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.

Does that not mean that people are far more inclined to just invite the children of their friends, so it becomes more cliquey?

And the quiet little one who does the afterschool club never gets invited.

It may save the upset for the parents seeing other children getting the invites and not theirs, but the children will still talk about it at school, so it doesn't stop the upset for the children.

Why is it immature and ‘clubbing together’ and not simply making friends with people you have something in common with?

There are challenges in life specific to working Mums, SAHMs and teacher Mums, so it’s natural that people will gravitate towards others that they can relate to most easily.

Do you feel obliged to become friends with anyone and everyone who’s child shares a classroom with yours?

That comment reflects worse on you than it does on them.

Our very nearly 12 year old has been invited to only 1 maybe 2 birthday party's by his classmates. He seems well liked but he has a.s.d, so I don't know if that is why. Not nice for them to be left out.

I have been in a situation where I wanted to invite the whole class, but funds wouldn't allow. And then asked them to pick who they wanted to go (twins) I have found though that with being twins they wouldn't be invited to play at their friends houses so I didn't feel guilty leaving anyone out. They chose who they wanted to spend their birthday with and that's what matters.

Because quite frankly it is up to the child who to invite. Whole class parties are expensive and many activities are either too expensive to invite the whole class to, or just aren't do able for more than a limited number. For example we couldn't fit 30 kids in our house, and the expense of taking 30 kids to soft play or trampolining is simply too high. We will often invite maybe 5 or 6 of the class to a party. Unless your son is being left out like being the only one in the class not invited, or not being invited by kids he considers to be really close friends, there really is no problem. My son just had his party and invited 7 of the 30 children in his class and has been invited to 2 parties himself between September and now and that is fine.

Some parents do all class parties, some dont. I think a lot probably comes down to who the parents are most friendly with in those circumstances - so if they know other parents better than they know you, their kid will get the invite over your son if they're keeping costs down. As they get older and have more solid friendships it will change.

I really feel for you OP - you're right at the start of something that's all a (not too) distant blur for me now as mine are 19 and 16. The highs will definitely outway the lows, but the lows may sting when they happen.

I'll always remember the first time I got that awful pang. My DS had been at nursery a few months and as I was putting his coat on to go home, a mum I'd often chat to at pick up, whose son my DS played with, was doing the same. She started talking to her son in a really loud voice about this big birthday party they'd been to the day before with lots of children from the nursery class, naming them one by one.

My DS hadn't been invited and I felt so upset on his behalf, but told myself to toughen up etc and that the mum was just trying to engage her child etc.

The child was also at my DS's junior and secondary schools and the mum eventually became known as a really competitive and duplicitous person, and looking back I do think she did what she did that day to deliberately goad me.

Only on MN is establishing friendships with parents of other kids in your class seen as "cliquey"

Agree.
I tend to think that anyone who even uses the word clique is just a narky person who is annoyed that not everyone wants to be best buds with them. They bang on about cliquey mum groups ignoring them (reality, groups of friends who have no idea that you have some bizarre expectation of being folded into their friend group even though they don't know you) and alpha mums dominating the PTA (reality, the women who actually do the thankless hard work you won't volunteer for but will endlessly moan about).

I mean, just chill out. It's not all about you. Not being included is not the same as being excluded.

My son studies in a private school . Until Year 3 - the school policy was very strict on birthday parties - either every single boy gets an invite or none. You could do a smaller party but it had to be discreet. Fast forward - my son is in Year 4 and every child has been invited to every single party so no one feels left out. It’s only around senior school boys are older enough to choose only a small group of friends to invite. I think at that young age every one should be invited !

That's a rule for rich people. So only rich kids get birthday parties, and if you can't afford the entire class you don't get one? Fuck that.
It's also completely ridiculous, the school has no business telling parents what they can and can't do in their own time. If my school tried that they'd be laughed at and told fuck no by everyone.

What if there's a child who is aggressive towards the birthday child? Should they be invited?

My youngest does not like big parties, they make him anxious as there's too much going on. Should he have a full class party that he doesn't enjoy just because that's what should happen.

I'm sure you're also aware that you're in a privileged position that all the families can afford full class parties.

My DD is at a private school and parties always invite the whole class + siblings (age restrictions not withstanding, obviously toddlers can’t do Go Ape etc) but it’s pretty obvious that isn’t always going to be practical in state schools. There’s the cost obviously but also class sizes are larger and lots of places have restrictions on numbers. It’s ridiculous to say that everyone should be invited based on your wealthy cohort and a class of what 18 kids?

At my sons school, birthday party invites are supposed to be handed in to the teachers, rather than handed out on the playground. They then get put into children's bags discreetly to take home. I really appreciate this policy as I'm sure parties have happened that my child knows nothing about.

We just use WhatsApp. Simpler by far. School banned invites.

How do you get that first contact on Whatsaop though? There were 4 or 5 kids my youngest wanted to invite who I have no clue who their parents are, don't see them at drop off or pick up (maybe they're in wraparound care?)

School can't distribute other parents' details so how do you get them?

Isn’t it rude to invite only a few children on a class WhatsApp group?

You don't invite them on the class WhatsApp group, that would be insane, and yes, very rude. You either make a subgroup or you invite each individually.

We have a class whatsapp group at the start of school and everyone chose to sign up to it. I suppose in theory people could have chosen not to, in which case they would miss out on things like invites unless the relevant people had another way to contact them, but nobody did. Everyone in the class has at least one parent or guardian on the whatsapp group.

Do kids need to give out invites in front of other kids. My kids went to a school where invites were always given out secretly and the kids knew not to talk about parties unless all the kids were invited. It's not difficult.

As I posted earlier-as a KS 1 teacher of many years, I have no desire to get involved with party invitations and my HT agrees. I have no TA, so have no way of going through invitations and putting them in selected book bags without any children seeing. Perhaps if there was a TA in my room who could do it who at I was teaching/reading a story at the end of the day, that would be different, but there isn’t.

My class would immediately clock what I was doing if I tried. Our parents sort out party invitations either on the playground or via text/WhatsApp.

@Redlocks30 I agree! I wouldn't expect teachers to get involved. With my kids school it was done via email (it was a few years ago!).

The school made it clear when you started that invites weren't to be handed out at school unless it was whole class or all the boys or all the girls.

Like I said, it's not difficult.

Is he worried, or is it just you? Remember, he's a boy. They don't use friendship groups as a weapon the way girls sometimes do.

I think everyone feels a bit sensitive about this stuff. My hack was to have several parties where I invited the whole class. Hired somewhere, got a science/slime person to entertain and that included party bags so not as expensive as it sounds. Also managed to share a couple, halving the cost of course.

Please don’t over analyse it. Please don’t spend another thought on it in fact. Not every child is getting invited to every party, and it will typically just be based on the answer to the question ‘who do you want to invite to this party’, sometimes your sons name will be in that list, sometimes he won’t. So long as he has nice friends and is happy at school, this really doesn’t matter.

I think it happens more because ofnuninvolved sometimes self-centred parents who don’t really twig how it looks from an uninvited child’s pov than anything else.