Some context: my son is coming up to six and is in year one.
So far, in primary school, he doesn't seem to have made firm friends though it is clear based on various conversations that a lot of the other kids have BFFs. I am aware that this will likely change but right now, he does tell us that he spent lunch time all by himself or no one played at afterschool club, so clearly he is struggling a bit and he verbalises that he is sad or lonely at school, at times.
This brings me to my conundrum. His birthday is coming up and he is having a party. We obviously want it to be successful - his 5th all-class birthday was very good and he has fond memories. We would like that to be the case this time too.
We got to his invite list and he has given us some names. We could have guessed quite a few of them, but he also has people he has never once mentioned before while excluding a couple of kids that are very closely linked to groups. For example, there is a group of 4 boys who have known each other since nursery (1 year old). My son would like to invite 3 of those boys. In the other group, there are 5 children and he would like to invite 4, excluding just one person.
I'm sure lots of you will jump down my throat about this but, I feel we should gently encourage my son to consider the excluded people. They will very likely find out when the kids all stand up at sharing time and recite what they did over the weekend. We are happy to pay for the extras. Equally, we don't want to force him - he'll have to put up with people he would rather not at various stages of life, that is just inevitable.
Seems silly to get wrapped up in the lives of six year olds but my son has speech delays which he's been mocked about by some children. So, we and he are sensitive to navigating this sort of thing to try and set him for social success. I'll add that the mums in the group are like something from a US teen drama - I am forever astonished by their clique behaviour. Children have been excluded from parties due to parent politics and I want to avoid that sort of thing, on behalf of my son, to whom this has already happened (I heard the mum quite loudly say something awful about my son and how he would ruin the party with his 'baby talk').
So, should I suggest to my son he ought not exclude people from within a group. Or just let the chips fall as they do.