Excluded from bday party - aibu to text the parent?

[RealReginaPhalange]

Reception. Its Feb so kids know each other well enough. Bday party tomorrow, idk how many not invited and how many invited but my son has been excluded. They do play together at school but i dont know the mum. They had chats today about party tmrw, my DS feels he is invited and he is fully aware of the party. Apparently invitations went out by whatsapp directly. I am on whatsapp group so it is not an error. Fine not to invite everyone but in reception? They dont have own little circles of friends yet. Invite everyone or no one at that age. And then talks at school and some kids end up upset. I am so so angry now and will need to have a chat with ds. should i text the mom it is hurtful or should i leave it?

just to add. I dont really know parents there and not sure if she is well known, i am worried i will be a gossip no 1 afterward and it would lead to my ds being excluded more.

aibu - dont text
not aibu - text

The more I'm seeing your attitude in this thread, the more I can see why he maybe wasn't invited.

"Before I do something I regret" - This makes you sound like one of those rough, chav-like parents everyone tries to avoid. This then makes me think your son copies your behaviour and therefore he is not wanted at this party.

If not, you are not automatically entitled to an invite, it is not your Son's party, it is not up to you to dictate how these parties are run and who is and is not invited. You have no idea what the parents situation is and it is not up to you to throw your weight around and demand all or none! You sound like a spoiled little madam.

I don't think I would want you near my children's party, either. Even if the parents are well off, your attitude speaks volumes.

Grow up.

also as the host parent you cannot win.
I arranged a whole class assembly and was branded selfish for not having additional spaces for all siblings of invited class children. I’m not even joking.

Have you thrown a birthday party for the whole class? Do you know how much that costs?! play centres etc charge about £15 per child and thats before you shell out for party bags, cakes etc. There are 30 children in my childs class.... because I can't afford to drop £500 on a birthday party my child shouldn't get to have one?! How entitled are you?! It really is not about your DC. It is about the birthday boy or girl. They can't be invited to everything.

Only a few other posters picked up that in the Op's last reply she said
' He didnt have a party few months ago bc i was on maternity and it is expensive and i didnt want to be in that exact same position.'

but here she was expecting an invite to a party when she herself had not invited this birthday child to her son's party because he didn't have one.

Maybe the mother has invited all the children that did have parties since the beginning of Sept, and her son was invited to, and taking a chance on the children that still have to have their birthdays...

and the Op also said ' Shall i make sure to exclude them 3 next year who didnt invite him but invite everyone else? '

so a similar tit for tat ?

It's lessons in life in school. He will be a bit upset but it's your job to explain why some parents can't invite the whole class. Up to you what you do at his party, but I don't believe "tit for tat" is a good example for your son - that child may well be his "bestie" by then. If you'd always planned a big party with invites for all, then go ahead as planned.

I had 4 daughters and I would tell them they could each invite 8 friends to their parties (when they were young they all obviously had to have their sisters, by default and birthday parties are expensive!) That meant that more children from their individual classes were "excluded" than invited. I think you're overthinking this. Just explain to your child that not everyone can be invited to every party!

We can’t know if it’s a tit for tat, obviously, but it seems perfectly possible, and not unreasonable, that, if another parent can’t invite the whole class, they will prioritise the children who invited their child to their parties this year as well as the children their child plays most with. If the OP’s child isn’t in either group, then he won’t be in the 20 out of 27 that got invited.

Just leave it. A friend once got me to message a party mom to ask if her child was invited as they had not had an invite
My child did have one and was going .party mom then said no the other child hadnt been invited and it was just awkward sll round
Some kids sre invited some srent its no big deal and you have about 7 years of this to contend with

Why would you do that? Trying to force an invitation when there wasn't one? Bang out of order

Your whole idea of all kids being invited is based on your model of parenting. But the parents of the other kid are free to have their own wholly different model. And besides that, maybe they lack space, or money. Maybe they spoke to their child and said, who are your three, four, five, ten best friends, and they invited those. Their kids' birthday doesn't have to be a community event for the neighbourhood.

Why are you getting so worked up over this? It sounds very petty and will be tit for tat for years to come if you simply dont invite those who didnt invite your child just because he wasnt invited to a reception kids party
Is this your first child going through school? As i assure you there will be worse than this to come

This is so odd.

Your child isn’t “excluded”, they’re just not invited.

You don’t know how many in the class are invited, it could be just a few. Whole class parties are incredibly expensive.

Why not just do something nice with your child instead?

Jesus, you sound very uptight and entitled.

I cannot afford to invite an entire class, also I always had the rule same number of friends as the age of the child, no 4 year old needs the entire class there.

Oh God, please DO NOT text.

I only judge when it’s only one child left out and the entire rest of the class is invited.
But you don’t know this is the case for this party, if she’s only invited 3 kids or so then YABU.

Exactly! The reply is likely to be sorry he was not invited .

You’re being too sensitive! I would understand if 21 kids are going and your child is the only one not invited… or if all boys are going except your son… BUT you can not stipulate that parents should invite the whole class or not have a party at all!
My DD had a party in reception and all girls were invited, no boys at all! But her party was in November so the kids barely knew each other with some only being full time in school for a matter of weeks, so I thought it was an opportunity for all the girls to have a party and get to know each other. However by year 1 you will find virtually no one has ‘whole class’ parties, my DD did an activity with just a handful of friends in year 1 & 2…
by year 3 onwards it was take 1 or 2 friends out for an activity and food…
I’m afraid you’re setting your child up for a world of hurt and feeling excluded if you allow not being invited to parties as your benchmark… just tell him you can’t be invited to everything and parties are expensive so parents have to limit numbers!
One year My DD wrote Christmas cards to all the girls in her class, and maybe 2 boys out of the whole class…. (Class of 30) … one mum seemed to take offence and decided her son was the only child not to get a card of my DD…. She then put on the school page how unfair it was that
one child had given cards to everyone except her son, and her post became a bit of an attack on my DD who had actually done nothing wrong!! DON’T BE THAT PARENT!! She later (in a year 6 classroom chat) decided to tell all the kids they were brats and threaten to tell parents etc .. she PM’d me on Facebook and I had the satisfaction of being able to tell her my DD had left that particular group chat weeks prior so was no part of whatever she was trying to accuse the group of!
I hate parents who insert themselves too much into things like this without knowing the facts!

Sorry, but this behaviour is worse than what they are doing. You will have to develop a thicker skin if this is affecting you so much. You don't seem to know how many are actually invited. It might be 10 or less. Do not message the parent or you will be labelled for a long time.

I think you're taking it all too personally. The other parents/kids aren't obligated to invite every child and honestly it's just how life goes sometimes. It's not fun that your kids feels excluded but at some point they do have to learn that they won't get invited to everything and it's not always personal. They may have legitimate reasons to not invite everyone, space or financial reasons etc. And the other child might have wanted to invite yours but they were at the limit and had to make tough choices.

And it probably wasn't on purpose that the kids were talking about the party, they are at an age where they're not necessarily going to be socially aware enough to know that it hurts the feelings of the kids who weren't invited.

If anything you can text just to double check if they weren't invited but if you do be kind and polite and don't make assumptions about why they weren't invited. They may just not have been able to invite all the kids and it may not be as personal as you're taking it.

I think the bigger thing you need to think about is what lesson are you teaching your kids here. Do you want your child to grow up thinking they're entitled to be invited to every party and if they don't they need to take it personally and hold a grudge against the other people? Or do you want to teach them that hey sometimes you don't get an invitation and it hurts but it's OK because sometimes there's a good reason for it and it's not a slight against you?

I'm not British either and you do sound entitled. You don't get to set the rules for another kids birthday party. You don't know the situation for the other kid and why they didn't invite yours. They aren't excluding your kid they just didn't invite them.

You're teaching your kid to take every minor situation like this as a personal slight against them and to be offended every time they're not included in something. That's a nasty attitude to have in life and not really healthy or mature.

If only 1/5 of the class isn't invited then your kid isn't the only one. So they're not excluding your kid they're just not inviting them. Again you don't know the situation and the reason why they weren't invited. You're making a lot of assumptions and that's not fair to those kids and their parents.

Those early years parties are a long time ago for me, thankfully.

But the thread has reminded me of the minefield to navigate, of parental school yard posturing and the settling of real or imagined scores.

OP, you will have to develop a thick skin and maybe use it as a teaching point for your DS. Also, perhaps don’t not invite the child/ren who DS didn’t get an invite from just for tit for tat especially if DS would like to invite them.

I think this is a good point about cousins or neighbors. Kids have other friends outside of school sometimes and those 4 spots op mentioned might have been reserved for cousins or other kids the birthday kid wanted to be there. Plus I think 15ish kids is already a lot for a party depending on what they're doing. The parents might have looked at their budget and realized they could only afford to host that many and told their kid to prioritize. My guess is it's not as personal as op is taking it.

That is entirely up to them and nobody else's business. You dont know their circumstances financially or the size of where the party will be. Believe me, I do understand because 2 of my children have been through this ALOT just because they are different. Don't text the mum, u will forever be known for it and may jeopardise your son being invited in future

That is entirely up to them and nobody else's business. You dont know their circumstances financially or the size of where the party will be. Believe me, I do understand because 2 of my children have been through this ALOT just because they are different. Don't text the mum, u will forever be known for it and may jeopardise your son being invited in future