I am bing pathetic to be so upset by this, and is this normal for a primary school?

[Spero]

I appreciate this isn't the most serious of issues, when compared with what is going on elsewhere, but it has really upset me and I would welcome views about whether I should just get a life or this is something a reasonable person would object to.

My daugther is having her birthday party in a few weeks. I initially said we should just invite all her class as I know from experience that most won't even respond, let alone turn up. She got very upset and said some of the little boys were very naughty and she didn't want them to spoil her party.

I asked her Reception teacher (she will be five) if it was ok not to invite all the class as I didn't want people getting upset. Teacher said, no, its her party she can invite who she wants.

I thought fair enough and planned on slipping invites discreetly into school bags at the end of the day but teacher said she would help my daughter give them out at home time.

I thought therefore they would just be discreetly slipped to individuals mums as they left, but I was horrified on Friday to arrive to pick her up to find the children seated in a large circle in front of teacher and my daughter (who was beside herself with joy), grandly bestowing invites on the class.

Those who hadn't got an invitation looked stricken. Two little boys were crying and one came up to me and asked why he hadn't been invited.

I didn't know what to say and felt very upset. I left in a bit of a daze, didn't speak with the teacher, don't know now if I should have done something, or if I'm just being a wimp and children need to know that they are not going to be everyone's friends or invited to every party.

But it just seemed such an unnecessarily public and cruel way to go about it and if that had happened to me when I was five, I suspect I would remember it to this day.

YANBU. What on earth was the teacher thinking? Yes I think you should have spoken to her, not that you can undo what she's done.

YANBU what a tit of a teacher.

But if this is general policy, i might be able to get them to stop it so it doesn't happen in future. But what the hell do I say?? and who should I say it to?

the weird thing is, they've just banned the distribution of party bags when someone has a birthday, which I had assumed was to stop children getting upset if they didn't get one.

Two choices :

Tough it out if any of the non invited parents speak to you maybe citing space, H&S etc

Take in invites for the others in class and the teacher can repeat Fridays badly thought out plan

The teacher was crass in the extreme.

I don't know what to advise, slip invites into those bags of those missed out? It depends I suppose on numbers, if you've invited 8 out of 30 then fair enough, but if you've only omitted say 6 or 7 then it does look rather pointed.

She ended up inviting about 2/3rds of the class and to be honest, I was quite relieved the teacher was ok with it because a few of the little boys do sound hard to control and my daughter was in tears when I suggested she invite them... so I actually don't want them to come, I just feel so angry and upset that they were put thru this.

But I am glad to read that I don't appear to be a complete wimp about this, and this does eem to be a remarkably crap way to go about it on part of teacher.

Now makes me worried what other weird things are going on in her class.

oh no this has really upset me too!
If it were me I would be devastated and take in invites for those who were left out on Monday...say there had been a mistake.

Then i would speak to the teacher about her methods (how could she ignore crying children?)

Then i would explain to my daughter how children were upset and how it was kinder not to leave anyone out.

I cant imagine how I would feel if my son came home upset like that

what kind of primary school teacher would think this a good idea!?!

It will be difficult but I would stick to only inviting the children your daughter has chosen, it is her party and it is neither yours or her fault these other children are upset, it is the teachers fault and I would be going in on Monday and making sure this didn't happen again.

Out of curiosity, how many of the class were invited?

I did try to make it a 'learning experience' with my dd on the way home and ask her how she would have felt it that happened to her.

She said she wouldn't have cared, which I am 100% sure was pure bravado. I still get upset now if I find out people have not invited me to various things, and I'm nearly 40, not 5.

a silver lining - it was roughly 2/3rd invited 1/3 not out of about 25 children.

Do you think the best thing is to speak to the individual teacher? more in sorrow than in anger kind of thing??

I think thats crazy. Our school actually put in a newsletter that no invites were to be brought into school and would be confiscated by teachers if they did. Parents hand them to other parents discreetly, the children and teachers have nothing to do with it.
My son got invited to 2 parties this weekend, one today and one tomorrow, I didn't even mention tomorrows to him as he can't go, saves the bother!

I'd definitely speak to the teacher, I would be silently fuming every time I saw her if I didn't say something to her.

Thank you for your replies, I was kind of hoping you would say, don't be a wimp so i wouldn't have to confront the teacher, but it is clear that I will have to do something, at the very least get them to clarify their position on handing out invites.

badly handled

in our school, teachers didn't deal with party invitations and I think this was good: it meant parents had to organise it in the playground or from home

invites could be brought into school but not handed over at a public time

YANBU. I must say that I would never give out invitations on behalf of a child in my classroom (I teach primary). It always makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit sad when I see the kids giving out invitations/christmas cards at playtime and some children are left out. I don't know what to suggest though; not sure whether speaking to the teacher would do any good. The damage has been done now. I would feel shit in your position, but I think you are going to have to brazen it out. Teacher is an arse.

Is the teacher quite young/new? It sounds like she just didn't think it through.

Is this the first time its happened? What happened when people had parties last term?

She seems fairly young, but i don't think this is her first year or anything like that.

I don't know how this has been handled re other parties as they don't seem to happen very often round my way - unlike a friend with dd in v posh Hampstead school who has had parties every weekend for what seems like the past year. My dd has had an invite to Macdonalds in Penge and that is it.

So maybe it happens rarely at this school, but even so, it just seems basic common sense that you don't rub children's nose in fact that they haven't been invited to something.

YANBU to be upset by the way it was done but TBH unless you're inviting the whole class, then asking the teacher to distribute the invitations is a bit lazy IMO. Teachers are teachers not social secretaries.
If you want to be discreet about it because you're not inviting every child in the class then hand them out yourself to the parents.
At our dcs' primary school, the teachers won't distribute invitations unless they are for the whole class on the grounds that it's not fair on the children who aren't invited if they see other children waving invitations around.

Am going to go slightly against the grain here.

While the teacher was perhaps a little crass to have your dd hand out the invites in the way she did, the reality is that even if it was done discretely, children are not discrete, and news of the party would have made it back to the uninvited children anyway as they talked about their invites/about looking forward to/the good time they had at the party.

Children do need to learn that they will not be invited to everything, and when they start school is about the time that people start becoming a bit more particular about who they invite purely because having 30 children at a party is a logistical nightmare.

I certainly wouldn't be handing out invites to non invited children as tbh it will be forgotten by now anyway.

display I DID NOT ask teacher to distribute. She offered to help my dd given them out because dd can't read the names on the envelopes yet. I wanted to slip them in the bloody bags! I can't hand them out to the parents because i don't know who the parents are. She only started in Sep and as i've said, there isn't a culture of parties at my school as she hasn't been invited to anything so far ~(or maybe they just all dislike her, and after her evident joy at Friday's escapade I could see why!)