Inviting every child but one to his party

[lingle]

My friend asked her 5-year-old who he'd like to invite to his party from reception class. He replied "everyone except X because I don't like him". So my friend invited everyone except X.

Then she told me what she had done and said, "I'm sure X and his mum won't find out about it". There is nothing particularly difficult about X and his behaviour.

Surely the probability that X's mum never found out is zero? Isn't my friend now lining herself up to have an enemy for the next 7 years, plus possibly to have caused misery to a 5-year-old?

In a similar incident last October, a mum sent round a generous invitation list for her son's birthday. At the time, the son was "too naughty" and not much liked. Quite a few people declined on the ground that their child didn't like the birthday boy. My friend and I both told our unwilling sons that they were going but didn't have to play with him. They went, we made friends with the mum, the birthday boy now behaves much better and 8 months later is friends with both our sons.
I think it is important to avoid singling out and ostracising a child who is 4 years old - firstly because it's immoral, secondly because children change quickly at that age and thirdly for the practical reason that you are committed to spending the next 7 years in the company of his mum! what do others think?

I know you can go too far the other way. A boy in my son's friendship group was annoying the others and they ostracised him, causing his mum a lot of pain. At first, I made the big mistake of just insisting that my son play with him. Then my son became very upset and explained how the boy physically hurts him. It turned out that the boy hadn't really developed his sense of "boundaries" and hadn't realised that hugs can be unwanted, kisses can block someone's mouth and bear hugs can hurt. Once I realised this, I told my son it was ok to say "no, don't touch me!" and that it was his choice whether to be touched or not. He looked so relieved! I also told the mum, because she was pretty upset and worried by this point. She taught her boy to do "high 5s" instead and practised gentle hugs at home - and peace broke out.

My DD wanted to invite the whole class but one ( a naughty boy apparently ). She was told that this isnt acceptable.
She was later on happy to get an invitation back to the "naughty" boys party.

That's awful - I WAS the child who was let out of party invitations and it was horrid.

the only thing i would say, as someone who has never done this...
my DS1 had his party aged 6. when i checked re invites he wanted all the class except one boy.
i told him flat out that was not OK so said boy attended.
Within 15 minutes this boy had been really rude to me, deeply offensive to every girl in attendence and then tried to get the other children to chant a really really mean thing about DS1.
I tried to reason with him. Nothing. When i told him I was about to phone his mother to come and collect him because his behaviour was foul he burst into tears and tried to tell one of the party organisers that i had threatened to hit him .
two weeks later at school he attacked my DS in the school changing rooms.
I actually wish I had trusted DS1's judgement a bit more.

Hmm. We had something a bit like this.

There was 1 boy (Boy B)in my DS's class (R/Y1) who was violent and disruptive towards the other children. He had punched my DS in the face, knocking him over and causing a large graze: DS was extremely upset about this. He also punched another boy, Boy A in the stomach knocked off his glasses and deliberately stamped on them. Boy A then had to spend some time without his glasses and was disorientated and again very upset. Bot B's parents appeared unconcerned and generally told the boy to get his retaliation in early (my DS and Boy A re both quiet, non-alpha males types). (There are some additional unpleasant overtones of a possibly racial nature which I am leaving out of this, but again don't reflect well on the boy or his parents).

Boy A was leaving the cleass and my nanny was arranging a small tea party. We did not invite Boy B (on the basis that my DS was still quite upset and Boy A - who the party was for - was also very unhappy with mixing with him). There was some uproar from other people in the class who felt Boy B was being "excluded" from a small party, although there were lots of others not invited. After a lot of argy bargy, we invited him. His behaviour at the party was really unpleasant - he ripped up someone else's painting making them cry and refused to participate in any of the games. Of course, none of the people who complained about him being "excluded" were actually there to deal with any of this, and he soured the party for a number of people.

What to do in these circumstances? Genuine question. TBH, I felt sorry for my son, having invited into his home someone who was giving him quite a bit of grief.

Thanks for all the replies. My friend (the one who invited all but one child) was never left out herself as a child - and that makes a big difference, I think. When you've experienced that pain, you watch for it on the playground.

I like the consensus that it's ok to invite only about a third but never ok to invite all but one/two.

I was always "on the fringes" socially at primary school - I wore odd, worn, out of fashion clothes which didn't help! Luckily for me, there were a couple of very confident girls (you know the kind, captain of netball and confident in their own bodies) who would occasionally step in and stand up for me - so I never got bullied.

Looking back, I'm really impressed with these girls. I was so painfully shy I never thanked them or played with then..... I try to encourage my (fairly) confident son to be nice to the shy ones and not to mind if they don't seem to be responding.....

I read a really good way to describe the "naughty" 4/5/6 year old to your own child - instead of saying he's naughty or denying there's a problem you can say: "he's still learning" or "he's still got to learn about that".

I've just sent out invites to DS's P1/2 class. He wanted to invite all the P1's except 2. We've had to complain to the school about this pair on a lot of occasions due to recurrent threats. They've both told DS they'll beat him up, their mothers will beat me up and one of the little treasures has told DS he's going to torture him. All of the above have been reported to the school who are monitoring it.

I don't have a problem with not inviting them because they've been horrible to DS. If their mums are upset, I'll happily discuss it with them. I don't see why DS should be unhappy at his party because we feel we should invite this pair incase they don't like it.

Totally agree with Romy7.

I would have put my foot down and said, no x, no party AND you will be polite and friendly to X.

Sad. What a crap examply child's mother is setting.

I think there's a reasonable chance the excluded boy/his family won't find out. If DS wasnt invited to an all-class party I dont think I'd know -- who would tell me? DS wouldnt realise unless someone pointedly said to him "You're the only person in Year 3 not invited to So-n-So's party".

DS has been invited to a few all-year parties & I didn't realise they were all-year parties until we got there, so maybe he's not been invited to plenty of all-year or nearly-all-year parties.

Agree it's a horrid thing to do, of course, but it happens. One parent grumbled because they were having an all-year party but really didn't want X child to attend, and were Xing their fingers that X child would not turn up (think she didn't, in the end).

the child is bound to find out, even 5 year olds ....or especially 5 year olds ....can be cruel.
Sorry to say it but your friend sounds immature and spiteful. Poor wee mite.

I still to this day remember being the only girl not invited to a party back when I was about 6 - I went home and sobbed to my Mum that everyone must hate me.

A couple of days later I got an invite, having been told that they'd just "forgotten" to write me one, but I have a feeling my Mum went and had a go.

Even now I'm overly sensitive about being "left out" of things - I posted on here recently about a colleague who had invited everyone in the team to his birthday party, and not me. If a mature 28 year old gets upset about being left out, imagine how a 5 year old must feel

I am amazed at the bit in the op about children not wanting to go to the party and refusing invitations from a kid they didn't like. Was it just the parents saying no? Am sure my 5 year old would say yes to any party, however little he like the birthday boy/girl; he is so obsessed with them.

They haven't had many all class parties at my kids school but have noticed that many mums just invite all the kids of the mum they like rather than asking the child who they actually like.

makes me feel sad, tbh it seems like a form of passive bullying on the part of the mother. my advice would be to show her all these posts and make her think a little more about the impact it may well have on this little lad.

Msappropriate - my school does that, the slightly surreal situation when my son and another boy were not invited to a 5 year old party even though they were the best friends of the birthday boy.

I have had a similar experience to pagwatch.

I now say there are certain people I will not have at my DCs parties. Sorry but the party is for my DC and their pals to enjoy, not for another child to ruin just so they are not left out.

That said, the situation in the OP sounds a bit grim. The worst thing is telling others all about it, I think.

DS2 left out 2 boys in his FS2 class - and several of the girls. I thought this was OK.

Oh dear, poor X - if he is not a disruptive/bad boy, then how awful for him to be the only one left out.
This happened to me when I was 15, such a traumatic event, everyone in my class was invited to this one girl's party except me; and I was publicly told that I wasn't wanted there - I still have no idea why.
But, luckily for me, the "Popular" group in the class thought this was outrageous and insisted that I should be invited too (and considering that I wasn't particularly friends with them, that was even more nice of them). I did go, under the wing of the popular group and it never happened to me again but I remember being close to tears in the classroom as a result of this exclusion.

Thumbwitch, Interesting that you also were "protected" by the "popular" group.
We were obviously lucky that the popular groups in our classes were nice people.

Going back to the original post, my friend isn't immature or spiteful; she's just thoughtless.

Have decided that I will find some opportunity to indirectly mention how tricky it is to arrange parties given that you cannot possible leave out just one person....

My DS1 hasn't been invited to any parties yet. There seems to be one every other week in his class but he has yet to get an invite. So far he's told me one girl's mum didn't send an invite as she didn't know how to spell his name (it's Greek). It's heartbreaking really.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm not "in" with the other mums, because I have 4 other young DCs so they assume I'd drag them all along (I never would) or because DS1 just isn't liked. DS1 joined the school at the end of Feb when we moved to the area, so I'm still playing catch up on all the little cliques that had already formed in Jan.

This is one of the reasons why I never allow ds to invite more than 10 children. If 2/3 of the class are not invited, then no one child will feel singled out. And I let him make a list, though I may suggest additions to it. That way I can be sure that he is not going to end up with somebody he really can't get on with- but if there is such a person, then that person won't be singled out either.

I think its awful to leave one child out like that, imagine if it was your child and you found out? I'd be so sad and angry.

There is a woman at our school who encourages her daughter to be like this, she once marched her up and down the "Line" waiting to go into school and said things like "is THIS child invited to your party? oh no, he isn't...is he" whilst pointing directly at the offending child! and that was the mother, not the birthday girl.

I've disliked her ever since.

MrsSnape: that's terrible terrible behaviour.

I used to be sensitive about being invited to parties. Until, that is, I had to organise my own wedding list eight years ago. What a nightmare! It cured me, hopefully for life, of being sensitive about whether I was invited to something.

But I doubt it would cure me if it was my child it applied to. I haven't had this experience at school, but DS1 has been slowly rejected by his previous best friend and that feels like heartbreak. Thankfully he's less aware of it than I am, I think.

I think it is never never ok to leave 1 or 2 out of a party. If there are one or two children who are so disruptive that you cannot bear the idea of them being there, you should just invite half. Having said that, it's insensitivity rather than intentional cruelty in the majority of cases, I think. Certainly my friend is not a bad person....

I feel small parties are the way to go. Tbh I don't want ds and dd to be invited to 30 parties each every year (who could afford the presents?); I'd rather they just went to their best friends' parties.

To answer the "How would you know?" query... We used to go to a disabled swim session every Saturday as DS2 is disabled, but DS1, 3 & 4 all like swimming too. One week I was surprised to see many mums from their school at the leisure centre as we came out of the changing rooms for our usual post-swim snack. Didn't take long to realise that one of DS4's nursery class was having her birthday party there, to which rest of nursery class were invited. It hurt me more than him, at 4 years old, he didn't really notice, just enjoyed running round the foyer with his friends when they came out of the party. I THINK he wasn't invited because the hostess was only at nursery on the days that I worked, so the mother didn't know me and only ever saw DS4 with his au pair, but who knows?

I have once invited all the boys in a class bar one. The reason was that I and many other parents had previously invited older siblings of the child to parties and the parents never replied either way. We were left paying for a child who never turned up (we had booked a place just in case. ) So I felt it was reasonable to not be out of pocket again under the circumstances. The parents in question have, erm, unusual views on some things and the children are often not allowed to join in with certain things at school....

Oh that's happened to me, cheapskate except I dont have a solid reason why ds not invited. I can even go better
Child running around playground handing out invites to seemingly everyone but DS? Check.
Other parents asking "Is [my ds name} going to [so-n-so's] party?" My answer="No, don't know anything about that." -- Check.
Immediate neighbour (her ds is in same class as my ds) having noisy Halloween party with many children invited, but none of us? Check.

What I dont know is how big these parties were, whether ds was sometimes only one or one of only a few not invited. Seems perfectly possible, but I'll never know,

I could ask DS, but if he's not already noticing being left out, I don't want to encourage him to start noticing it, iyswim.