Party Invites causing upset

[Horseskeepmesane]

Hi, first post!

non judgey, non cliquey mum here who is just confused by Year,1 party invites.

my son is literally the kindest, mild mannered boy, can be quieter with others he isn’t familiar with.

party invites in his class seen to be the biggest issue I do NOT understand

i see chunks of invites being handed out, my son does get them sometimes, but there are also many times when he doesn’t get them, from parents of kids I know he plays with???

what is going on? I’m very happy and chatty at the pick up and drop offs, no issues I can think of, never had any behaviour issues mentioned from school. Why do some kids seem to get invited to all parties? Is it to do with the parents being ‘pushy’ about climbing the social ladder with other parents? I know this sounds petty, but it isn’t. It’s getting under my skin, and upset for my lovely son.

To all those saying ‘it’s just one of those things, it’s not personal, they can’t invite everyone blah blah blah….’

When it happens to YOUR child, it feels bloody awful. When it happens multiple times, it’s hurtful and worrying. It’s human nature to be protective of our children.

It doesn’t matter what the circumstances, to be left out of a group at any age is a huge thing (we see posts on here all the time when grownups have been excluded from a friendship group activity /holiday and it causes pain and upset).

Everyone wants their child to be included, and to be doing well socially. If I’m honest, I think it mattered more to me than the academic side of things when they were small. Nobody wants their child to be left out socially as it can lead to bullying etc….

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know I’m so glad mine are much older now, and the birthday party days are over!

I think Y1 is when parties start to move to not whole class due to numbers. I expect if he's on the quieter side, he may get overlooked when parents ask, 'who do you play with that you want to invite to your party?' I expect it's the more outgoing ones who naturally get mentioned. To be honest, I have no idea who my ds plays with at school (except for the one really obnoxious kid who is constantly in his and my face - I'd probably not invite him if I could get away with it!).

Frankly, he might just get forgotten about too unfortunately. I had to ask my ds for names of his classmates and he forgot two of them and I had to do last minute invites for them. We don't have a class WhatsApp, I don't know all the other parents, and he's 5, so frankly, he just doesn't remember everyone's names yet.

Have you invited other children around for playdates? I would start there to get to know other parents and encourage his friendships. If you have, I'd just keep doing it.

I am coming out the other side of the party invites / play dates stage and if I could tell younger mums one thing it would be just do not stress this type of thing unless your child is invited to literally nothing and has no friends at all.

I never stressed, had play dates but didn’t go nuts with them and always encouraged my kids to have lots of friends and be nice to everyone.

Despite some bumps along the way, it’s paid off. My kids are really secure in the friendships, don’t feel the need to be super popular and can easily deal with any drama.

Parents too often see their kids social, academic , extra curricular achievements as a reflection of themselves and their parenting skills and get too obsessively involved.

Step back, and unless it’s all going very wrong, let your kids be.

FWIW, in our school its pretty much who the mum is friends with. Mums invite their friends kids

Yep, generally this and often it’s got nothing to do with making mum/dad friends at school, they are often pre-formed parent friendships made during several years of nursery/daycare. I totally get it as these parties are generally quite ghastly, so keeping them to people you know quite well and get along with rather than having to make chit chat with newbies would just be easier. Obviously as the kids get older then it progresses to their actual friends at the time, which isn’t so bad as then they are older and parents are happy to do the drop and run. That was my experience anyway, many parent friendship groups were already formed when kids started school, there was nothing personal against other parents or kids.

I feel exactly the same!! I did a whole class party, I would never want to exclude any children! I think this situation will naturally get easier as they get older xx

Often it's about mothers controlling whom the child should or should not invite, rarely is it about the child's actual friends. Often close friends don't get invites whereas remote class acquaintances do because their mothers push them to play together.
And a lot of social climbing too.
Surprised how many mothers invite their own friends with kids or someone they think their child should play with rather than the child's actual friends.
Are there any behaviour issues, however small, at all? Plenty of parents will judge your kid for the minor things ignoring the fact how shitty their own kids can be.
Are there any prominent parent cliques in the class - or year - those will tend to invite own friends kids over the actual kid's friends?
Are you a different background to the rest of them? You'll be amazed how many mothers who sent kids to "multicultural" schools "on purpose" will find over one or two years reasons to exclude anyone remotely different to themselves from the child's circle.

We went through something similar. Many of the parents were very cliquey. Later I found out that they knew each other before their children starting school so they had formed the social circle before school, and we were on the outside.

Not much that could be done apart from rising above it, and continuing to arrange playdates/time with the friends of your child to establish friendships.

As they get older it should be easier as parties are usually smaller.

We did have a rule that party invites could only be handed out at school if the entire class was invited to prevent this type of scenario where children felt left out. That was quite helpful.

It's like the PP says - the "obnoxious" kid always in her child's face, who probably is indeed one of her kid's best friends, she wont invite him. It's vwhom mums like rather than whom kids like. Sick.
But then you don't want such people in your life, they are vile in other ways too, so good riddance.

😔😔😔💙

It's because people tend to reciprocate. So if you have a party for your son and invite 15 kids he'll get more invites.

From the other side of primary school, I think party invites in infants IS mostly up to the parents (and let’s face it, frequently mums)

There’s a lot of “well we have 10 spaces”
”your close friends are XY and Z”
”but my friend’s son is W”
”and the popular boy is V”
”and his friend is U&T
”and S is well behaved/lives next door/is good at football/friends with Dad”
”and your cousin R is coming with my sister so that’s 10 with you!”

Which might not leave space for your son A.

My youngest son was frequently A in infants but by the end of Juniors where parties had died out and the boys made their own arrangements about meeting up was very firmly part of the gang and the other kids had moved towards the people they liked better too.

I asked my DS who he wanted to invite but we had a limit on numbers. It most definitely wasn’t based on parents and if they talk to me or not.

As a people pleaser I loved that my DS didn’t want to invite everyone. He was very firm about some children and not inviting them.

We have been invited to a few parties but definitely not all and it doesn’t bother me, it would have 10 years ago.

Is your child bothered or any chance you’re projecting your childhood issues and worrying about how liked your child is on them?

Behaviour wise, just quieter! Nothing else! I am totally fine with all other parents, however there is definitely a group of ‘in the club mums, many of whom are teachers funnily enough, find it very immature how the club together.

My son is 8 and he hasn’t been invited to a single party in around 2 years. He tells me he sees kids at school handing out invites. He has a joint party every year with one of his friends and they both invite the whole class plus a few children from the other class. Personally I think it’s really mean of the parents - they know their child went to my sons party each year and yet he is excluded every single time. He’s a nice little boy who doesn’t cause any problems at school. I know some of the birthdays will be ones that are just a couple of friends but I also know that lots of kids do invite the whole class so I’m pretty sure he is being deliberately excluded. It’s horrible.

We either invite the whole class or if we’re doing something expensive (Ninja Warrior, pottery painting etc) then we will limit it according to the price and packages offered by the venue. So we may only invite 5-10 out of a class of 25 ish. I wouldn’t organise a party where numbers were limited to 20 for example because it’s really shitty to leave out a handful of kids from the class IMO. Also I always make sure my kids - who are still young and need a bit of guidance sometimes - are inviting their actual proper friends. For example I wouldn’t allow a situation where they were inviting someone they barely know but think is “cool”, at the expense of a child who’s been a good friend to them. Not that this has happened but I have witnessed it at other parties.

Unfortunately if it’s just a case of limited numbers for a small party and the child genuinely has closer friends, it’s one of those situations where you have to encourage a bit of resilience. I can be sensitive too so I get it 💐

Behaviour wise, just quieter! Nothing else! I am totally fine with all other parents, however there is definitely a group of ‘in the club mums, many of whom are teachers funnily enough, find it very immature how the club together.

Or maybe the 'in the club' mums are just friends.

I have a small group of friends, these kids almost always come to our parties as the children are friends (that's how us mums became friends). It's not a club, just people who know each other. There is no obligation to be friends with every other parent in the school, of course it's nice to be friendly but you can't invite everyone to everything.

I hated this when my eldest went to primary, he never really found his solid friend group. So always had to watch the rest of the kids get invites, luckily my youngest go to a school where they don’t allow this.

For birthdays now the teaching assistant will put invites in book bags while the kids aren’t around.

Not this cliquey nonsense again 🙄

Not every kid will be invited to every party due to money / space. I had parties at home this year. No way am I inviting 30 5 year olds to my house in winter.
Some parents form good friendships at the school gates so of course they and their kids will spend more time together.
Not every kid will have a party.
I have never got offended when my kids aren't invited to parties, sometimes the topic of another kid's party comes up in conversation and I just say that they can't be invited to everything just like they didn't invite every kid they know to their parties. It's a learning opportunity. No drama or upset necessary.
Sometimes invites get lost or buried in the book bags. I invited one of my son's best friends to his party and the parents didn't respond so what can you do 🤷‍♀️

This is awful - I don’t understand what kind of parent would allow their child to do that!

I do get it OP. It's upsetting because you see your lovely child who you feel deserves an invite to every party. I have a child in reception. We invited the entire class to her party and only a few turned up. There were a few underlying reasons for that which I don't want to go into as it's too outing but it was still very disappointing when as far as I can see my child is lovely and popular. What's even more upsetting is that I've just come to realise that there's quite a few kids who obviously had pretty big parties but didn't invite her to their party. I know there's a limit but I do still think the politics of it is really silly. I went into reception with the mindset that the etiquette is to invite the whole class until they're nearer junior school as this is when I feel they can reliably say who they do and don't want at their party and have established (reasonably) firm friendships. However, after some parents didn't even bother responding to my invite this year so I won't be wasting an invite on them again next year unless my daughter specifically asks me to. Same goes for the parents who didn't invite my child to their kid's parties. Even if they don't turn up you're still having to include them in numbers etc which is expensive so I'm not wasting my time on such disrespectful people.

It is a bit upsetting but look at the bigger picture. If your kid is happy and liked at school then that's all that matters really. The kids will grow up and get less interested in parties very quickly but just a couple of firm friendships are far more valuable in the long run than an invite to little Billy's party who they hardly even talk to. In my heart of hearts I know that my dd is very well liked and has a number of very strong friendships already so I'm not worried she's being isolated as such. And tbh I don't want to be ferrying her to a different party every week so it's all good. Just don't make a big thing of it and they won't either x

This sounds just like my son and I. It's so upsetting and as he's in year 5 I worry he's going to move up to senior school without his bestie and struggle to begin with and what bothers me too is as we're leaving school he'll be like See you tomorrow X, all cheerful and friendly and the majority blank him or just look at him. I don't want him to change his personality to fit in but I don't want him left out either.

It’s wasnt so much the kids not being invited it’s was the way they are handed out.
In Our first school ( we moved ) all invites had to be handed to the teacher for them to give out. They handed them out as the children were leaving at the end of the day.
Can you imagine all these little ones filling out of the classroom, hand out thinking they have an invite and not getting one.
So sad.

Some of us complained about this and they stopped it all together. Invites were not allowed in the school at all and had to be handed out outside the school gates.

Ultimately, parties are expensive and whole class invites only happened in the first maybe second year.

I am literally the most anti social parent that goes to school to fetch my kids and then leaves. There are probably two parents I speak to with any regularity and that’s with two children at school (reception and Y3) I just can’t be assed to make small talk. Both of my boys are invited to parties, some that are obviously whole class ones and others that are small ones, it’s the luck of the draw.
parties are hell for me to have to sit in a church hall for two hours pretending to be interested in what people are having for dinner or where they are going on holiday

Maybe what you think of as 'clubbing together' is just a friendship group. And if they're all teachers they've shared experiences and interests. It's really immature to think along those terms. The happiest and most balanced people I've met don't get drawn into these weird insecure perspectives about how the other parents of kids who just happen to go to the same school as their kid behave. Just drop off and pick up your child from school without all this drama!

Could your son just be less memorable than other children? For instance if the children he is friends with are going home telling stories of what X and Y did, their names are bandied around and Mum/Dad remembers them at party time. You say your son is "literally the kindest, mild mannered boy, can be quieter with others he isn’t familiar with." so maybe he isn't mentioned at home. Then when the parents make the party list he is forgotten. In Y1 my DC did not remember the entire group names if I asked and would regularly leave off close friends accidentally. If its something you could do maybe have a playdate and invite these kids and mums over so you get to know them. Or as the teacher to slip a note into certain bookbags suggesting a park meet up one day for that group after school. Make yourself (and your son) known.