Halloween dis-invitation

[Anonymous]

Sorry OP. But *do not* catastrophize. There is nothing wrong with your kid. There is possibly something wrong with those other kids, but it hard to know for sure so let it go. Your kid will find his tribe eventually. These are growing pains.

Also, don’t get over-anxious for next year. Let your kid figure it out. I love that he had the confidence to go alone - let him do that again if it doesn’t work out with friends! Or let him stay home, watch a movie, hand out candy. Halloween is not some amazing bucket list thing. It’s a dumb holiday.

[Anonymous]

OP, DD made plans with a friend for Halloween and her friend canceled on her yesterday to go trick-or-treating with someone else. There was no apology and no acknowledgement that my daughter would be left without any plans. Fortunately, DD reached out to some other kids and was able to join up with them. This is not the first time the other friend has canceled on DD. I told DD not to make any plans with her in the future because she is unreliable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take it you're not friends with the moms on your street and that's why they excluded him?

This OP— it’s not the kids, it’s the jerk moms who are trying to live their kids’ lives for them. These same women will be appearing in their sons’ homecoming pictures in a few years—standing between their son and his date.

Agree with this and I could see how this happens and it’s not the kid’s fault:

They made plans at school to go in group.

Kid 1 told his mom hey I’m going with X 6 kids from school.

Mom said no we’re going to Aiden’s mom’s house for a pre Halloween party and she only invited so many kids.

This got relayed to your son as being disinvited when it was really a parent social engineering.

In middle school?! I don't know the same people you know. My kids figured out their own plans and I dropped them off without even getting out of the car.

Yeah, you clearly don’t live in a neighborhood filled with kids and busybody moms. Kids DO make they own plans and the mom squad nixes them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry OP. But *do not* catastrophize. There is nothing wrong with your kid. There is possibly something wrong with those other kids, but it hard to know for sure so let it go. Your kid will find his tribe eventually. These are growing pains.

Also, don’t get over-anxious for next year. Let your kid figure it out. I love that he had the confidence to go alone - let him do that again if it doesn’t work out with friends! Or let him stay home, watch a movie, hand out candy. Halloween is not some amazing bucket list thing. It’s a dumb holiday.

This is really good take.
It's hard not to take it personally and want to protect kids from all life's unfairness.
But this too is part of growing up. Making mistakes, hurting feelings and getting feelings hurt.
It's great that your kid still went out and hopefully had a great time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here

It's hard to be a friendly, grown up when the group of 4 kids who said mine couldn't go with them come to the door to trick or treat together.

They were very quiet...

Mine was out trick or treating on his own.

That really sucks. Also super jerky for the boys to do that. I’m sorry OP.

[Anonymous]

Ugh. Kids this age can be so casually cruel that it makes me despair for humanity. I’m sorry OP.

[Anonymous]

OP here
I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone tonight. Your caring support, helpful suggestions and understanding has been amazing and greatly appreciated!

Yes, disappointments are part of life and these things are for sure for kids to work out. I'm glad we're going to have a busy few days with sports and other plans to give space to move on. I mostly just hope he can communicate and get support when clearly upset.

DS handed out candy to the big barrage of early little kids who came by, then went out and came home tired with a huge candy haul (and so sweaty bc it was so warm out).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here
I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone tonight. Your caring support, helpful suggestions and understanding has been amazing and greatly appreciated!

Yes, disappointments are part of life and these things are for sure for kids to work out. I'm glad we're going to have a busy few days with sports and other plans to give space to move on. I mostly just hope he can communicate and get support when clearly upset.

DS handed out candy to the big barrage of early little kids who came by, then went out and came home tired with a huge candy haul (and so sweaty bc it was so warm out).

When a “single rider” comes to our door, we do a HUGE handful of candy. Sure they may hit a lot of houses, but they also may only have nerve or interest to go to a few on their own so we try to help make it a big haul to look at when they get home.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes tweens / young teens are not thinking of all the possibly consequences. They have a thought and go with it. One thing you can do is to teach your son to not respond that its fine if it isn't. So when the friend disinvites him, he can respond to friend with someting along the lines of that sucks, now I have no one to go with or time to make other plans (but in MS appropriate language). Sometimes just giving the other kid more information to work with in the moment can lead to them realizing the consequences and then making a different decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take it you're not friends with the moms on your street and that's why they excluded him?

Oh please, that's ridiculous.

Really? Even in middle school, neighborhood moms are still making the plans for things like Halloween parties. If OP isn't friends with them, they're not going to invite her & her kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I’ve just make my own plan for my 3 kids each year. We leave our neighborhood and go to my parents’ more festive and full of kids neighborhood. My kids don’t feel pressure to make their own plans because they know we already have plans if they don’t have one. So far they have preferred to stick together on Halloween.

This only works if you have more than one child. For those of us with just the one, your advice is not useful.

He can go by himself. We had plenty of single kids tonight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here,

I know tons of the parents in elementary school. But it seems like a totally different game once you get to middle school and three to four different elementary schools come together. I don't know the parents of the kid having the gathering prior to trick or treating tonight. It's not a block party or a class party. It's just a handful of friends at his house. Apparently it is exactly the kids that walk to school together minus my DS.

Anyway, I care less about who to blame and more about how I help my kid so he's not stuffing down his feelings. Seems like boys have a hard time articulating how they're feeling in words.

In the meantime I'm trying to make it fun, handing out candy, watching a movie and he still wants to go out trick or treating but on his own (likely with Dad trailing way behind).

You said it was people on your street that he walks to school with every day. They didn't go to ES together? You don't know your own neighbors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why I’ve just make my own plan for my 3 kids each year. We leave our neighborhood and go to my parents’ more festive and full of kids neighborhood. My kids don’t feel pressure to make their own plans because they know we already have plans if they don’t have one. So far they have preferred to stick together on Halloween.

are they over 13 years old though?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I’ve just make my own plan for my 3 kids each year. We leave our neighborhood and go to my parents’ more festive and full of kids neighborhood. My kids don’t feel pressure to make their own plans because they know we already have plans if they don’t have one. So far they have preferred to stick together on Halloween.

are they over 13 years old though?

1 is the others aren’t. My parents live in an awesome neighborhood and we don’t. Just go somewhere else if its an issue or make alternates plans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here
I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone tonight. Your caring support, helpful suggestions and understanding has been amazing and greatly appreciated!

Yes, disappointments are part of life and these things are for sure for kids to work out. I'm glad we're going to have a busy few days with sports and other plans to give space to move on. I mostly just hope he can communicate and get support when clearly upset.

DS handed out candy to the big barrage of early little kids who came by, then went out and came home tired with a huge candy haul (and so sweaty bc it was so warm out).

When a “single rider” comes to our door, we do a HUGE handful of candy. Sure they may hit a lot of houses, but they also may only have nerve or interest to go to a few on their own so we try to help make it a big haul to look at when they get home.

This happened to my daughter one year at about age 9. Her siblings had stopped but she wanted to keep going, so I went with her. Multiple houses commented that she was solo and then gave her a huge handful or two of candy.