7yo not invited to classmates party despite her talking about it

[Inciwinci]

7 year old son came home several days this week excited by and convinced that he had been invited to a party because a classmate (who we had invited to his party) had been talking to him about the party coming up at the end of easter holidays. I had had no invite or notification from mum. I was informed by another mum that "whole class parties" stops after the 5th birthday. When we organised DS (FB) we invited 10 and had a situation where someone's parents got wind and made it clear that their DD would love to come. We gracefully added her on and fun was had by all. We also coached DS not to talk about his event around anyone who was not invited and from what I can tell he stuck to this. So today, at village kids event, I asked classmate's mum if DS was invited and was told no, we can only invite 10 for practical reasons. There was no apology or acknowledgement that her child has caused hurt and disappointment and potential humiliation to DS. I handled it with my DS in the "you get invited sometimes, sometimes you dont/do you actually play that much with her?/there are folk that you didnt invite to yours etc." but inside I am absolutely distraught and spent the afternoon partly in tears and apologising to my DS for all the times I failed as a mother.
It has been a struggle to teach my DS to socialise - he thinks and responds slowly and always has, but has recently started to enjoy the company of classmates, likes playing in the playground, has occasionally been over to play at others and they have been over to us, but it feels that just as he is starting to catch up a bit, the bitchiness (of parents) that I remember from my teenage years is what my kids have to deal with, so very much younger.
I am not sure what I am asking for here. I want to be able to help my son to find and enjoy the company of mates and make friends but the revelation that he is among kids of parents who might not have ever had to read about ASD and neurotypical and non-neurotypical and who don't coach their kids to be sensitive to the feelings of others makes me sick.
AIBU... I want to get my kids out of the school (there are other children who bring behaviour which the others have to learn to assert themselves with) for this reason and other concerns further up the school about the academic standards..
How do I get past this feeling of extreme dread and helplessness because the reality that there is very little I can do... And I kind of know I should not be so triggered by it. but I cant fight it...

Gosh op that’s an unusual massive overreaction. The crying and apologising to your son must have been unsettling for him. In this situation you laugh and say “win some lose some” or similar. He is not going to be invited to things he will not invite others to things. It’s not unkind or bullying it’s life.

My 9 year old was invited to a party recently and was the only child not invited for a post party sleepover. The birthday darling spent the afternoon regaling dd with the fun she would miss out on later. Birthday girl is extremely jealous of dd. Dh picked dd up. My calm sensible kid held it in until they got home then sobbed like I’ve never seen. Dealing with that was fun. Dh and I call that child and her mother “birthday bitches” in private.

Totally OTT. Kids need to learn they wont be invited or included in everything they want to in life. At 7 they are old enough to understand that.

I get what you're getting at OP. Its not the space limiting at the party, it was that DS had his expectations raised that he was getting an invite and then it didn't materialise.

This happened to DD at around 7 too, she was very hurt by it. For her the main hurt was way the girl handed out the invites to others and turned around and said oh I forgot about you pointedly, cheered on by her DM. I did the explaining about some parties having limited numbers and not relying on being invited until there was an actual invite in hand, then took her out and treated her to something nice with the money we'd have spent on the girl's present.

Dd2 is similar and one of her friends made a huge thing hyping up her party and saying dd2 was going to be invited etc - then no invite came.

I phrased it that sometimes mums (was one in this case) tell children who they can invite and want the mums they're friends with there and parties are expensive so you can't invite everyone and it's ok to feel sad if you're not invited but this is why I have the rule that I only believe party invites when I get an actual invite... Now how about we go swimming this afternoon?

Yes it hurts like hell for them (and this one was definitely playground mum politics at work) but you can't give into that and have to just help them through it all.

Yeah the explaining “some people are not kind and polite like we are darling and have no manners. Be sad for them”

Feeling your pain OP. My DS2 desperately wanted to be invited to classmates parties, invites were not returned, he used to get so upset when invites were handed out and he wasn’t included. Then he would say to me can you ask their mum if I can come. I was difficult to explain to him.

He’s 16 now, and actually it came up in conversation the other day and we just laughed about it, so he hasn’t been damaged by it, but it was very upsetting at the time, seeing his disappointment.

Typically, shy DS1 used to always get invited and hid the invite because he didn’t want to go to parties! That got me into a few embarrassing moments when mums would ask if DS1 was coming or worse, why didn’t DS1 turn up, I didn’t know anything about it.

You can never win with kids at times!

Sorry you are upset, OP, but you really shouldn't have asked. It was very rude of you.

Your DS will have hundreds f these small disappointments and you can't cry every time. Please seek help for that.

My friend took a clutch of invited to school to hand out turns out they were her child’s imaginary friends and didn’t actually exist. She thought some of the names abit odd

Total over reaction. Crying all afternoon over a kids party

You need to step back and not react so oddly to things like this. It was a simple misunderstanding on your sons part, and you have turned it into a much bigger issue. And as for spending the afternoon in tears and apologising to your poor confused son for failing as a parent? Don't do that again.

For whatever reason, you are not currently in a good position to advise your son about social interaction with his classmates. If you just step away, he will work things out for himself without the histrionics,

Parties are minefields of expectations and disappointments. These AIBU threads show that there are still people who are trying to get it right, and failing, when it comes to arranging weddings! I think you did the right thing in being breezy and calm about how to accept the disappointment of your DS not being invited. One word of advice: the relationships you’re making with school mums is only going to be in your life while you have kids at this primary school - don’t overinvest in them, and don’t take their smirks (which is downright rude) seriously. Do you really want to encourage your DS to be friends with the offspring of people like that?

That parent who pushed her DD in to your DS party was a CF, and the fact that you approached the party child's mum and asked if your DS was invited also puts you in the cheeky fucker category.

Only 10 people were invited, most of the time because kids parties cost a fortune per child. Most of the class wouldn't have been invited, I doubt your child would have been left out because of his ASD

Hi Op

I would suggest you invest some time learning about building resilience for you and your DC

Shit happens in life, you win some you lose some

There is always someone more popular, tougher, prettier, more clever etc

Resilience is the key to bouncing back, a vital tool in adulthood

but inside I am absolutely distraught and spent the afternoon partly in tears and apologising to my DS for all the times I failed as a mother.

You lost me here, how on earth does your child not being invited to a party (which is reasonable if they have limited numbers and your child is not particularly close to Birthday child) translate into this type of reaction from you? 🤦‍♀️

Particularly when you didn't invite all and sundry to his last party...

I think the issue isn’t a party invitation. That’s almost an irrelevance.
It’s the notion that you can and should make life perfect for your children and step in whenever there is the slightest disappointment.

It’s really not in their best interests to take away their chance to learn to cope and adjust. Children need to be allowed to develop resilience and parenting requires us to model and coach this. Tears from a parent over a party invitation is an extreme reaction. You need to step back and let him find his way a bit.

The whole bit about spending an afternoon apologising to him makes me wonder if you, perhaps, aren’t very well? That behaviour really isn’t good for him. It ends up almost as emotional blackmail by making him feel responsible for your happiness. A bit unfair on him. I think you might need some additional support for yourself.

You sound like a lovely mum and of course we all would like to protect our children from all the hurt in the world but we cannot. It is not really appropriate to approach another mum and inquire as to an invite. The remaining issue is that you have turned this in to a big deal for your son. Next time it happens do not dwell on it with your son, simply say you cannot be invited to everything and move the subject on, you need to build up his resilience.

Op you must absolutely learn the art of bright and breezy (even if you are breaking in two inside your child must not know)

'Never mind ds, now you are older and the parties are small we won't be going to every single one now. We can't go on that day anyway we are doing xxxx and lets make a plan for that!'

Then you proceed to map out a super fun afternoon (perhaps with a few other children that have not been invited) and you do not give the party anymore 'air time'. Refocus ds on his plans for his weekend and not the party.

If you descend into floods of tears you will be damaging your child, he will not be equipped to deal with all of the future let downs and disappointments ahead of him (There will be many) not to mention the nightmare that is social media.

So, you make fun plans for your child, you forget about the party - it is just a party. There will be many more and you teach your son social resilience.

The less you care (or pretend to if you have to) the less your child will care. He will mirror your reactions op. So be very careful about being overly emotional about one kids party. It is not a personal rejection, don't take it so personally.

You need to toughen up. You cannot protect your son from disappointment in his life. Bright and breezy is a much better role model to promote with your son than descending into tears.

Hello OP, DS1 is hardly ever invited to parties, even though we have held many and many invited. He has HFA, very bright, very engaged academically at school, but friendships are delicate. This is particularly hurtful when DS2 is very popular and has lots of invites.

This is something that you will need to get used to. Firstly as kids get older, parties become more selective, but also, if you suspect ASD, differences are going to get more pronounced as the kids get older. When you next hold a party for your son, only invite those who you think have a good friendship with him. Don't invite just for the sake of it or in any expectation of return.

I think you're upset because you fear this is the beginning of a pattern.

Btw you may want to think about assessment for your son. My DH was resistant because he didn't want labels. But in our case it was a big relief for DS1 to know why he felt different from his peers. There may be more support and appropriate strategies to help him and you, especially come the teenage years. It also takes ages to get a diagnosis and would be better started sooner rather than later.

Ffs get some sort of help, it's a kids party.

Op I'm afraid YABU.

You spent all afternoon crying and apologising to your DS who previously wasn't really bothered by the lack of invite?!

Yet you only invited a few people to your DSs party. This is exactly what's happened here. It's not about you, and as your DS had 10 other children happily attend his party I'd say it's very unlikely to be about his ASD either.

My DH is often projecting things about his childhood onto our DC and whilst my first thought is to try to be patient and kind, it is also infuriating.

I think fishing for an invite from the other mums may well have come across as rude and entitled. I'd probably internally raise my eyebrows at that request too, though I would do my best to not show it.

It sounds like you're working very hard to help your child socially, I think you getting some counselling would be one of the best things you do for him. It would also give you confidence that in the future you're approaching things from his perspective not your own.

Inciwinci - neither of my children got invited to many parties at primary school. Frankly, it saved loads of money in presents... Neither of them is hideously scarred by it or friendless, neither was ever bullied. Rather than make your ds feel insecure by tearfully apologising to him for not being a good enough mother, help teach him to be resilient. He's only 7 and a boy, he has plenty of time to continue to hone his social skills. It sounds like he has plenty going for him already, anyway. Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, but don't expect others to live up to your expectations. There is nothing wrong with you or your ds.

I get that it is hard to watch your child navigate social stuff, but really there is a lot of this stuff to come....friends being fickle, parties not invited to, worries over best friends....It is a really hard part of supporting your children, especially because our own memories of difficult friendships etc tend to inform our reactions. But our children are not us, and some of these things are part of growing as a person and how we help them through it, helps them become the person they will be.

I can still feel the pain of being left out myself in my teens there are so many parts of our own lives we hope to protect our children from, but sometimes it leads to the opposite, and our emotional response can be overwhelming. ....spent the afternoon partly in tears and apologising to my DS for all the times I failed as a mother. I know you said this was over something else, but try not to let your child feel your broken edges.

I'm not sure if your son actually has autism, but if he does you may find some things that haven't been an issue become more so as he gets older. It also means that you may have to temper your reactions and how you explain things to him. I also think that as you are a doctor, maybe you should have a rethink about the idea of a diagnosis as 'labelling'.

Children should never be told to keep secrets, surely as a doctor you're hyper aware of that?

There is no reason a child should have to keep their birthday party secret. There is no reason they shouldn't talk about it, just as they can talk about a holiday they are going on but not inviting the class along on.

The only things to avoid with children's birthday parties are inviting almost but not quite all the children/ almost but not quite all the children of one sex, telling a child they are invited then retracting, or goading a child about not being invited.

Keeping secrets is unhealthy and a bad habit to encourage.

Your own teen experiences were your parents' fault - it's fairly normal not to keep inviting someone who never invites you back. It's fairly normal to have a shabby house, and that is equally true of lots of "posh" people. Obviously you should have been allowed to have friends 'round.

Part of socialising your son is teaching him to be able to accept not being invited to everything, it's part of not expecting the world to revolve around you, everyone has to learn this and like everything some children find it harder than others. That makes it more, not less, important that parents help them learn rather than trying to shelter them from reality.

If your son doesn't have a diagnosis it's probably unrealistic to expect people outside the family to treat him differently. Is might be worth pursuing to see whether other professionals feel he has ASD.