AIBU to exclude 1 child from friendship group from DS party??

[Louisa80s]

Please help me out here...
DS is turning 9 in a few weeks and we have a party booked for up to 12 people. Currently at 10 with numbers.
DS is quiet and lacks confidence a little, but has a really lovely tight-knit group of boy mates. There is 1 child in their group of 8 friends, who since reception he hasn't got on with.
This boy will consistently laugh at DS's work, belittle him if he answers questions wrong, hit him and push him over 'playfully' etc. DS has come to write his invites tonight and said he doesn't want to invite this boy. He is absolutely adamant and not backing down.
He said he will ruin his birthday and he makes him uncomfortable. But my heart kind of breaks as he will know he is being excluded and it's not sitting right with me. DS has said if I invite him he would rather not have a party (already paid the deposit) And I don't know what to do.
I've never seen him so certain of a decision. But I also know how he and I would feel if the boot were on the other foot and it were him being excluded... something I've tried to explain to him but he keeps saying he doesn't care, he doesn't want him to to.
I get on with this boys mum pretty well too. She isnt a close friend, but we always stop and chat and we message off and on, she's really nice. I really don't think she thinks her son does anything wrong. Other parents definitely do see it as it's spoken about quite regularly.
Please help me decide what to do...

Bluntly, the other child’s insecurities are not the OP or her child’s problem to solve.

If OP has, as she should have, raised the issue with the boys’ teachers since reception, the other child’s behaviour would have been repeatedly flagged to the other child’s parents so that they could address it.

But, regardless, the OP’s child’s birthday party isn’t a learning opportunity for the problem child and his parents. If his parents ask why he wasn’t invited, then the OP can choose what to say then, but she certainly doesn’t need to subject her child to any more of the other child’s behaviour by offering a ‘compensating’ play date.

All that’s going to achieve is to make it clear to the OP’s son that his feelings and wishes are less important than those of anyone else’s involved. And to make it more likely he grows up to think that not only is workplace bullying normal but he needs to invite the bully to his own out of work parties in case it is ‘bullying’ not to.

Who knows if maybe other children in that group don't feel that they can speak out about their own problems with this child?

OP said the mother said the boy doesn't get invitations to playdates. So it seems the other boys don't want to spend time with him out of school either, and will know why he isn't invited to the party.

I hope your boss laughed in her face. That's Bullying 101 that she was demonstrating there: DARVO and paint yourself as the victim, and complain about being bullied when people treat you like you've been treating them.

Even so, I think people are confusing a private party - which is a luxury and a privilege - with a basic human right that people are somehow supposedly seeking to deny to somebody.

If you work with somebody, you need to treat them fairly and civilly at work; in your private life, you can organise things with your friends - whom you may have first met anywhere, including at work - and you aren't expected to randomly include anybody else whom you also happen to know from anywhere.

Even in cases where people are actually, genuinely friends, it gets tiresome in the extreme when people expect to do everything together with all of their friends every single time. Spending time with some of your friends is just that: it's not a value judgment that everybody else is not your friend, nor a statement that you don't also have other friends.

We used to know somebody like this, who would get dreadfully upset about being excluded if she hadn't been invited to something - even if nobody had been 'invited' and it was just a chance meeting between two or three friends who happened to bump into each other in the supermarket or somewhere, completely unplanned, and stopped for a lengthy chat and a laugh together. It's so draining.

Not for a bully. His mum has said it's not bullying. If it was, then her son wouldn't regularly socialise in this group. If her son is happy to meet up with this group often despite this child being there, then he mustn't be too scared of him. I'm getting the impression he finds him more of a nuisance and a pain in the ass.
Bullying is quite different. It's specific, unrelenting targeting of one person. Sounds like this kid is up to this stuff with everyone and son is generally willing to hang out with him because he's part of a group he likes.
I'd def bring him to the party. Son is walking into territory he doesn't understand. When the whole group gets invited to annoying kid's bday, son is going to be sad.

I was going to suggest telling the mum about it. If she's that oblivious to the problems with her son then this is a chance for her to turn things around.

The only thing I would say is perhaps as a warning, this could be the start of a group splinter. My son is in uni now but I remember a very similar situation in his group though he wasn't one of the boys at loggerheads but it did alter things a bit in that groups split, friendships changed etc. That wasn't a bad thing, though. It did them some good to widen their horizons, I think.

What, so it 'just' ruins a random Saturday for him rather than ruining his actual birthday party? Either way, it's actively rewarding a nasty child for being nasty.

Incidentally, it's also excluding the other children - punishing them for not being bullies, you could say - when otherwise, the actual friends could have enjoyed two fun occasions together.

Surely the boy’s Mum would be horrified to hear how her son is behaving and would understand your son’s reasons for not inviting him. What exactly can she say?

thsu absolutely

It's not for his mum to decide whether her DS's experiences at school constitute bullying or not. Also, bullies don't always just choose one victim; that's an oddly narrow definition of what bullying is: it's not like somebody assigns one bully to one victim and then they've completed the set. Are you a teacher, as it seems to be a real thing amongst schools to dismiss victimised children's (and their parents') concerns and claim that bullying simply doesn't exist at all?

Is the DS actually happy with socialising with the bully, or has he just fallen into it? Obviously at school, he has little choice but to be there with him; and children often end up steered into things by circumstance and/or by parents e.g. playdates with another child because their mums happen to be friends.

It sounds to me like he's a wise young lad and he is now saying enough is enough and that he isn't willing to meekly roll over and be mistreated this way any longer without a whimper. This is really commendable and a sign of his developing maturity, as well as his understanding of how his feelings matter and that he is just as important as anybody else.

I admire your son for being so certain of this and standing up to you.

I think you can get ahead of it with the other mum. It depends how honest you feel able to be.

In your position I wouldn’t worry about the other boy feeling excluded (if it was just one party he would get over it) but I would worry about it backfiring on my own child due to group dynamics. So despite what another poster said about the “insecurities of the other child not being yours to manage” I think they are a bit.

I don’t really see a route through this except finding a good time and talking to the other mum, acknowledging it is really awkward, and being prepared to hear things you don’t want to hear in return. Being clear that you have to support your son about the party but that medium term you want to help him by role modelling how to deal with conflict and trying to get them to a point where they can be in each other’s company as part of a group. What a tough situation.

glad to hear you decision and plans. I hope this will actually help both children.

I highly doubt she doesn't already know or at least strongly suspect it. Even if she doesn't, if she can't be bothered to address her son's behaviour problems, she will need to plainly accept that they are the cause of him missing out.

At 9, I'd say there's still time for him to be properly disciplined as to what behaviour is and isn't acceptable and to be brought into shape; but if his mum merrily ignores it, she runs the real risk of ending up with a nightmare teenager soon, who might be completely off the rails, lonely and refusing to listen to anybody in authority. His mum is not the poor innocent victim here; she is a parent who needs to parent her child - along with the boy's father if he is still alive.

It's a lesson they need to learn, if they are nasty, they won't have any friends. I would not be inviting my child's bully to his party.

I am a teacher and I can tell you, with a wealth of experience under my belt, if he was really being 'bullied' by this guy, he'd be way too afraid to not invite him. He doesn't like this child and I'm sure many in his class, not to mention his group, feel this way. He's using the party for a bit of revenge. It won't end well as unkind acts often don't.

You exhibit spectacularly poor judgement for a purported teacher. For a start, the OP has specified that this child isn't, in her view, a bully, in that she thinks it's more a personality clash rather than a targeted campaign of abuse. Either way, it's irrelevant. The OP's child doesn't want him at his party, because experience has shown that he doesn't enjoy himself in this child's presence. He would rather not have a party at all than invite the other child. That's not 'revenge', it's a child with boundaries and being supported in maintaining them by his parent, as should be the case.

Why does your heart break at the thought of this other boy being excluded but not break for your own son who is being bullied by him?

It is your son’s birthday. He doesn’t want his bully to be there as he knows this boy will ruin his party. Perfectly reasonable. Please back your son in this. The other boy’s behavioural problems are not yours to solve.

I guarantee if push came to shove, he'd still want the party, especially if mum said she'd make sure said boy was kept in check.
I'm a teacher and a mother. I know how the social world of kids works more than most. I've seen parents make awful mistakes and the resultant consequences and I know excluding one child from a group from a party is never a good idea. It won't end well.

But so what? Teach children to invite classmates they don't like to their parties in case things might get awkward later on, and cause trouble for their teacher?

It doesn't sound like revenge to me when he has gone as far as saying he'd rather have no birthday party at all than invite him. Not to mention the fact that he is scared to speak in class due to this boy laughing at him which it seems his teacher has acknowledged.

It isn't unkind to not want someone who makes you feel afraid to speak out in class as well as hits you and pushes you to be at your birthday party.

You remind me of a number of teachers we've met along the way, with similarly dismissive attitudes to children who are being victimised and seeking to centre the unkind, shockingly-behaved children as the only ones who matter.

Are you actually saying that, because this boy isn't terrified enough for you of the child who is victimising him, his reports of mistreatment at the other boy's hands must be fairytales and he should run along and just accept being treated that way?

It's interesting that, these days, when it comes to children reporting sexual abuse by an adult, they are always listened to and their reports taken as extremely seriously as they should be and thoroughly investigated; yet when children report physical, emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of other children - which, contrary to what so many schools seem to believe in isolation, the majority of speakers of the English language would class as bullying - they're gaslit and told that they're making it all up, fussing over nothing and should just learn to be resilient and play nicely with their tormenters.

I would absolutely NOT force a child to invite their bully to a party.
WTF.

Actually I think a lot of mumsnet are more inclined to over-complicate fairly minor issues, and believe that because they struggle navigating something then that the same must hold true for everyone. It doesn’t. OP’s son doesn’t want this kid at his birthday party, so it’s very simple to not invite him. If he and his mother feel bad because of this then that’s fine. That’s their problem, not OP’s.

By the sounds of it OP’s son is already well versed in playing friendship politics, given what he already tolerates from this kid on a daily basis. He’s, very reasonably, drawing a line at having to tolerate it on his birthday.

That’s what you think but it looks bad when a whole team goes somewhere bar one person. If it was just some close friends from the team having a party it’s different. That’s why I think cutting the numbers to make it close friends only is the best solution rather than everyone except one, or else he might claim to be the victim. I don’t think it’s right but I’ve seen it happen so often you have to be sensible about these things. The bully still won’t get to go to the party either way but there’s a way to do it which mean you don’t come across as a bully either

I think the lesson that needs to be taught here is that we all meet people that are annoying in life and have to learn how to deal with and work around them.
I taught a group of 10-year-old girls a few years ago. There was a girl that was incredibly immature and annoyed everyone. Class clown, mocked everyone, drove everyone nuts and obviously had no real friends. A very happy, well-adjusted girl in the class who had plenty of real friends found her particularly annoying and accused her of bullying. From a teacher's perspective, it was farcical. Yes, she was very irritating to be around but she didn't focus her nuisance behaviour on anyone in particular. She was just very socially immature.
Thankfully, the girl who accused her had reasonable parents. I explained the situation fully to them. As a teacher, you're like a parent to them both. You can see where it's going wrong and why each of them is seeing things the way they do. You feel sorry for the socially maladjusted child because you know they don't mean to be as painful as they are, they're just too immature to understand what they're up to.
If you had 2 children and one was 2 years younger (at least socially and emotionally) you would work harder to get them to see each other's point of view and gain common ground rather than let them just exclude each other from their lives.
This isn't a teacher ignoring 'bullying' , it's a teacher that is trying to navigate two charges, of different maturity levels, through childhood and socialisation.
When a child is actually being bullied in my class, believe me, I would never let it stand.

“I think the lesson that needs to be taught here is that we all meet people that are annoying in life and have to learn how to deal with and work around them.”

Like OP’s son is already doing, then.

Equally, there are times in life when we don’t have to deal with such people socially, and can say no to them. That is a valuable lesson to learn also.