excluding just the classmate with special needs from party invitations is NOT ok.

[lingle]

Kind of amazing that this needs to be said really isn't it?

But have a look on the special needs board and you'll see regular threads popping up from parents whose children are routinely the only one - or the only girl/boy - excluded from invitations.

It doesn't matter if you think the child wouldn't enjoy it or couldn't access it - let the parent judge that - send the invitation anyway. If the child has behavioural problems and the invitation is accepted, I think you should ask the parent to stay at the party.

camaleon no I would never exclude a SN child but sometimes the parents' attitude doesn't always help their own child. In fact in ds's case he chose to invite the SN child when he had to limit his choice to half of his class. It was an extra burden for me to deal with that I could have done without (single parent so no one else to share the party managing stuff with). I should stress that it would not have been a burden if the parent had bothered to stay or at least given me contact details.

At my DD's school the teacher made it very clear that she will not distribute party invites at school if there is not one for every single child in the class.

She rightly said that it is too upsetting for a young child to see party invites going around and they don't get one.

That just sums it up really.

Mollie
shocking I know , but some parents of children with SN are actually just shit parents.
Of course children with SN can be more tiring or challenging etc. But , just as children with SN are perfectly capeable of being little shits, so parents of children with SN are capeable of being lazy , useless fuckers.

Don't feel bad about admitting that , whilst you would like to invite this child who happens to have SN, her useless mother makes that hard.

I don't think she is a bad parent but I do think that she doesn't give as much thought as she might to the difficulties her child has in social situations. I don't think he actually gets a choice about being left either. I always discuss beforehand with ds on whether he is happy to be left or wants me to stay.

The party dump and run was weird as all but one other parent stayed (and I knew about that in advance). The activity was slightly out of the norm for 6 yr olds so the parents were intrigued to see how it would work. She had a go at me when she collected as she had left her dc with a bag (we had moved to another location for the food and left the bag). She didn't bother to tell anyone that her dc had a bag so I didn't know about it. Fortunately it was where she had left it.

Having said that ds does play with this child and goes out of his way to help them. I think that is probably because ds likes younger children and this child acts younger than their years.

Fair enough..

My use of language was lazy. i was just trying to suggest that we (parents of kids with SN) are not always striving affecdtionately to support our child in every single way. Sometimes we just slope off for a coffee like other lazy fuckers everyone else does sometimes.
Thats all

fast forward to secondary. my dd has got into whole heaps of trouble befriending a sn girl in her school. the girl only does half days,but i am shocked at the nastiness!

i'm not talking parties as such,just cinema trips etc at this age (14) but the poor sn girl is never included. her mum has said she will drop at cinema and wait outside with a coffee,then take her home. but the other girls have now shunned my dd for inviting her

so what now?? its always been hard. dd gets bullied for talking to this girl and even for partnering her in PE. nobody will say it to the girls face as they would be in trouble,but to my dd (non sn) they are nasty!

thank god dd is having none of it,but i do worry

ILT,
Your message makes me very sad. I have no words really. It seems that your dd is a reasonable, sound, good person and I guess she will not be running to do what all the others do for the sake of it either. Things like smoking, alcohol or whatever collective stupidity leads to. It must be hard, because the whole situation you are explaining is really hard, but I think the other mothers have much more to worry about than you.

It is awful to exclude one or two regardless of SN. My dd1 when at nursery was left out of a party where all the nursery went. She was only 4 and not too upset but I was. The mum handed all the invites to the other mums and walked straight past me. I felt a little humiliated at the time but soon got over it.

DD's first proper party we invited the whole class

DS (asd) we also invited the whole class, a mixture of down's, asd, cerbral palsy and a host of other disabilities. There was 8 plus DD's few friends and a couple of family and we went to a local soft play. They all had loads of fun and the other mum's couldn't believe how brave I was inviting a group of SN kids to a party.

I invited a child who is apallingly badly behaved and apparently is SN (as is his brother - nothing to do with the way they are brought up )
My DD cried and begged for him not to come to her 5th party at a bouncy castle, but I still invited him.His mum buggered off and I had to spend the whole party chasing after him and physically restraining him from hurting other children.

yes, or mumsnet could have them up on the main boards somewhere.

My ds has behavioural issues and can be a handful, but he is also popular in his class and has lots of friends. Last year (birthday in July) we invited the whole class and all but 3 came along, since then he has only been invited to 1 party and he often asks me why people were happy to come to his party but don't invite him to theirs . It does hurt them, especially as he sees hiw cousins going off to parties almost every weekend. For his birthday this year we are just going to invite a small group of 5 or 6 friends.

My Son has ASD, and I can honestly say I don't think he has ever been excluded from any invites.. but then again I would never leave him at a party alone, and I tihnk people know that.. I have also offered to help like at village hall parties, kind of makes it easier and I'm not standing there like a spare part.
He is treat like royalty at school, I haven't heard anything negative at all, but then I know this is not always the case.. and makes me anxious as we are moving out of area and he is changing schools in Sept...

Oh FFS. How about the rule is that the child who is having the party gets to choose who comes to the party, and the mums butt out of making it a political issue.

Actually my experince is that the child having the party often makes shit decisions or unrealistic choices - Like all the children when you only have a few spaces, or the child that bullies then .

And equally the child with SN is often not being excluded by the birthday child but by their parents.

It isn't politics. It is empathy, manners and sense.
FFS

benbenandme - yes, and worse as my college friend has found with her sn ds when they all accepted the invitation to his b'day party and then made last minute excuses on the day for not coming including "sorry, dd just doesn't want to" . He's also really sad and uncomprehending why his younger brother is at parties several times a term and he is never invited to any parties himself - he doesn't really get the social situation thing. It's made me think that when we get to the school stage, it's not only whether or not the whole class is invited but that sometimes it would be good for my dcs to think of inviting one or two who struggle to make friends and hopefully teach them to consider others' feelings rather than just their own. Or is that terribly naive? Of course, maybe mine will be the ones without the invitations ...

IT is silly not to invite a child cos they have SN.
just ask the parent to stay........no biggie

maryz - two things for you to think about...

1. As a parent, how on earth do I access the schools' SN information in order to ascertain which children I should be inviting to my own childrens' parties?

2. My DTDs are pre-school age. They have been at nursery for a year and a half. They have been invited to two parties by children from nursery. Of those, they went to one and had a lovely time, the other, we were on holiday for. They have never ever mentioned a party and asked why they haven't been invited. My niece, on the other hand, is the same age, and is at a party practically every other weekend. I have not decided that this is because the children at my girls' nursery have no manners or social skills, or that my children are social pariahs. IMHO, parents spend more time worrying about this sort of thing than the children, which is bonkers.

For my DTD's 4th birthday party, last week, I asked them who they would like to invite from nursery. They named four children, who I duly invited, along with their friends from twins group (whose mothers I know) and their cousins. I have no idea whether any of the children from nursery have SN. I wouldn't even think to ask, to be honest. They are children that my children play with, and therefore they were invited to the party. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only thing which needs to be taken into account when issuing party invitations.

You may have gathered that I am not the sort of mother to ever do a "whole class" party, so perhaps this will never apply to me.

My dc2 is on the spectrum and I hope I'm as lucky with the parents of his class as I am with parents of dc1's class.

They all follow the rules as set out by somebody earlier. eg, all of the class, or all of the boys, or all of the girls, or half of the boys or half of the girls or half of the class.

Teachers at my school won't distribute the invites and I think that's for the best, I don't care if it's a pita for the parents once a year. It saves a lot of hurt feelings.