I came across this story about a 10-year-old girl whose classmates all declined to attend her party. (The girl has Sotos Syndrome, which makes forging friendships tough.) Her mother posted a Facebook message about how no one wanted to come to her daughter’s party, and 300 people ended up coming.
So, very feel-good, but many of the commenters were saying how horrible the original classmates were for not coming. Some even went so far as to say that not accepting an invitation, unless you were busy, was rude, which seemed extreme. If you’re not particularly close to someone or don’t consider them a friend, I don’t see that it’s wrong not to go. Does it make a difference what age the party host/guests are?
I saw that on the news this morning and I wondered if the original invitees were just not close friends with the kid and individually decided not to go to the party, unaware that no one else was going. I don’t think it’s mean to decline an invitation. I don’t know how the invitations were made or declined, it could just be an unfortunate circumstance and maybe the girl’s mom should have talked to the parents of her classmates to work something out.
The only way it would be mean is if the kids had said they were going to come and then didn’t. And if any of the kids in her class had ever invited her over to their parties, then I think it’s only fair that they come to hers.
I cringe whenever I read stories like this, and I can’t help but think uncomfortable thoughts. Like, I wonder if all the “friendships” she has now made are genuine, or if they are just for show. Or out of pity. I wonder what’s going to happen next year, and the year after that. I think of all the lonely kids who don’t have a sympathetic syndrome, or the kids who don’t have parents who will solicit friends for them on Facebook.
I feel rally bad for thinking this thought: If the little girl were an unlikeable brat, how would we know? The mother may be making this to be all about her condition, when really the kids have a good reason for shunning her. We will never know the truth because the media never covers both sides of this kind of story. I guess I’m glad about that. I prefer to think she’s innocent and deserving of attention, not some undercover devil child.
So my time is anyone’s for the asking? That kind of shit really pisses me off. Just because I am not busy doesn’t mean I have time to go to anyone’s birthday party. Maybe I just want to sit on the couch all day.
I don’t think any specific person was mean for not going to the party. I don’t think any of them should be criticized for that. It’s probably like **Tripolar **guesses, where no one was close to her, and no one realized that everyone was rejecting the invitations. But one of the kids could have been nice and gone.
I don’t have kids so it’s hard to say what I would do in a parent’s place. I don’t think I would ever force my kid to go to a party they really didn’t want to go to, but I would try to find out why they didn’t want to go. If I heard that it was a case like this, where the kids seem to think that the birthday girl is weird, I would hope I could try to convince my kid that you don’t have to be best friends with her, but you can try to be nice and be her friend.
I hope this works out, and after the party that other kids try to make friends with her, and not feel extra weird about it becoming news that they didn’t go to her party and her becoming ostracized. I could imagine it going either way, so I hope it goes well.
I also wonder if sometimes the parents set up the party knowing darned well that nobody’s going to attend, and then invite the town and the TV stations too. :dubious:
p.s. I was that kid who on many occasions was the only child in the class who wasn’t invited to a birthday party. I was told by both my parents and the teachers that there’s a rule that kids can invite everybody except for one person, and if I was that one person, that’s just the way it was. It was quite a shock to me to find out that this isn’t true.
It strikes me as kind of odd that the mother isn’t aware that the girl has no friends at school. At ten, aren’t parents involved in the social activities, at least as far as being the driver or hosting playmates at their home? Not trying to criticize the mom; it sounds like she does the best she can, it just seems weird that she’d invite all these children to a party, despite never have met or heard of them.
To answer the OP’s question, I don’t think it’s mean not to attend, per se. If it was an orchestrated shunning, or if the invitation was turned down in a cruel way, then hell yes.
I don’t really see what good 300 strangers who were goaded into it is going to do, but I guess if it made her feel better for the moment that’s a good thing.
On a couple of occasions my kids have been the only people to show up at other kids parties. I felt bad for the kid since no one came but I also felt bad for the parents because it’s tough to watch your kids get shunned by their peers to that degree (even if its just a perception and not purposeful shunning). Even if it wasn’t a coordinated no-show by the other kids it doesn’t change the fact that there wasn’t any kids there. It’s embarrassing for the kid.
Bottom Line:
It’s not rude to not go to a birthday party.
I can understand why someones feelings could be hurt by no one coming.
Doesn’t mean it’s anyones fault. Sometimes people just feel the way they feel.
Without looking into this particular case, it’s not a good idea to ask “classmates” to a party. Sometimes not everybody is invited–& they feel left out. Her friends should have been invited, outside of the school environment.
When my son was between 4-6, we generally invited everyone in his class to birthday parties. But long before he reached 10, we only invited the few kids who were particularly close friends of his. If we invited all 23 of his classmates now (he’s in 5th grade), most of them wouldn’t come.
Did the parents KNOW the girl had no real friends at school? If not, they should have known, and they should have had more sense than to invite a whole bunch of kids they knew probably wouldn’t show up.
I think Bridget meant that the kids should have been invited by a means other than handing out invitations at school, which I presume was what was done.
Most schools prohibit that for all the reasons we’ve mentioned in this thread.
I think we all know this, but lots of special-needs parents are in huge denial about what’s going on with their children. Lots of parents of “normal” kids are too.
According to this, they seem to have known that she didn’t have any actual friends , although the father says kids are friendly to her, so it doesn’t seem like she’s picked on. I don’t know what the parents were thinking.
You can usually lure a lot of kids to events that promise games, cake and pizza. If the other kids were friendly to the girl, I can understand why the parents did what they did. A couple of years earlier, several kids probably would have come, because they weren’t quite at the age to be so discriminating with their time.
It may not have mean of them to not go, but given the girl’s situation, it would have been nice of them to go. I’m sure the girl’s parents were hoping some of the kids woukd feel that way too.
If it were my child who was invited, I would have strongly encouraged her to go, needing a very good reason to not go. You can be sincerely friendly and kind to someone without being close friends and that’s not a bad thing to start learning.
