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 am a TA in a nursery class and we often have invitations to hand out, which are rarely for the whole class.
They get handed out at the end of the session when all the children are sitting down after storytime. Sometimes a child might cry or complain that they have not had an invitation but myself or the other staff simply say "never mind neither have I and neither has Mrs X and she loves birthday cake" which usually raises as smile and thats that.
In my opinion five is a good age to start learning that you can't always do everything you want to do.

I think it much better to learn it at 5, if everyone were to have the whole class 'to be fair', there comes a point when you want to stop (or your DC definitely wants to stop), and at that much later point the DC has to learn the lesson. It just gives false expectations and is far easier to cope with at 7yr or 8 yrs if you understood from the start that a party is a few DC only.