To not invite a friend to his birthday party?

[NoMoreCoffeePlease]

DS(8) has a small number of friends in his school, and his birthday is coming up. He has said that he doesn't want to invite one of his friends, Tom. But Tom recently did invite DS to his party, so it seems rude to not invite him back. Moreover, I know his mum from the school runs; we often chat while waiting for the boys to come out, so it would be awkward.

DS' reason for not wanting to invite Tom, is that he sometimes uses swear words and DS doesn't want his little brother to hear these (though I'm sure he hears worse in the playground anyway), but more importantly, that Tom keeps saying 'your mum is fat'. (I'm not, but that doesn't matter).

I told DS that I wouldn't invite Tom, and I haven't yet. But I have honestly no idea whether I am making a mistake by breaking 'birthday etiquette'. Also wondering how to tell his mum.

AIBU - Invite Tom.
AINBU - Don't invite Tom.

they are not in the same class, they sometimes play together in the playground.... I am not super close to his mum, but as a mother myself, I can imagine how heartbreaking it would be for your child to be excluded from a party.

So Tom isn't a particular friend of DS, and his mum isn't a particular friend of OP's. Why would it be more heartbreaking for Tom's mum if Tom isn't invited, than it is for the mums of all the other boys DS sometimes plays with, who also aren't invited?

As he isn't inviting the whole class or even all the boys, it is fine for him not to invite Tom. However I would talk to your son about why he doesn't want to invite Tom. If Tom did something that makes your DS sure that he'll want to avoid him long term, then not inviting Tom is fine. However I do wonder whether your DS is actually very temporarily annoyed at Tom for something small, and this will turn a little tiff which is a forgive and make-up the next day, into a big stand-off resulting in the loss of a friendship they both value over something stupid.

I have to admit I haven't read all the posts, but wanted to add that when my daughter was in reception we had a party at our house. We had 5 girls from school, 4 of them were part of my daughter's friendship group and I added another girl from her class who's Mum I was friendly with, but the girl not so much with my daughter, she spent more time with the boys in the class whilst at school. Anyway, as it turned out the dynamic was off the whole time due to my decision to include her. This extra girl didn't want to participate in the party games, didn't want to talk to the other girls and spent the whole party play cooking on our toy cooker. My daughter is now in Year 7, so this was a long time ago. It's a tricky one to navigate, but for me I definitely wish I'd stuck with inviting my daughter's requested friends.

You realise you just said it’s not nice to call people mean names and called an 8 year old a dick in the same post right? Smh.

Well presumably your quite a bit older and haven’t achieved this yet so…