Awkward party invite situation- wwyd?

[bobblehead]

Dd2 will be 6 in a couple of weeks. She has invited around 8 children (from class of 22). We slipped invites into bags on Monday.

Dd chose all the guests. She's been talking about who she wants to come for weeks and it changed a fair bit week to week. One girl, I'll call her Betty, was pretty consistantly on it. Dd went to her party in October and she seemed to be one of the children mentioned a lot. Then as we were finalizing the list dd stopped mentioning her. I asked if she was invited, dd said not. No fall out or anything, just didn't want her there. I double checked before sending out the invites as I felt bad dd had been to her party, but dd was adamant Betty was not invited.
Today dd was it another girl's party, as was Betty. As we were leaving Betty's mum cornered me and very nicely said she'd heard dd was having a party, and she wasn't trying to make things awkward, but her mum had picked up Betty from school on the day of invites, so she wasn't sure if Betty should have one or not? She said its fine if not, she just didn't want to not reply if invite had been lost.
I couldn't face saying no, she's not invited, so just said, well dd did the list, I'm not 100% sure who she picked, I'll go home and check and email you if you should have one. Now I feel terrible!
So, should I A) email and say sorry, Betty is not invited B) not do anything or C) make dd invite Betty and email saying gosh, just found Betty's invite lying around, good thing you mentioned it!!!
Was I wrong not to reciprocate the invite in the first place?

TIA

Well, you have invited Betty now but I do think it's unreasonable to expect your DD at her age to not open her mouth about it - whether you buy her something or not .

Also, can you be sure that your DD is going to be nice to Betty at the party - given that she doesn't want her there. Betty might be better off having a nice weekend not going to the party!

DD was invited to a party last year where the birthday girl had obviously been told to invite her, when we arrived the birthday girl said 'I can't wait until my real friends get here' and was then mean to her for the whole party. Nice.

Unlikely Maryz as I don't live in UK....(may have to return if she turns out to be a closet mnetter though!!!)

Dd's personality is such that I suspect she will a) not say anything and b) be nice to betty at the party. From what I gather any ill-feeling towards Betty is due to dd wanting to play/chat more and Betty not always reciprocating.
The most I see dd saying would be something along the lines of "I forfot to give you an invite" not "my mum made me invite you".

Thank christ my ds is now ten and we're past all this presumed whole class party/must-recipricate-all-invites party politics. fwiw I only had one class party - when ds was four - for his preschool class, never again. It's madness. As for recipricating every invite, that just isn't practical if there are a lot of parties in your area, and at the time it's not possible to know which invites you would recipricate and which you wouldn't, etc etc etc.

And tbh I think it's a bit off to ask whether your child should have had an invite. If child doesn't receive an invite then you assume they've not been invited.

Next year it'll be "choose one special friend..." cheaper and less potential for disaster! Or does that mean dd can only go to one party next year?

I only reciprocate if the kids are happy about it; I don't force the issue if there's been any falling out since the last party.
Apparently I'm in the extreme minority - but I let my kids have the ultimate say in their own guest lists.

I agree WannaBe, no invite means you're not invited.
There was a very surreal scene at a recent party my 8 year old went to; one boy's mum had received a text about the party details, addressed to for example Susan, inviting her son Simon to the party. Mum receiving text is actually called Jayne and her boy is called James.

First text was immediately followed up with another saying "oops, wrong number, that text was obviously for Susan.
The mum receiving the texts, both the one inviting another boy and the kiss off one actually showed up for the party, appearing quite unfazed at not appearing on the pre paid guest list.

God, sorry for burbling on, that probably only made sense to me

The other Mum didn't do anything wrong at all - it was a reasonable question given the circumstances and she said 'absolutely no bother if not, just checking'.

It would have been easy to have emailed her saying 'Sorry, DD & Betty seem to have had some minor fall out and as DD was only allowed to choose 6 children she didn't invite Betty :( However, kids being kids they'll probably be friends again by next week so maybe we could do something over the holidays. KR OP'

I reckon Bettys mum knows darn well betty want invited! How can you not know who your five year old wrote invitations to? There is zero chance of me allowing ds to write and hand out invitations without close supervision! I need a list to keep track of replies, and we'd have the class teacher, the class bear, a couple of random kids and maybe his best friend turn up!

I always recripcate, well actually invite all the girls in DDs class.

But I think it's up to your DD. UNLESS there are only 9 girls and just Betty is left out? Or perhaps only 2 or 3 left out.

DD has been the only girl out of 11 not invited, the girl who's party it was had been to everyone of DDs parties. Me, sour? not much

I did write the invites, but dd had been reeling off names of who she was inviting for the past month or so, and this kept changing! (Betty had made the cut at one point....). Had one of the the other girl's mums asked me the same question I may well have not been able to answer on the spot as not totally sure without checking the list (I tick off name when I get an rsvp). I knew full well about Betty as I wasn't sure about the whole reciprocating bit and do know the mum to say hello to.
I hope it doesn't look obvious, but she did ask...what did she expect? No=hurt feelings and awkwardness, yes=invite and I'm guessing she'd prefer the latter!

At least 4 other girls are not invited

What ChippingIn said.

So you are saying that if a child's parents can't afford to throw them a party, then that child should be told that they can't go to ANY of their classmates parties because "We can't afford to reciprocate".

REALLY?!

WTF?!

Sometimes I can afford to throw whole class parties. I don't expect to get 31 invites back.

Sometimes I can only afford a party for, say, 8. Does that mean that at the start of the year, I have to decide which 8 out of 31 invites I have to accept on my DC's behalf?

Sometimes I can't afford a party at all. Does that mean that if my child gets 31 invites, I have to turn all 31 down?

I think that's plainly NUTS. Sorry.

It is all about our adult perceptions of what is appropriate. I doubt Betty is even aware of the party. If she is and is disappointed, she would get over it. I feel obliged to invite so as not to offend Betty's mum or create awkwardness.
Both my dd's have asked "wasn't that rude of Betty's mum to ask?" Dd really doesn't want Betty there, for whatever reason and now I do feel bad I didn't just say "sorry, she's not invited" to her mum. But at the same time that would be a very hard thing to do, with her dd stood right there hugging mine

Betty's mum sounds barking. I mean who gets this invested in six year olds birthday parties?

Never mind, too late now, but FWIW it sounds as if your dd had good reason not to want Betty there, and you've over ruled her to keep the other mother sweet (she hands out little favour bags to buy friends for her daughter at Xmas/Easter etc - WTF?).

She's not an adult, she's five. It is your guest list really.

I don't think at 5 it can really be entirely her choice. If she gets invited to a party, you as her parent have to decide whether she is going (if you chose, then taking her preferences on board). Same with planning the list of proposed guests.

I agree it is good manners to reciprocate. If you don't want to invite someone back, then you should not accept their invitation in the first place.

I don't think her mum is barking, I have a very strong feeling she is a mnetter, her questions is the advice I've seen on every thread about someone's dc not being invited to a party.

Doesn't make the standard advice correct. If your child comes home and says so and so hasn't invited me to their party, you say never mind can't do everything. Not grill the party parent.

So LondonKitty. You are saying that because this year, I'm not throwing a party, as I can't afford to do one every year for the DC's (we do parties on set birthdays), that I shouldn't accept any party invites for my DC's?

Not even their best friend?

All I am doing for my DS2's birthday this year is taking him on a day trip with his brother.

So that means he has to turn down party invites all year, and upset his friends that really want him there?

It's a good job the parents of my DS2's friends don't think like that, and understand that I can't afford a party this year, but still want my DS2 to attend their parties.

Seems do far away from RL to me!

I thought Betty's mother left the door wide open to be able to say, without any hard feelings, that Betty wasn't invited to the party.

Exact reciprocation is madness, but it's worth double checking whether the initial invite list omits anyone obvious - last year I started by being strict with DS about only inviting 6 to his party. Turned out the reason he was dithering about the list was that he has 7 very good friends at school and whose parties he had been to... (I upped the quota and made a mental note to pay a bit more attention to this stuff in future!)

Actually I wish Betty's mum had emailed me to ask then I wouldn't have been on the spot and the dd's wouldn't have been around. She hasn't replied which makes me worry it was too obvious I was after-inviting. But if she expected the answer to be no why ask? I think she asked as she was so sure Betty should have an invite that it was worth putting me on the spot, which means she would have been hurt/confused if I said no dd didn't want Betty there.

I would also be horrified if someone refused an invite because they didn't plan on inviting my child back. If dd has invited someone its because she wants them there, not because she wants a reciprocal invite!