Group party not invited

[Kim926]

My little one is in Reception.

He’s been playing well with almost everyone, and his teachers have given him good feedback.

There’s a parents’ group chat, and one of the mums posted that three mums have sent out birthday invitations. She asked people to reply if they’ve received one and can attend.

We haven’t received any invitation, but from the responses, it seems we’re among the few who didn’t. According to my child, one of the girls (whose mum is hosting one of the parties) can be quite “cheeky” — she cries a lot and has said “no” (asking not come near her) to my little one quite aggressively a few times. He even cried at home after school because of it.

I feel bad for him, and I can’t help wondering if it might be because we’re the only East Asian family (though I know that may not be the reason).

We were thinking about sending out invitations for my child’s birthday party soon. At first, we planned to invite everyone, but now I’m not so sure.

Any advice on what we should do?

I wouldn’t waste time wondering why he isn’t invited- there will be hundreds of parties by the end of primary and some he’ll be invited to, others not. I don’t want to dismiss your suspicions that it’s race related, as it could well be, but it won’t help you to know that.

But it’s extremely poor behaviour for the parents to use the class what’s app if they’re not hosting an all class party. I’ve never seen that in the many years of primary school parenting- it’s just common sense to protect the feelings of small children, though hopefully he won’t find out that he’s been excluded.

Try not to focus on it and worry.
There will be alot of reasons why they might not have been invited and I've really learnt not to dwell on it.
We always did whole class invites for reception and year 1 but from Year 2 we have reduced and only invite a selected few. These can change depending on what day I asked DS who he wanted to invite. We have a core group of about 5 then the rest swap and change alot.

I'd still invite everyone. Its a good way to get to know children and parents in reception esp if you don't know many from pre school

Its very bad form to use a parents what app group to talk about parties if not everyone has been invited though.

i know how rejecting it can feel especially when it’s rubbed in your face that way but please don’t take it personally especially as you aren’t the only ones who didn’t receive an invite. We’ve had similar situations over the years with our 3 children and we would still invite everyone if we had planned to regardless of whether my children went to their party (unless we were limited on numbers of course). To be honest I feel relieved when my children aren’t invited as after 3 children and years of parties some months felt like all we did at weekends was go to parties sat/sun sometimes 2 in one day and sorting out presents can be time consuming and the cost adds up.
When numbers are limited at party venues you sometimes have to guess which children they play with more and sometimes if mums are close they will automatically invite the children of their friends regardless of whether the children even play together.
some I’ve noticed only invite all boys or all girls to cut the numbers down also.
they definitely shouldn’t be mentioning it in a group messaging app though but some people have no thought for anyone else’s feelings possibly because it wouldn’t bother them.
There will be many more parties over the following years I’m sure :)

Invites get lost a lot in reception. If someone has added that question to a whole class chat I would think it’s perhaps a whole class invite and yours just hasn’t made it home.

In these circumstances I’d assume it got lost somewhere along the way. I wouldn’t mention it didn’t make it home just incase you’re right. But I think it’s unlikely she’d message class group if whole class wasn’t invited.
I’d just message ‘thank you for the invite, X would love to come, can you remind me when and where? I managed to spill coffee over it before I added details to diary!’.

I wouldn’t do this as they really may not have invited everyone and then they’d know that you’d made up the whole thing about coffee. If you think it’s a genuine mistake you could message and say ‘Jim didn’t receive an invite, I’m just checking if he should have had one‘ or just leave it.