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...

There is some properly messed up thinking on this thread! Forcing your kid to spend a whole day with a child who’s been unpleasant to them thereby emphasising their role as emotional support animal to horrible people. Inviting a woman you hate to your own wedding?! Bizarre behaviour on both counts sorry!

Don’t invite him. My DS is at uni and still recalls a similar situation from year 4 that I didn’t stamp out sooner. The other DS was my friend’s son who I brought home 2 nights per week while mum worked. Very similar situation with wider friendship group since reception class. Please listen to your son.

Exactly crikey. They remember these betrayals by parents. Bet the friend and her son are now peripheral people in your lives if you are even in touch but your sons view of you affected..

Nearly fell into this trap myself honestly a cautionary tale for people pleasing mums. Sometimes you have to piss off other people for your child’s sake.

"It's interesting to read all the comment about a bully child, made by adults who basically recomment OP to behave like an adult bully"

What rubbish. People are expecting op to act like a parent and safeguard her child's wellbeing, not sacrifice it on the altar of someone else's personal growth so she gets to feel like a superior person.

Deliberately and repeatedly excluding one team member from social events outside of work is regarded as workplace bullying. When the whole team gets together socially it can be construed as an extension of the workplace and the issue then becomes a matter of workplace ostracism if the same person is intentionally excluded each time.

Whether or not that person would want to go if invited is irrelevant and they would have a legitimate cause for complaint, especially if they could cite similar treatment in the workplace - even something as simple as being left to eat alone at lunchtime while the rest of the team interacts. It’s very difficult to prove but employers have a duty of care and the spotlight would fall on the way the employee was being treated in general.

There absolutely is a basis for an employer to get involved. When a whole team gets together socially outside of work, it can be viewed as an extension of the workplace and the deliberate and repeated exclusion of one person each time is potentially workplace bullying. Exclusion from social events will normally be only a part of the full picture, and there will likely be other exclusionary behaviour within the workplace setting which can be used as evidence to support a claim. An employer has a duty of care to investigate.

I was going to say I'm surprised at some of the posts from purported teachers on here and then I realised that it's depressingly likely that they ARE teachers and are a huge part of the bullying problem a lot of children face.

The practise of centering a bully's feelings, and making everyone else adjust to their behaviour is no small part of the problem, IMO. I am heartily sick of schools and teachers doing sweet FA to stop problematic behaviours.

One teacher on here using an example of an annoying girl to explain why she would make a nine year old child ruin his own birthday to save the feelings of his tormentor is exactly insane enough to seem real. Madness.

Where I'm from teachers are becoming less and less supported by the general public and I'm sorry to say but teachers like that poster are why.

Of course you have to work with children you may find 'challenging' as that's your job; but nobody is telling you that you have to invite other people your own age whom you don't like to your private social events.

You're kind of confirming what I said, though, when you say that you won't stand for bullying, but that lots of behaviour and treatment that upsets children and can ruin their schooldays 'isn't really bullying' - or at least leads them to experience many symptoms of being bullied, even if the child responsible for it isn't actually intending to bully them.

Whether we call it bullying or not, and whatever the motivations of the children behaving in this way, the children who are seriously affected by it are just as important, and their feelings matter as well. They aren't responsible for steering/trusting children who are being deeply unpleasant to them into behaving better and making better, kinder choices; they are children, not teachers.

Regardless of who else might be there too, why on earth would he want to attend his bully's party? It's hardly a loss if telling a horrid person that you don't want to spend time with them results in them not inviting you to spend time with them!!

Yes, absolutely. We need to break the cycle and teach our children that they and their feelings matter; and they don't have to paint "WELCOME" on their backs and accept whatever poor treatment anybody wants to inflict on them by default.

ds is so upset about it he doesn’t feel able to have him at his bday celebrations

Why is any excuse needed? They're long past nursery or reception, where the default expectation is that everybody in the class will be invited. When you're planning a party, you naturally think about which friends you would like to invite and make a list; it would be madness to make a great big long list of everybody you know and then go through crossing off the ones you don't want to invite!

Just like you don't make a to-do list of every conceivable task and then go through deleting all of the ones that you don't need to do: cross off 'walk the dog', 'get petrol for the car', 'go to the butcher's' - because you don't have a dog or a car and you're a vegetarian!!

OP's DS has never said that he utterly hates the other boy and that he wants him to suffer horribly forever; he's simply made a list of his friends and, as it happens, this boy is very clearly not one of his friends and so he naturally isn't included on the list. He is irrelevant in this case, as the birthday child is obviously always the one who is centred at his/her own party.

This is my experience too in the main. Also don't explain to the mum. There really isn't anything to explain. We didnt invite a child that was like this to DD's party last yr. They aren't close/best friends though. They don't get on but there are 12 girls in the class and she was one of 2 not to be invited. She found out about said party, parents now ignore me. Happy days :)

I personally can't tolerate someone pushing, kicking, scratching my child coming to their party If they said they didn't want them there.

I think don’t invite him but do text the mum and give her a headsup. Just something like “hey just wanted to let you know that Jack is having a small birthday party and I’ve let him choose who to invite. He’s chosen not to invite Ethan, he says they’re not getting on very well. I did say Ethan may feel left out but he is adamant and I want to let him choose for his own birthday. I just wanted to give you a heads up and explain a little. X”

reason being - the mum has done nothing wrong and also hasn’t been given chance to resolve this so don’t want her feeling really sad and excluded, and you said you get along well so it’s nice not to ruin that (better to have her on side and amicable if want to navigate future bullying etc) I think then you can proceed conscience free

Isn't it interesting how they focus on what they (mistakenly) think that you've done wrong; but not on what their own child has done wrong, nor on what they have done wrong in not parenting adequately?

It makes me think of an old cartoon I saw, where an angry child ran to tell on her sister: "Muuuum, Cheryl broke my doll when I whacked her over the head with it!!"

But why a need to even bring it up? He's inviting his friends to his party, and this boy who has been bullying him very obviously isn't included on the list - as aren't dozens of other children that the birthday boy knows but doesn't consider friends.

I hate it when parents who have friends expect their children to also be friends with their friends' children by default. Friendships are nuanced, organic things that naturally mutually develop over time; you don't just get your friends assigned to you, based on what suits other people.

Because it’s a friendship group of 8 kids.

I agree if he was just selecting him favourite friends from the class and this included mainly 1:1 connections or a couple of smaller clusters. But to invite an entire friendship group minus 1 is always going to be tricky for kids or adults. It will always raise questions. And in this instance will cause hurt to the mother of the left out boy who OP says has been nice and not done anything wrong and also has not been made aware of the issues to even have a chance at addressing them.

But as I said/asked upthread, are they actually friends? Adults have an annoying habit of assigning groups of children as 'friends' just by virtue of their proximity or happening to do the same thing at the same time.

Adults don't tend to describe ALL of their colleagues at work as 'work friends' - only those with whom they are actually friends; but when it comes to kids, it's often just condescendingly assumed. Just because they may have a limited number of peers in their lives at this stage, that doesn't mean that they're automatically friends.

When our DS was bullied at school, they tried to gaslight us by dismissing it as 'friendship issues' when the children doing it were most definitely not our DS's friends at all. I don't know if they were foolishly assuming that 'children in the same class = friends' or blaming our DS for not cheerfully accepting the bullying as displays of 'friendship'? Oddly enough - as the lad in question here is finding - if you're nasty to others, they don't tend to want to be your friends!

Because it’s a friendship group of 8 kids.

Is it, though? OP said the boy's mother said he doesn't get invitations to playdates. Do any of the boys actually want to spend time with this boy, beyond what is unavoidable at school?