they wish to their parties e.g. invite the whole school if they really want to!

But doing it in that sort of manner which publicly excludes others and mocks them too in the process...that's just nasty behaviour.

And sadly, the little girl seems to be taking right after her mother- pretending to give an invite to another child and then laughing about the fact there was no invite for them. Horrible

Our school gives them out discretely but we invited everyone to DS' and he got to give them out in class and loved that.

@aubaine
I do realise some may feel I should have done / do now things differently and I'm not justifying my lack of response in the moment

However I do feel we can all only make our decisions about things like this with the information and choices we have

It may not be the way you would do things but I do need to balance out likelihood of response from the school ,the information I have at hand and reasonable response

It's also worth remembering the little girls mother was with her and giving her a hug as the door opened , I do think I would have reacted faster if she had been alone but I just don't know...i really hope I would have but I am not proud of not being faster in the moment

Surely no one in their right mind would think that this was merely a delightful family exercising their right not to invite everyone?! This was a grandstanding bitch teaching her daughter how to treat others like dirt. What a cow. I agree it would have been nice in an ideal world to front her up with it OP but I too have stood frozen to the spot whilst one of these mums does her thang trying to humiliate other kids

On the occasions when we made it clear one or both of my DDs were having a party EVERYONE was invited; we were lucky to be able to afford it and I remember the pleasure my kids got from handing an invitation to every single child as they left the classroom, even the staff liked doing that as everyone went home happy. When my kids got older and I couldn't do that anymore all invitations were discreetly delivered. (PS I love kids parties)

A similar thing happened to my DS1 in reception. He’s now 13 and wouldn’t remember it but I still do. And I still fucking hate the mother who only left out him (extra needs) and a boy in nappies in front of the whole line of kids waiting to go into school. There is a special place in hell for people like these.

Btw in my case I told the teacher but she didn’t do anything. The girl in question was a bit of a teacher’s pet in class.