To think it’s crap for the non-invited kids when party invites are handed out at school?

[GotMooMilk]

Maybe overthinking as 7 year old has been really upset this eve. This morning one of the girls in her class was running around handing out party invites at drop off, about 80% of class invited from sounds of it? 3 girls not invited, DD included.
I know they can’t be invited to every party, that’s life. But just feels crap for the kids left out. All the other kids all excited, chatting about it and there just standing there awkwardly. Almost every party is organised discretely on whatsapp here so although I’m sure they talk about it it isn’t as obvious as it was this morning.

How many were invited OP and how many weren't?

@Mothership4two I mean I didn’t count but I’d say 24 of 30 kids invited, 3 girls not invited at a guess?

School is cruel and unusual punishment as far as I'm concerned. The idea that children wouldn't be socially well-adjusted if they were all (somehow) home-schooled has always been absurd. 99% of children's misery is due to the fact they're forced to be in unchosen environments, with unchosen peers, subject to banal 'norms' at best and bullying at worst. If it was a job, most adults would leave in a heartbeat.

Yep, that's a shitty thing to do.

Thankfully never had this happen at my kids primary school - it was either a whole class party or invitations were handed out away from school.

Make a note of every child that doesn’t invite your DD to a class party where nearly every other child is invited and be sure to not invite that child to your daughter’s party. I find a dose of salts works really well in these situations, made even more sweet if you get contacted by the child’s mother to enquire why their child hasn’t received their invitation yet.

That's what I used to do when I was a TA. Unfortunately some kids are determined to make sure that other dcs know when they haven't been invited.

I don't think that approach would work all the time either. Children of parents who, for whatever reason, don't know many other parents are more likely to be excluded.

I get this but I’ve gone more down the ‘let’s learn that this isn’t how we would want to make people feel so let’s not do this when it comes to your birthday’. Tit for tat doesn’t feel right when it’s small children, I don’t blame the child at all it’s the parents i was annoyed at really.

Bit of an extreme response, given that most teachers on here are saying that their schools ban this kind of behavior.

I’m familiar with some homeschool groups and trust me, you get mean behavior and bullying in those as well. And if you HSed without a HS group and outside socialization, your kids definitely would not be well adjusted.

@user1477391263 If your definition of 'well-adjusted' is being resigned to putting up with misery, sure.

There's a whole effing world out there, school isn't the only way to become 'socialised'.

At my child's school they ask that invites are handed to teachers in the morning and then distributed by the teachers into children's book bags/rucksacks to avoid this. I really appreciate it.

You always get one or two rotten apples in every cart.

The mothers will tell you it’s up to precious if they wish to invite almost everyone but a few - the same parents that are SUPPOSED to teach their children empathy, emotional intelligence and social skills.

We have watched this play out over the years and the outcome is disastrous for those children. - they grow up to be friendless confused young adults, and really suffer later in life socially as they are not equipped for social interactions as they have no idea how to form decent friendships.

We have watched it time and again children being left out, to the point where I can even accurately speculate which kids this will happen to, it will be the mean mum creating division sowing the seeds very early in life. The one that says the feelings of others don’t matter - and a sense of entitlement that their child’s current wants should trump educating them to consider other people.

The only thing you can do is insulate your child as far as possible. If you know the other children or parents well organise a fun alternative or do so with home friends, family, neighbours. Tell your child it is not them, that the other child isn’t being raised to be kind and that sad for them. Dump the responsibility at the door of the parents that choose to be such bad role models. Celebrate all the people you know that wouldn’t do this with your child. There is far more good in the world basically, that’s the message.

It hurts, but it's a life lesson. You're not going to be invited to everything as an adult, so why should you be raised with that expectation.

Obviously, two questions come out of this:

Why are the kids/family so mean as to not realise it is cruel?
and
What did your daughter do/not do to result in this decision?

For example, many people get bullied at school... and I'd get pissed, maybe even never forgive my parents if they MADE me invite everyone (including the bullly) to my party.

My DD and the two other girls are v quiet and mild mannered I can say with 99.9% confidence it’s not because they have bullied or been unpleasant to the girl. DD tends to play with one other girl and the boys (all invited) but does play with the birthday girl too.

That's what our school did too. You'd still get the occasional dickhead mum who preferred to make a display of who was included and excluded. I suppose it's a life lesson that some people are dickheads and best avoided.

I knew you would say that! In every year throughout all of my dc school lives it was always the sweet natured, quieter children that were hurt in this way. Every bloody time. I say that as a parent of very extroverted kids. It’s almost like it’s decided they won’t mind or notice they are not invited.

Fear not, your children will grow up to have wonderful friendships and this incident will be a life lesson that not everyone is as kind as them, and how it feels to be on the other side of things. Teaching them empathy and compassion for others, and more rounded in the end.

Life is full of disappointments and it’s our job as parents to teach our children how to handle them and how to move past them. Don’t dwell on it with her & after an initial short discussion if she mentions it, change the subject to something happier. In the future, she’ll miss out on the job she wanted, won’t get the house she wanted, won’t be invited to every occasion going. Teach her that it’s all part of life and that it doesn’t mean anything or matter. (This is said kindly, not critically).

It's sad that they just left a few out. I understand they may be restricted with numbers but it's not even as if they invited half, 24 out of 30 I think I'd have tried to invite them all. Hope your DD is OK. YANBU

"Life isn't fair" isn't an excuse to treat children as shittily as you like, as it'll be good for them to learn to deal with being treated badly. 🙄

For all you know the invited kids could have had a lovely life with very few disappointments and the uninvited kids could have had a very difficult life and not need yet another disappointment. It's not up to crappy parents to decide who to teach "life lessons" to by making a display of excluding kids from parties. That's just a crap excuse for behaving badly to children.

How much would it have cost to invite the other 3?!

I remember years ago being the only child not invited to a party. Our birthdays were the same day and her mum said to mine that she thought I’d be having my own party. Who with, considering she’d invited everyone else in the class?! I’ve never forgotten that.

At least 6 not 3 @PinkiOcelot

How much would it have cost to invite the other 3?!

It's 6. If 24/30 were invited then 3 boys were also left out.

Maybe the numbers were set to 30 and the child had 6 friends from another class or scouts or sport to invite. I think they should have been told to choose 15 from class if they weren't inviting the whole class though.

We don't have a parents WhatsApp, so only way to do invites is handing out at school. I try to do it discreetly by handing them to the teacher in the morning to distribute to at some point during the day....which turned into her handing them to my dc to distribute himself to everyone at home time (which was exactly what I'd been trying to avoid). In our case, we were inviting the whole class, so not really an issue (the whole class is like 12 of them!). But it did mean that we ended up accidentally inviting a random who just happened to have the same name as one of the children invited. He isn't even in the class but was there and my dc just handed him the invitation with his name on it assuming it was him (instead of his actual friend by that name!). Fortunately, random same name child declined, and I figured it out when a mum I'd never heard of before messaged me to RSVP, so was able to sort out a new invite for dc's friend who was actually meant to be invited. But I have no doubt that he might have felt a bit upset if he didn't think he was invited initially. I know teachers have better things to be doing, but I was hoping it would mitigate any issues by just quietly giving them to the teacher to slip into bags.

I've done full class parties (definitely in reception) but also ones with between 10-20 children and thankfully the school would put the invites in the book bags because quite honestly I wouldn't know what the parents/people collecting the children invited looked like in a few cases when my DC were little.
Also would like to say that even though we did a class party several times and had other parties every year one of my DC only got about 5 invitations to parties during the whole of their primary years.
Thankfully past all that now.