Class Teacher handing out party invitations

[Penguincake]

I am quite willing to be told I am BU. My son has Autism and can occasionally push children when he is panicked. He has been doing a lot better recently and his teacher has said he is forming good relationships. However I understand that some children might be wary of him.

He has been in reception since September and has not been invited to a single party. I totally accept a parents choice in not having a child who pushes at their child's party.

What does hurt though is when there is a party, the class teacher or TA stands at the door at class time with a big wodge of invitations and gives them to each child as they leave. Yet again today they had a stack of invitations and my son was the only one walking out without one. He has started to question why he doesn't get a "card". It all feels so bloody thoughtless and cruel.

I think class teachers should refuse to hand out invites unless everyone is invited. Or maybe I should just suck it up and reconcile myself to the fact that for my son and I that this is the way of the world.

I personally think whole class parties are more about the parent than child

My kids picked an activity and were given a number to invite. Job done.

It depends on the school. If classes stay the same from Reception to Year 6, a whole class party is great to have at least once, so you make sure everybody who invited your own kid gets invited back at least once.

If you have a bouncy castle, disco, magician kind of thing or book the whole soft play, makes no difference if you have 30 kids or 20.

As a teacher I have said no to handing out invitations unless everyone in the class is invited! Simple as that! We are one family in the classroom.

YANBU.

I clearly remember in primary school the teacher calling for everyone who had been to so and so's party to come out into the hall and everyone but me went. I tagged on at the end anyway when I realised I was going to be left on my own and some of the other children shouted that I hadn't been there. I have no idea what I did to not be invited

YANBU
My DC has no special needs but just isn’t the loud popular child in school. She has friends but their parents are the ones that don’t have birthday parties that invite school friends.

My DC did not get invited to any parties in reception and was invited to one party in YR 1. I could have cried when I saw the invitation in her book bag.!

Parents can justify leaving one child out all they want, but if they are doing that they cannot expect to organise party invites through school. If it isn't whole class they need to organise their children's social lives for themselves and leave school out of it.

@mirime bloody hell that's awful! I'm so sorry that happened to you. What on earth did the teacher do it for anyway? What could possibly be the reasoning behind such a bizarrely cruel act?

To be fair to the teacher 30 invite look very much like 29

How was he/she to know?

It breaks my heart. My DS3 has suspected ASD, SPD and loads of other issues. He was excluded from every party at nursery. In his last year I spent time and money putting together party bags for all the kids in his class for DS to hand out celebrating his birthday. I wanted him to be included!
He is in Reception at School now and is included more now...It's so bloody sad seeing your kids excluded from things. As parents to SN kids, we get isolated too, as our DK take up so much more of our time in care. I've lost touch with most of my friends too, sadly they don't understand why my DS behaves differently. He's hard work! Best thing I can say, Give your child all the love you can, you won't be able to protect them from everything, but offering them a loving home where he/she can be their true self. Xx

I think class teachers should refuse to hand out invites unless everyone is invited

That is exactly what I do.

Don’t ask me to put them in book bags either-I have no TA and don’t have time in the day to locate book bags and do this because I am, you know, teaching. Please give your invites out yourself!

I love our school's policy. Invites are only allowed to be distributed at school if the whole class is invited. Any other type of parties need to be dealt with privately, away from school.

I think class teachers should refuse to hand out invites unless everyone is invited

I agree with this. Otherwise they're participating in a form of bullying. Being the only one excluded from whole class parties must be very upsetting for young children.

Greentulips yes maybe more about the parents not wanting to leave any children out.

At our school we refuse to deal with party invitations at all - for many of these kind of reasons.

Our parents do come into school in a morning for drop off, so do come into classrooms - unless at breakfast club, or with childminders, etc. But it is an option open to all - 10 minutes drop off time.

So they can do it themselves then, but more likely the child does it themselves, right from EYFS age - an envelope or card goes in the child's drawer. We don't allow them to hand them out to individuals in the classroom or make a show of issuing invitations. Many hand them out before or after school too from what I have seen, in the playground.

DD's primary school didn't allow teachers to do it either.

I understand this. Its not part of the teacher's job and I certainly wouldn't want to be involved in handing out invitations to all but 1 or 2 children in my class. It would feel like I was accepting that was right, when I really don't think it is.

Forgot to add - despite school not being involved with handing out invitations, and having a decent number of children at various breakfast clubs and/or before school childminders and nurseries - all the classes seem to manage to still have birthday parties.

You say your son is on the asd spectrum but you do realise the other parents won’t be aware of this at all .

They only have the word of their child to go by and if they say that Johnny is pushing or shoving them in school , then it makes sense that they wouldn’t want them at their party.

We aren’t really doing our children ( special needs aside ) any favours if we shelter them from every situation which may cause them some upset . We need to teach them some resilience. Regardless of what we think or want to happen , the world is a scary place and hiding everything difficult from them doesn’t help them in the long term .

This is just so so cruel

Another teaching chiming in to say Yanbu at all

@Purpletigers

You're right that the parents might feel they have good reasons not to invite the OP's DS. My DD1 (10 this coming week) has only been invited to one classmate's party in the last 3 years. It's been very hard for her, especially since DD2 (7) has been invited to lots of parties and play dates. I don't blame the parents for that.

That's not the point here. The point is the TA openly handing out invitations to the children in the class when the OP's DS is very obviously the only child not included. That isn't okay by any stretch.

I do agree the teacher should not be handing out invitations and most definitely not at the door as the children passed .

YANBU.

I've never known teachers to hand out invitations and I'd be really annoyed about it.

That is awful. I cannot understand why the school allows it or the teacher hasn’t realised she is causing pain to a child.

My daughter has allergies and doesn’t get the school treats (given by parents for classmates on their child’s birthday) but they have a stash (provided by me) of things she can have so she doesn’t feel left out.

I brought it up though, not them. Perhaps schools are clueless...

@DanielRicciardosSmile I have no idea why she did that. This was a long time ago, I'm in my 40s now. I assume she didn't realise how many of the class had gone, and thought it would be a handy way of splitting the class in two. Backfired obviously if that were her intention!

She had everyone stand in a circle and take it in turns to name the party food they'd had. That was it.

Many unreasonable things happened throughout my time in school, I wasn't popular or well liked - too nerdy, too quiet, and later after being bullied too don't-give-a-fuck towards my peers.

@mirime I honestly have no words. I also wasn't popular at school, but that absolutely takes the biscuit. Surely anyone with half a heart (or brain for that matter!) would have realised it was a bad idea, though thinking back to some of the teachers I had at around the same time I'm not sure why I'm so surprised.