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.

I can't believe that an adult would use a word like 'fucktard'. It is just using 'retard' but trying to be clever about it.

Unbelievable. Twat

I agree about the class list actually - I hate giving out my address (so many SAHMs have stupid direct-marketing-from-home jobs I'd worry my junk mail quotient was about to shoot through the roof - or that I'd be invited to every tupperware party going!). I always give a fake address when I return something to a shop and they ask you to fill out your details on the receipt.

Name and mobile no might be ok I guess. Definitely wouldn't want them having our address though. What if your DCs fell out and the other parent decided to come storming round to have it out with you there are some crazy folk out there...

God, I really sound like I have something to hide...

[sigh] well Dcs are 16, 13 and 7 and I have never had marketing junk m,ail from school list nor has any weird psycho parentturned up.

I have had people pop around with presents when DD was very ill. Also had parent bring DS2s christmas gifts from the class when he missed christmas party. And have had one friend of DS1 call here when he had fallen in the street and was bleeding and upset. he phoned his mum and she told him where I was. He waited here until she could fetch him.

All pretty terrible really.

Apart from the use of language, for which I think the OP is BVU, I do think the OP has come in for a lot of unfair flack on this thread from some other posters, especially some of those who are teachers.

First: My ds is also in reception and his school has an 'all or nothing' invites policy for invitations that are handed out at school. If I hadn't been told that before he started, I wouldn't have known - so the OP was NBU for checking with the teacher.

Second: Once the teacher had confirmed that there was not a policy (and it was ok to invite less than the full class via invites handed out at school) it shouldn't take a great leap of imagination on the teacher's part to realise some sensitivity might be called for.

Third: The OP did not ask the teacher to help, she just checked whether there was a policy in place. The teacher offered to help. The OP has stressed this several times. My ds comes home with letters and invites in his bag almost daily - I assume someone puts them in there for him as he is incapable of putting all that stuff in tidily and frequently hasn't seen any of it until he gets home and we open things together. Why couldn't the invites have been put in alongside anything else by the teacher/TA once help had been offered?

But I do look back at my own primary school days and recall that I was very rarely arsed about not being invited to every party...as far as I can remember, we all used to invite our friends, and of course that didn't mean the entire class. Upsets only occurred when, for example, your so-called best friend didn't invite you to her party....

Just listen to yourselves...the teacher "is a cow", is "grossly unprofessional" yada yada. Don't you think teachers have enough to contend with without having to also be responsible for a party which has absolutely nothing at all to do with them? she was just trying to do you a favour FGS. I am incredulous at the responses here. Why not call bloody OFSTED in and have the teacher struck off while you're at it ?

It's YOUR party - YOU do the effing invites.

oh and the teacher is also a 'fucktard'. What does that make you then, OP?

I am sorry that my language has offended some.

donnie, I am someone who was extremely upset at what I witnessed when I certainly never requested any help or intervention from the teacher.

But this has been a very useful thread in that it has helped me think about other explanations for what happened; I think someone mentioned earlier that the teacher might not have wanted me rooting about in other's bags, which again, I hadn't even thought about.

But I reserve the right to question her judgment and her sensitivity in the strongest terms if she made that decision deliberately.

I am not sure however, what I am supposed to do in the future. I don't know any parents names, I certainly don't know their addresses. As far as I know, the school does not give out addresses.I had hoped this party would be a chance for me to get to know some people, which would benefit me and my daughter.

I'm afraid I am a single parent, work full time and rarely get the opportunity to go to school. I drop her off at breakfast club (where she is the only reception child) and get to pick her up about once per fortnight, so not sure what other options are open to me.

What do other working parents do?

Invite all the children in her year or all the children in her class, or all the girls in the year or all the boys in the year or all the boys in her class or all the girls in her class...

The point being that you invite a group which no one is excluded from. In any of my above suggestions the fact someone isn't invited can be explained away in a very general manner.

The learning should not just be that you can't be invited to every party, that not everyone likes you but that when inviting people to a party it is right to be sensitive and inclusive.

If this had been thought about sensitively when you wrote the invitation no hurt would have been caused however publicly the invitations were handed out.

smokeandmirrors

I did think sensitively. I initially said to my dd we would invite everyone, secure in the knowledge from previous nursery parties, that most would not acknowledge or come.

She got very upset at this, and was crying, saying she didn't want so and so to come.

So I am not going to trample on my dd wishes and feelings in the rather strange manner you suggest.

Anyway, I think I have learned all that I am going to learn from this thread which would seem to be:

It was insensitive of teacher to act this way, but there may well be things going on in the background about which I am not aware so making a complaint is probably over reaction:

it would be good if schools were upfront and clear about policies re parties and invites:

some people think that the above would be an infringement of their civil liberties. I must admit I don't understand that one:

there doesn't seem to be much understanding or sympathy for the parent who simply can't get involved at the school gates and get to know all the names and addresses of every parent.

thanks for all your replies, it has been helpful.

It is horrible to exclude a few children in this way at such a young age.

Unfortunately five year old children are not very good at thinking about the feelings of others and it is our job to helep them learn the skill of empathy.

You may consider the idea of finding different ways of being inclusive strange, but I think it's rather strange to let a five year old's petty tantrum overule your much wiser, much more sensitive judgement.

But Spero you were going to invite the whole class if the teacher had told you to!

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.

That's what I think is unreasonable, not the policy (if there is one) on handing invites out but the policy on telling you how many to invite to your party (which clearly would never exist)

You are old enough to decide who to invite to your ds's party so shouldn't have asked the teacher!

My bets are still that the teacher forgot the earlier conversation about who to invite and maybe because OP had asked her if she should invite the whole class and then took her up on the offer of helping distribute them, she wrongly assumed that the whole class was involved.
Either way, if you want to get on and have a pleasant experience of your child's school life it might be worth being a tad more accommodating of the people she is having contact with at school instead of rushing to blame them when you make a gaff.

'But having read all the replies and all this about party-policies etc I am starting to marvel at how any of us coped with our own school days'

We coped fine because people, in general, had small parties at home with a few friends.
Then it got into one upmanship with soft play areas, hiring halls etc. It is like corporate entertaining. The DCs are in the same class-the birthday DC barely knows some of them -and yet they all have to come because 'it is horrible to 'exclude'. The DCs come, put all the presents in a black sack (why any DC wants or needs 30 presents is beyond me!)and opens them when they have gone home and the parents writes them a letter! Young DCs think this is what a party consists of and, that if anyone in the class is handing out invitations, they are entitled to one! (It may be that the DCs main friends are in a parallel class-or out of school).
When they get to the age where friendships are really important, and it really matters if they get invited or not, people stop doing them and go out for the day with a couple of friends!!
On other threads you get on to whether parents should stay because the DC is in tears at being left? I hated parties when I was little, I could just about cope with people I knew really well-these whole class things would have been a nightmare and I would have been pleased to be 'excluded'.

Not that I think it is excluding-they are merely not being invited. I dare say that I get 'excluded' from lots of things that aquaintances do socially, but since they are not people I do things with socially I would be surprised to be included, unless the friendship developed.

When 5 yr olds have to deal with all sorts of dreadful things in their lives, I don't think not being invited to a classmates party features very high on the scale. The wise parent helps them over it. Maybe next year they will know the birthday DC better and be a friend-friendships are fluid at that age.
The teacher handled it badly-they are not perfect-she made a mistake-point it out and move on!

Perhaps the teacher did it in that way to show the badly behaved kids being a pain in the arse makes you unpopular!

I don't think it's the end of the world, and kids do need to know that not everyone is going to like them/be invited to stuff/get picked for sports etc, as a bit of rejection is part of life, but I can't understand why a teacher would be quite that insensitive, especially after you expressed your concerns to her about leaving some children out before hand.

I understand about the teacher not wanting to let you put the invitations in their bags yourself however due to confidentiality probably - they get a bit shifty as it is if the kids books get muddled up and sent home by mistake!

But like Imisssleeping said, you shouldn't be worrying about who to invite in the first place, it's perfectly normal not to invite the whole class for a party, not everyone can afford to cater for that many children anyway.

The badly behaved kids are not necessarily unpopular!!!

Excluding only two or three is pretty horrible though. Exclude ten or twelve and it's not so hurtful.

If it is one or two, or even 9 or 10, then that is excluding and hurtful. Only inviting 9 or 10 isn't excluding or hurtful, unless it is a class of 15 DCs.

I do sympathise with you, SPERO, it does sound as though the teacher didn't think it through, I'm sure she'd be horrified if she saw this thread!

It's got me thinking though, as early last year my ds (aged 6), was given the school mascot to take home for half term. The child writes about what he's done and sticks photos of himself in the diary, out and about with this soft toy. During that week he had his birthday party. We had it at home, and about 10 children, (his main friends) were invited out of a class of 30. We stuck a few pictures of him with his friends around the party table (with the school mascot of course!), in the diary.

I now know that the diary is shown to the class by the teacher, and the child talks about his weekend/holiday to everybody in "Show and Tell". I'm now wondering how the other children felt seeing my ds and SOME of the class seated around the party table, some could well have felt left out at "Show and Tell".

This is what is so wrong about the whole thing! Of course he should be able to take the diary to school. It is a sad day when you have to keep what should be a joyful occasion a shameful secret! Anyone in that class would have been able to tell you who his main friends were.
It would have been a horrible thing to do if a few children didn't go but 20 children weren't there!!
Children talk about their birthdays in 'show and tell' and that includes their party. It had never occurred to me that it was a taboo subject-only to be whispered about!

So am I right in thinking that the "policy" is that if you want the teacher to hand out then there should be an invitation for each child?

If not-sort it out yourself?

All the teacher has to do is ask the TA to put them in book bags for the end of the day-very simple because they generally do that with any school letters anyway. There is no need to hand out anything-DCs of that age lose it anyway. I once found an invitation in the bottom of my 5yr olds school tray, 3 weeks after the party and had to make grovelling apologies to the parent!

smokeanmirrors am amazed at you calling spero's DD's views on who to invite to her party a "petty tantrum".

As a matter of fact, I did overrule my 4yo DD's views on this and certainly regretted it.

The children she didn't want to invite were the very ones who made her FS2 party a bit of a nightmare - bad behaviour, refusal to do as asked, etc etc.

They have never come to another party and I vowed to listen to DD in future. I just don't get why I should have to spoil a child's party so that some other children get an invite. It's bizarre.

Mind you I did go out of my way as another poster suggests further down the thread to give out invites personally to mums at school gate. I agree spero, this is virtually impossible if you work full time and you have my sympathies (tho no very helpful suggestions, sorry).

Sorry I meant that the children DD didn;t want to invite have never come to another party of hers - I am sure they have been to other children's...