To want to know WHY my child isn't included

[Cakemamma19]

So my DC is 2.5 years old and has been going to nursery since 9 months old. DC has a few friends there and gets on pretty well day to day. DC has had birthday parties only small because thier birthday is in December and covid/lockdown was rife both years we celebrated. I recently learned that 3 children have had birthday parties at softplay and community centres and invited the rest of the class but not my child. Its upset me a little for my little one but more than that i am left questioning why my child isn't included. DC is absolutely lovely, gets on with everyone, is kind and very bright.
I cant think why they would leave her out.
my baby is deaf and wears double hearing aids so does struggle a bit with communication sometimes. I'm not saying this is the reason at all. But just don't want to drip feed . Should I mention this to any of the parents in passing or just keep my mouth shut? What would you do in this situation?

We collect from rooms so that's how they see her stimming. And, in our case at least, I have spoken with the parents and they know her name and she has been excited to see me.

Obviously this is my experience. There are many different experiences and nurseries have different rules regarding collections etc. It could be a simple misunderstanding as people have previously mentioned but there is the uncomfortable possibility that it could be something like what I experience.

Funny how all the people insisting it's not because of OP's dd deafness don't appear to have children with disabilities.

No one is 'demonising' the parents that are potentially excluding OP's dd, you can't demonise a group of faceless people.

It's often the case. DS is autistic and previously had speech problems - he's been invited to 4 parties ever. He's 10 this year and no longer cares, he used to ask why a lot though. DD had a profound speech processing disorder, but lots of little friends - no parties until SALT helped her speak 'normally', at least 5/6 invitations a year since. It was like someone flicked a switch and she became visible to other parents.

The way adults treat children with additional needs is awful and I am sorry OP 💐.

How sure are you that it's every other child barring DD that has been invited?

I hope it's not but I also fear this is the case.

Children with all kinds of differences face micro aggressions constantly.

Is your child in on the same days as the birthday children?

It is most likely something like this.

Or the parents gave a bunch of unnamed invites to the teacher to hand out if they were not allowed to give a list of names, and they may have been given out on a day she wasn't there?

That's very upsetting. Is you child definitely the only one in the class that wasn't invited? I would find that out for definite as there might be things happening in class during the day that mean they don't want to invite her. As a PP has said, speak to the staff too about why it could be happening.

The other thing it could be though is communication/miscommunication. My 3 year old is in nursery Tuesday to Friday and In the last year I have also found out that there have been at least 2 parties he didn't get an invite for. I only found out because one of the Mum's asked me directly why he didn't come to her DC's party one weekend, to which I told her I had no idea about it. She had asked for an invite to go in all of the children's trays. Through chatting to the staff, me and the other mum discovered that the staff usually empty all the children's trays and send them home on a Friday with all of the drawings/invites etc, and because mine isn't in on a Friday, the invites etc were all still in there. Due to them having different staff in through the week, they (the staff) hadn't realised his tray wasn't getting emptied. It could just be that.

Birthday parties at play centres at 2/3?god no.

And your kid is not precious. She doesn't HAVE to be invited. The mums that had parties might already have known eachother. They would have invited the MUMS they wanted
Not the kids they wanted.

Some posters who have said it isn't the reason do have children with additional needs though.

Also people are demonising these parents by saying that's absolutely the reason the OPs child is excluded. They might be faceless but the certaity with which some posters are saying these parents are discriminating is still unnecessary.

Do you personally know the parents?

When my oldest was in nursery they nursery had a strict 'no contact outside of nursery' rule under its safe gaurding so the absoloutly refused to hand out invites, names lists for cards, other parents contact detail or anything.

Obviously they cant stop you organising anything outside of nursery time but they wont help so you have to know how to contact the parents yourself.

My DS wanted to invite a little girl he was really good friends with to his first birthday party (he was 4, up until then he hadnt had friends to invite anywhere) but couldnt because we had different pick up/drop off scheduals so I didnt know her parents and the nursery refused point blank to help.

Oh, and my DC's differences were obvious and preschool had fixed pick up times, where parents collected from the child's room. Much like at school really, where parents could also easily see my DC's differences.

Despite everyone being oh so confident it's not disability based, I assure you, once parents spot a difference, a significant minority are cocks and a huge number scared of dealing with anything atypical. So the child is excluded.

I was constantly and universally excluded as a young child, because my mother was an obvious drug addict. I know how shit it feels; I remember it vividly. I think very poorly of the type of parent (many!) that does this.

I didn’t even know parties at nursery were a thing! I’m oblivious if this happens at my sons nursery and I’m friends with 2 of the parents. Usually the birthday child brings cake, I sent mine in with cake and balloons.

Our school (and the nursery before) wouldn’t give out class lists for data protection reasons. If your nursery is the same they may have just asked their child who to invite. In this situation I’d be having a little side chat with one of the nursery workers to see what’s what. But I really do doubt it’s because of her hearing, I really hope it isn’t.

I have a 3 year old and have exactly zero idea of the names of children in his room at nursery, other than the ones who have siblings in my older child's class.

I know that I pieced together my older child's nursery class list from her memory and the Christmas Cards received, so I'd definitely miss someone starting in January unless they had an unusual name that was consistently mentioned by my child. Given that most of my information about what happened at school over the first 2 years was entirely based on what was on my DC's clothes/in their shoes when I got them home - I could work out that there had been sand pit time, water play and tomato sauce with lunch, and might discover that James or Rebecca had been in the sand pit with them!

In a school class I'd be more suspicious of a choice (other than the post Christmas arrival, not being in the Christmas play which might well have been the only time I saw the full class).

We have an August birthday which is very awkward for parties - I sent cakes in today (our last day of term- Scotland)!

Do 2 year olds have friends? I've never known any 2 year olds to have actual friends. 'Friendships' at that age are just because the parents are friends.

So, either, the parents really don't like you (unlikely) or your kid is just missing from some list somewhere. The only way to invite an entire class of 2 year olds is to ask the staff for a list of their names 🤷🏻‍♀️
There's no way a parent would know them all, and the toddler certainly wouldn't!

Also, I could understand (and still be disgusted by) parents perhaps not inviting a child with autism that has violent outbursts or gets very upset by loud groups etc. I am not condoning it, but people are cruel unfortunately.

But hearing aids? I would very very much doubt there's anything in that.

If they are giving the invites out via the nursery then the nursery should decline if they exclude 1 or 2 children or only accept whole class invites- the parents should be made to do their own dirty work if actively excluding.

When my oldest was in nursery they nursery had a strict 'no contact outside of nursery' rule under its safe gaurding so the absoloutly refused to hand out invites, names lists for cards, other parents contact detail or anything

I can't get over this weird secrecy about other people's children. If the children see each other in nursery, what's wrong with them seeing each other in a different setting?

When the same children start school, no school is going to say 'no contact outside school '

This is 'safeguarding' gone totally bonkers.

When my oldest was in nursery they nursery had a strict 'no contact outside of nursery' rule under its safe gaurding so the absoloutly refused to hand out invites, names lists for cards, other parents contact detail or anything.

either the nursery had completely misunderstood the meaning and purpose of safeguarding, or there was another reason and ‘safeguarding’ was given as an excuse

We have recently had a class party for our DD turning 3 at nursery and we did indeed ask the nursery for a list of kids because we didn't want to leave anyone out and you can't rely on the children at this age to know everyone's names. Not sure why a list of first names is a GDPR issue? We put the invites in the trays with our mobile number to RSVP.

We also get provided the list of names to do Christmas cards. Given the timing of your DD joining could it be the parents based the invites off an old list such as from Christmas?

I don't doubt that some parents would exclude based on disability but I think given it's nursery and parents don't know the kids in class it might be the simpler reason.

I have 0 friends from primary or nursery btw and DH has one. We're both NT, not sure you can always blame parents for not maintaining a friendship for years on prejudice.

That must be deeply upsetting. But first I’d ask the nursery if they know why this might have happened, or if they maybe failed to pass on invitations to you etc?

I don’t know all the children in my DS’s nursery class, let alone many of the parents, as they all attend on different days and are dropped off and picked up at different times.

My little one is about to turn 3. I don't know the names of all the kids in her class. I asked her the other day, who she'd like to come to her party. She listed 5 kids. 4 that I'd never heard of.

I can have all the kids. It would be too many for what I've got planned.

I have no idea if any of the kids have disabilities. It wouldn't be something my little would mention. At that age. They don't see things like that.

The parents don't know why you didn't invite their child.

The parents wouldn’t even have known there was a party. It was at lockdown.

Such naivety here. Of course the parents know the child is deaf, kids talk, parents see kids at pick up and drop off. Of course kids with disabilities are excluded by parents and yes there can be three sets of parents who do it. If I had a £1 for every party my daughter was excluded from because of her disability, I would be very rich indeed. And some of these were parties of kids she thought she was friends with. People are afraid of disability.

When I’m being charitable, I take the view that the parents might think it is offensive to invite her to things they don’t think she can take part in. When I’m not, I assume they are wankers.

Short of asking the parents why, there isn’t much you can do about past parties, but for future, maybe get chatting to the parents of the kids you know your child is friendly with and help them understand just through general conversation. Interact with them with your child so they can see it’s fine. Always be clear you can stay at a party with them if required (this will become more of an issue when they are getting in to drop and run age range)

Speak to the nursery. It happened to my DN and it was only when another parent made a snippy comment to SIL about her never RSVP’ing or turning up that it emerged that DN wasn’t on the class list that had been given out.