Upset DC were excluded from team social gathering.

[Littlemissdisgruntled]

So my DS's are 5 and 7. The are in a sports team. There's 10 boys in the team in total. It was one of the other boys birthdays last week and unbeknown to me the mum organised a party for the team but didn't include my boys. I only found out about it as one of the mums mentioned it in the team WhatsApp group the day before (in error I'm guessing) and a few of the other mums replied making it obvious their child was going. The day after the party the social media post and photos with all the kids appear. AIBU that this has upset me. I know it's upto the mum who she invited but I could never do this. My boys are clueless so far, but I'm worried the chat at the next training day among the kids will be party related and they get upset that they missed out/weren't included.

Id ask the mum then just leave it. I dont understand why you arent asking in a nice way like other posters have said. Now you wont know about any parties!

We also had one

I let her flounce

I didn't message her with things to know - mean maybe ? Maybe not

She decided to flounce

@Littlemissdisgruntled why on Earth didn't you say something

Bold as brass & breezy as anything 'were Joe & Tom meant to get an invite or not as I've not seen anything - thanks'

As above

Esp if group says hi everyone

Exactly this.

OP they must have known your kids were being excluded and brazen enough not to care about your kids/your feelings.

My mantra is- not invited, don't ask.

Leaving the group is fine. You don't take bullshit and won't be their audience to watch their social media posts. Fuck them. :-)

Sorry OP that’s really rubbish that it’s two different parties. One is upsetting, but two does seem to suggest deliberate exclusion. I don’t think it’s you, it’s probably your DS’, but I know that won’t make you feel any better.

As the mum of a DC with ADHD, I do feel your pain.

Some mums are soooo mean :-( I’m sorry this happened to your boys.

As a parent though is it not your role to set an example that you don’t exclude just two kids from an event, it’s so mean and unnecessary.

@Littlemissdisgruntled I think leaving the group you cut off your nose to spite your face.

Was that just a parent's group or a team group?
Won't your kids be worse off not knowing about team stuff? or is there another group with the coaches?

If communication is done of the WhatsApp it sounds like they were asking everyone there. If they have been excluded twice I suspect they aren't very nice to the rest of the group..there will be a reason you just might not like the answer op.

I would also message something like

“hi Party Mum, I just wanted to check about your DS’s party and whether my DS’s are invited? It’s no problem if not but I was a bit worried we might appearing to be rude by not responding to an invitation we’ve missed. Grateful if you’d put my mind at rest!”

The response will tell you whether it’s an oversight or deliberate (even a deliberate lack of an invitation isn’t necessarily nastiness). Even if she ignores your message and it does indeed appear to be the latter case I still wouldn’t have left the WhatsApp group as presumably there are a number of different parents on there who have nothing to do with the party invitations. You’ve removed yourself from a group on shaky evidence that there is a conspiracy among the WhatsApp group.

I know it hurts, my own DD was excluded a number of times in year 3&4 (the only one left out from a class of 14) and she was very upset. it happened two or three times, a complete oversight for two of those occasions and once because the mother was selecting the invitees on the basis of the parents’ social cachet and unfortunately for my daughter I didn’t tick the boxes (some others left out on that occasion as well).

Some adults are wankerish and/or thoughtless about these things but before you react it’s worth establishing whether they’re in that bracket or you just cut your nose off to spite your face. If the mother is being cliquey or whatever the best reaction is rise above it, stay in the WhatsApp group and be formally polite.

This can be quite upsetting because your DC have been clearly left out. It could be the woman's children do not like your kids or she doesn't like you. Unfortunately some people are awful like that.
I would always include everyone. It's an opportunity to teach your child kindness.

It does happen a lot unfortunately. I would usually tell my children the parents didn't have enough money to invite everyone. The older the children are the less likely they will believe the story. Take your boys and a couple other friends and do something nice for them.

You can shrug off one party as either a mistake, or the kids clashing. But 2? Seems a bit of a stretch to think OP's DC have been accidentally excluded from a whole team party twice in a row.

It is a bit mean to ,leave two out. But maybe the mums are friends. Maybe other children were at the party and it wasn't a football team party. I wouldn't challenge the mother but it might put me off being sociable with them if I thought my DCs were deliberately excluded.

So sorry, OP. I think that’s unbelievably mean. My heart goes out to you.

I just do not understand the mentality of some parents, I could never exclude other children like this. If there are friendship issues then the grown up thing to do is to discuss this with the other parent, not behave like a bunch of bullies and exclude someone. I can understand if there is genuine bullying happening then you might want to avoid putting your child in an upsetting situation, but I take it that is not the case here? If it was just a case of my son disliking someone then I would explain that you still need to treat others with kindness regardless of this. Please do as others have said and directly ask why your children have been excluded on the group chat.

@Positive41 and @Guiltridden12345 totally agree with your posts.
I experience the same and it definitely wasn't an oversight. My youngest started Reception and all the children were invited to a class party but my dc was the only one not invited. We moved from a city to a village, and at the time the mum took a dislike to me. Looking back. It is hilarious. I definitely had to toughen up and not let it bother me as it didnt affect my dc. Mine are all teenagers now so it was a long time ago.

I hate it when mums do this! Why leave a child out?? It is really hurtful whether intentional or not. At my daughter’s school there were only five girls in her class yet one of the girls invited just three of them to her birthday party. My daughter was so upset and I was heartbroken on her behalf.

I definitely second the posts saying don't ass ask where the invites are although this would definitely upset me too OP

Sorry typo!! Didn't mean my previous post to have the word ass in there a mistake so please ignore !!

No one answering this thread will ever know whether the mums are awful and deliberately excluded the OP's children, or whether there's been an oversight or a completely different reason (the boys behaviour, the parents behaviour etc)

If the OP doesn't ask she probably won't know either.

Everyone: the boys were invited. The invites were on a GROUP CHAT. To EVERYONE on the group chat (meaning all the kids). The OP is just miffed she didn't get a personal invite wrapped in gold and personally delivered to her on a silver platter.

I don't think that's the case. The OP has seen the messages and the only one about a party is the "are you still coming?" one. No previous messages.

Those messages were addressed to the whole group. She'd only have a point if the messages addressed some people individually.

This would have worked

Could this be an admin error. It sounds like your boys are recent additions to the team. Is it likely that a well meaning parent made a list of everyone on the team and circulated it with other parents before your sons joined (possibly for Xmas card lists/ party list from last year). As your sons are newish additions people may not have updated the list. Everyone is just using the old list for party invites.

I say this as this actually happened at my school one year. Class lists were sent home for Xmas cards and parents saved them for party invite lists. A new child joined in January and kept getting missed off the invite list. Parent was upset and came in to chat about it and ask if we knew why DC was missed off. After a quick chat with the birthday child's parent, it turned out that everyone was using the Xmas party list to do invites and they completely forgot that the DC who joined in January wasn't on it. Birthday child's mum popped a message in the parents chat saying don't forget missed off DC is not on the list. From then on excluded dc got party invites for whole class parties.

Could be something like that.