I was reading a thread elsewhere where this girl (6 years old) was absolutely distrought about being the only one in her class not invited to a birthday party. Evidently this six year old accused her mother of not buying her nice enough clothes so she didn’t get asked.
Now I’m not a parent, so I’ve never had to deal with this, and I only went to a few birthday parties and those were given by the kids on my block. And those kids weren’t even in my class (we would have at least three groups per grade, like three classes of kids in the 2nd grade), so I never really came across the issue or I didn’t care.
Now most parents felt the mother of this girl should talk to the mother of the child having the birthday party. Some felt that since the child distributed the invitations at school she might have lost one.
My question is how as a parent would you handle this? I guess it would also matter what age your kid is. Certainly while I could see the mother of a six year old girl calling the mother of another six year old, I couldn’t imagine this being done for a teen ager.
Bloody hell - it’s only a party. I’d just let it go. The last thing I would dream of doing is charge up to the parent of the other child and demand an explanation.
Chances are good that not “every other” child was invited. Six year olds, in my experience, tend to exaggerate “Everyone else …” The number of conversations I’ve had with my kids that start with “Everyone else…” And end with me saying “if everyone else jumped off a bridge…”
If “every other” child was invited, the person to talk to is the teacher - “what’s up with my daughter, is she not making friends?”
The last thing to do is to call the parent. That’s frankly rude.
And, on the day of the party, we’d go do something fun - the two of us. Or if she had another friend who wasn’t invited, we’d have a sleepover - even if I had to call a friend who didn’t go to her school to get one.
I wouldn’t call the parent, but I would investigate and find out the rules regarding invitations at school.
The rules at my kids elementary school required that invitations passed through the classroom include everyone, or all the boys, or all the girls. Parents or kids who want to have a more selective party should mail the invitiations.
My experience has been that kids in the lower elementary grades weren’t too terribly selective about who attended parties and generally liked most kids in the classroom. I suppose it may not be that way everywhere.
If my child was the only one not invited, and it was a violation of the stated invitation rules, I would let the teacher know and also inquire if there were any social problems with my child.
Fortunately this never happened to me as a kid, but it did happen to one of the other girls in my class. This would have been oh, around fifth grade or so. One of the “popular” girls was having a birthday party, and invited all the girls except this one just because she didn’t like her. I was invited.
My mom found out about it ahead of time, and didn’t let me go to the party either, and told the hosting mother why. Don’t know if it sunk into her brain what an awful thing it was to let her daughter do, but hey, at least she made the effort. One of the other girls’ mothers followed my Mom’s lead and kept her daughter home, too.
At the time I was embarrassed and angry at my Mom. Now, I think it was totally awesome. I don’t know if I ever told her that…I’ll be making a phone call tomorrow!
I’m a Mom myself, now, although my daughter’s too young to face a situation like that yet. Just the thought of her being snubbed that way makes my heart hurt. I honestly don’t know how I’d handle it–it would just depend on the specific situation. I’m a big advocate for letting kids fight their own battles, though.
Not to mention that a parent complaining and said exclusionary little girl being forced to invite her is highly likely to have the opposite effect. I can just see the poor kid who didn’t get invited being made fun of for “running to mommy,” or scorned at the party and have no fun anyway.
But I do support silently/obliquely finding out whether “every other kid” was really invited. I remember being that age, “every other kid” covered just about anything from “just Samantha” to “every man, woman, and child in the free world.”
I just re-read the OP and realised this is a hypothetical, and not actually a situation happening to any Doper.
so
I will now change my answer on the appropriate way to procede by advocating the burning down of the offending little girl’s house and giving Roman Polanski an invitation to the party, along with a 55 gallon drum of bacon grease, a fistfull of Czechoslovakian valium and a case of Inglenook wildeberry froot coolers…
Beaver joins a club that won’t take his best friend Larry Mondello.
So Mrs Mondello tells Larry, “Why I’ll just call the mother of that young boy and make him let you in the club.” (Larry’s mum was referring to the guy who organized the club that took Beaver and not Larry)
Larry says “Don’t do that, then they’ll know I want to join their club.”
Mrs Mondello replies “But don’t you?”
To wit Larry says “Of course I do but I don’t want them to know I want to.”
Mrs Mondello now resigned to letting her son deal with his own problem says “Well Larry, when you grow up and become president of a big company all those boys will be very sorry.”
Larry says “Of course they will, but that don’t help me now”
Most likely an exageration and if not then the parent should go down to the packing supply store and buy bubble wrap to insulate the child from the world.
Honestly, if I knew my child didn’t get invited because she insulted the other child then DUH . Sounds like a teaching moment to me. Either mommy can fix it or the child can learn to treat people nicer.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the kid who wasn’t invited might have been an obnoxius little brat?
When I was at junior school we had a kid who used to tell tales,tell lies and steal off of the rest of us,but he was genuinlly surprised and upset when he wasn’t invited to another kids Bon Fire night party.
I dont think it would have made any difference if his parents had remonstrated with the party holders parents as they no doubt didn’t want everything not nailed down stolen and everything that was vandalised or broken.
It did, which is why if there is truth to the “everyone,” I’d talk to the teacher.
BTW, I think kids SHOULD be permitted to pass out birthday invites in school, but it should be handled with discretion. Our kids have “mailboxes” that the teacher puts their homework in and kids can put invites in. One of the things about elementary school that bugs me is the teacher’s insistance that your classmates are your “friends.” Not everyone is your friend, not everyone needs to be your friend, and you don’t need to be everyone’s friend. You need to treat others respectfully and civilly. But that doesn’t mean your mother needs to have 25 kids at her house for your birthday party.
I’m really astonished that at any level below high school, the whole class would have to be invited as policy, or that parents would expect that.
When my mom held birthday parties*, the rule was always “1 child per year of age”. In other words, if you turned 6, you could invite 6 children all together, and of course those would be your friends, kids you liked, not simply kids who happened to sit in class with you.
Invitations would be passed out in class, because it was easiest seeing the kids then, but everybody only invited their close friends, so you knew ahead that you didn’t belong to that circle and therefore didn’t expect to be invited to their party.
Children should learn to treat all people nice with respect and basic good manners, but that you can’t control your emotions to like everybody, and that not everybody will have dozens and scores of friends.
I don’t think the mother of an un-invited kid should call the other kid’s parents. I don’t think parents should get involved directly, because it will only embarrass the children and cause resentment. Well-meaning parents trying to force children to accept outsiders in 9 times out of 10 don’t achieve anything. The only thing parents can do is have a talk with the child - not at the child - and try make them understand how lonely an outsider feels and that a certain level of including him is nice.
What the mother should do is contact the teacher if her child is generally excluded in class, what the teacher is doing about this. And talk directly to her child, how she feels, how she acts in class (as others have said, she might be insufferable instead of a victim, too) and maybe give her some tips.
She was a bit of an exception, because for many mothers, a birthday party was too much stress. Some mothers invited the kids to ready-made parties at McD or a swimming pool or similar, some didn’t have parties.
