To not expect to owe her £110 for ice cream?

[ForTidyShaker]

I have a receipt from her so it is the true cost.

My daughter is 6 and attended a friend’s birthday party. She was ecstatic to be going. It was at a soft play with someone doing princess make over hair and make up (face paint, all very sweet and harmless). Lovely time.

They had food. And then they were suppose to have cake. I’ve actually seen it in Waitrose, it’s a lovely cake but didn’t cost hundreds.

Anyway, the parents stayed. My son, had respite with his carer for the morning and I was meeting the carer in the car park for hand over after the party.

The party was running a bit late, and there was no sign of his carer. I rang and no answer. He’s had him a while so I wasn’t overly worried.

I went for a quick trip to the loo and was literally only 2 minutes max - I came back into the party room and DS was there with his carer looking for me - And he let go of his hand. DS ran straight for the cake and dug his hands in, eating it.

The other mums were giggling, birthday girl crying. My own DD crying. I was mortified and intervened straight away. But the damage was done.

I apologised over and over whilst handing a very upset, confused and overstimulated child. And told DD we have to go. Before leaving, I gave DS to his carer and ran over, telling the birthday girl’s mum I’d cover the cost. She did a weak smile and then said see you soon

DD was beside herself and had a really awful time of it. I paid the price, believe me.

Anyway, the birthday girl’s mum messaged me today with a bill for £109.59!

’Please see attached the receipt for the replacement desserts. Some children had more expensive things so it was quite costly. Sorry. Hope you are okay Anna’

AIBU not to pay almost £110?! The cake was a standard celebration cake I’ve seen before in the shops 😞 Would you just pay?

Thankfully, DD knows her from an activity and not school so no awkward school run trips.

I agree with this.

I’m with you here.

i wouldn’t have sent the receipt or asked for payment. Things happen and noth8ng was done maliciously or on purpose.
Does it suck that it happened? Yes!
Would I send a bill? No.
Would I as give the birthday money a nice bottle of wi e & apologize again? Yes.
(but not if she sent the bill. Then I’d just pay that. Done)

Oof. Sorry OP but I think you should pay for the desserts. What else could the host have done?

I would say there’s some responsibility to keep the costs reasonable however bear in mind that someone else may have ‘helpfully’ sorted the orders whilst the mum was comforting her child. I don’t think the mum was in the wrong for prioritising the birthday girl and her message is apologetic about the high cost.
The loss wasn’t just a cake it was part of the party experience that they wouldn’t have had if they bought another later. If you’d stuck around and offered to run someone to a local supermarket and back, offered the carer an overtime rate etc. you’d have had more control over the cost. You also prioritised your children which is fine but that’s the cost of it. Refusing to pay will probably cost your daughter a future invite whereas sucking up the cost may not. I’d also consider replacing the cake for the birthday child to make it up to her which would probably go a long way.

I respect you tremendously OP. You did the better thing in an all-round rubbish situation. I wouldn't have even charged you for the cake. I don't understand why, instead of laughing about it, one of the other parents didn't nip out to the nearest supermarket for a replacement cake. If you had wanted to pay something, the cost of the replacement cake would have sufficed. The kids shouldn't have been given free choice off the dessert menu - IMO that's crazy. It was nobody's fault, someone should have stepped up. Nobody who could have helped did. In my books, you are the better person here.

Do children have to have an alternative? No, of course not. It was unfortunate, it was an accident, it was a life lesson. OPs son obviously has special needs and wasn't acting deliberately. Presumably most of the kids at the party are capable of being told, "That was unfortunate but sometimes these things happen, go and play until the party ends."

Kids never eat the food at soft play parties in my experience, it was probably mostly left on the table anyway. When are we going to stop this culture of pandering to children's every whim? The party itself was a lovely thing for kids to celebrate, get together and play. That's enough. A replacement cake sent to the family to do with as they wish would've been sufficient.

DiaryofaProvincialLady · Today 11:58

"Your son should not have even been there - he wasn't an invited guest. The only reason he was able to destroy the cake was because YOU arranged his handover at that venue. Its 100% on you."

The OP arranged for the handover to be outside in the car park actually .

Yes, you should pay it. It was an accident but the birthday girl was upset, and you did offer.

Don't cakes normally cost £40 anyway? Was it specially commissioned?

Show me any little girl who would want her cake smashed by a boy she didn't even invite ?

It's not ''Snowflakey'' to be upset.

These mums don't know OP. Her daughter only knows the birthday girl through an activity. Hardly going to be privilege to her entire personal life.

All they saw was a man bring a child into a party and the child destroy the cake. Why would your first assumption be "oh he must be disabled and that's his respite carer" rather than it was the child's father and should have better control.

Oh dear OP what an awful thing all round to have happened.

You're doing the right thing by paying, but I'm sure it must really sting

As an aside, I'm shocked at the lack of security that this man and your child could just walk in to the play centre and into the private party bit with no invitation or prior arrangement?

But that's neither here nor there and I admire the way you've handled this.

OP did the right thing paying but the other mum did the wrong thing asking.

Why on earth did the other mum do the wrong thing by asking? She’s already paid for a cake, which was destroyed by a random child who wasn’t even invited, and as a result she then had to buy more desserts. Why should she have to pay for that?

Throughout your responses here, you’re often explaining what doesn’t work for you. Fair enough - your kids are going to be the priority for you, so you whizzed out and sorted them out and made sure they were okay.

However you are also fussy about how the other adults decided to resolve things. Ultimately you left so didn’t give input into a compromise. You need to remember that there were two problems at play to resolve here:

1. the upset children.
2. the cost.

Your desired solution of just paying for the cost of the cake suited you, because it’s cheap. But that solution did not suit anyone else as they were left with a room full of upset children through no fault of their own. Just the same way you prioritised your children’s happiness, so did they. Your solution “didn’t work” for the others. I mean did you expect them to just skip over dessert completely, and end the party there on a bad note?

The lack of security by soft play and the carer are the ones at fault here.
@ForTidyShaker has paid, but I'd be looking for a better carer who can keep her son safe. {not allowing son to break away}.

This is such a kind, empathetic post.

I don't think people have realised how difficult it is to have a severely disabled child.

I’m sorry some posters are so dense OP. I guess it’s nice for them to live a sheltered life with no idea what it’s like to care for a child with additional needs.

"i think it’s fair for you to cover cost of replacement dessert and cake. However it’s a bit cheeky to let the kids just have free rein to order whatever they like. Ice creams for all should have been sufficient. She shouldn’t have allowed some of the children to order expensive desserts"

I agree with this. The kids were meant to have the same pudding, part of a larger shared cake and there was no choice. The mum should have picked to two cheapest desserts and said to the kids they could have x or y. Not give them the choice of absolutely anything on the menu, knowing that someone else (with a disabled child so unlikely to be rolling in it) is paying.

Also all the people saying the OP 'left a room full of upset children'. The birthday child was upset but I can't imagine other kids at a party being really upset that someone had wrecked a cake.

Presumably your son wasn't actually invited to the party? It was party for little girls and a random sibling of one of the guests destroyed the cake. Paying for the replacement party food seems like the only reasonable thing to do.

This is the sort of gossip that spreads quickly around mums and sadly you are unlikely to be welcome at many parties in future.

sorry accidently quoted with random letters and don’t know how to delete

A child's dessert in our local soft play is 5 pounds not ten. I think equating the lack of a piece of birthday cake with a ten pound dessert is unreasonable in the circumstances.

I cannot believe the number of people on here that think the op should have just popped to the supermarket. It is clearly not possible to take an already disregulated child shopping on her own! Honestly, the judgement is shocking. Do posters think that disabled children should go back to being hidden away?

I think it's just an unfortunate situation where op wanted to put things right and the host may have been too flustered to sort things in the cheapest way possible.

She didn't need to pay for replacements - it wasn't an essential item, and she most definitely didn't need to allow unlimited spending on the replacements, though this is certainly on the other parents as well.

Your son was inadequately supervised and caused damage which could only be resolved by buying individual desserts for the party guests who couldn't enjoy the cake. I think the cost is reasonable. A child who has additional needs such that respite care like that is part of your life needs significantly more supervision than was happening, he clearly doesn't have the capacity to behave safely in this kind of environment so should not have been there. Whether it was you or the carer who was supposed to be supervising him at the time, it was negligent to have agreed for him to be in that environment with the freedom to cause that much destruction.