No invite - heartbroken for son

[TaupePanda]

I'm gutted for my son; it seems he is the only boy in his year 1 class not invited to a party for two other kids. Even a kid that is generally acknowledged as not very nice seems to have been invited.

My DS6 is upset - he definitely thinks of these kids as his friends and has invited them to his party. They are all talking about this other party (that he isn't invited to) and he is super confused as to why he isn't invited. He is pretty rule driven so the concept of reciprocation is embedded - if you give someone an invite, they invite you back.

He is so sweet and fun but he struggles with verbal communication, and he dribbles and is quite anxious about a lot of things. So, I do get it. But I am just so sad this is yet another party he is excluded from. He is already lacking on confidence and cries about being lonely at school, though he tries like a little trooper. This has really knocked him again.

I have said not all kids go to all parties and that not everyone can afford big parties - sometimes choices have to be made. But in that insightful way that kids sometimes have he asked: why was I not the choice. I just can't answer that - I obviously feel he deserves to be.

No point to this really but I don't know any other parents with ND kids so not a lot of people around me understand the secondary sadness you feel for you kid when this sort of thing happens. I just wanted to get it off my chest I suppose.

I used to call this “death by a thousand paper cuts”. It’s quite difficult to not let it get you down. I went with “well we’re all going to XXXX so we couldn’t have gone anyway” and those were the days we went to the GPs/cousins/zoo/etc. We took photos and bought rubbers and badges and people always used to say “you do so much with your kids, I don’t know how you have the energy/££s”. Sometimes I’ll find a trophy brought back from those days (ds is adult now) and I’ll get a little echo sadness, but ds remembers the trips and the fun and it was well done.
You can make something beautiful out of this. Just push through.

Oh I’m sorry. It’s so bloody painful (I know exactly how you feel) but I do sometimes think the kids are actually more resilient than us and it’s easy to feel down for days when they’ve long since forgotten. Second the idea of doing something fun together on that day, I do the same thing as @Ohthatsabitshit and will throw everything I can at trying to make it up to him but still feel a bit broken by it, I do think parents sometimes let their kids have to much agency, id never let my son exclude one child from a party, but it says everything about them and nothing about your lovely boy,