When to stop inviting all girls in class or kids of parent friends?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:At no age is it okay to invite all the girls in your class but two. If you end up at a tiny high school with 15 girls in your grade, it would not be okay to invite 13 of them to your 18th birthday.

This. We stopped inviting all the girls on class by then, but we were inviting less than half. We stopped inviting kids of my friends well before 9. That was really just preschool.

The OP has a really weird fixation on wanting to control who her daughter invites on one hand- like, the forcing her to invite a girl who was outwardly mean to her but whose mother the OP wants to remain on good terms with for social heirarchy reasons, when that girl isn't even in her class. And the trying to force her to invite the children of the OP and OP's DH's friends even when her daughter pushes back. That stuff is weird. And then on the flip side, she throws up her hands and says "but she never really plays with those girls, and the other girls in class also left them out, so, it seems like it's the normal thing to do, to leave out those 2 girls!" about her classmates. It seems like OP only cares about hurting the feelings of important adult friends of hers, and doesn't care in the slightest about hurting the feelings of children whose parents she doesn't know.

I actually now agree with my daughter and will let her invite who she wants on her birthday. I would not want people I have zero relationship with at my birthday either.

Making my son invite those boys in fifth and sixth grade did not make them friends. They didn’t talk then and still don’t talk now. I actually met the mom of one of those boys I forced my son to invite. They didn’t come to the party. The mom didn’t know who my son was. I didn’t recognize the mom because I never met her before. I only recognized her son’s name because my son didn’t want to invite him in sixth grade and I forced him. I don’t know why I made it such a big deal to invite him, the same way I’m trying to force my daughter to invite these two girls.

If you can’t grasp the concept of “whole class, vs just closest friends, are both fine” and “whole class except for 1 or 2 girls my daughter says never get invited to anything anyways, is NOT fine” then you are beyond help.

I have already said this but I made my son always invite the boys until sixth. I was always busy juggling my three kids and their many activities and our whole family social plans that I didn’t take a tally of who was invited from which class when my kids went to parties.

I have also said that the party didn’t make the kids be friends. Much more than a birthday party invitation, on everyday hangouts, kids on the periphery often feel left out. I don’t think the kid who isn’t even in the friend group at all who isn’t friends at all would feel bad.

I am juggling elementary along with teenagers. Homecoming was a whole other thing. We were the homecoming get ready house. Moms I knew from elementary were trying to get the kids together for homecoming. Halloween and trick or treating was a big deal last year in middle school where my son was invited and others were not.

It’s not about you it’s about the 2 girls in her class who are being excluded by your daughter. They will know they were excluded. It doesn’t matter what their moms know or don’t know. It’s not about you and whatever social juggling you and other parents are doing for their kids. It’s truly about one thing only which is “don’t invite all the girls in the class except 2”.

The rest is just random stuff you’re repeating about your sons stuff from years ago that’s not relevant

It is not random. In saying it is worse for a kid who is friends and to be not invited than to not be invited when you are not friends at all.

It is also not socially acceptable to, under any circumstances at all, invite almost all of the kids from a class or an activity and exclude 1 or 2. That's the only constant here. The rest is just noise. But you don't care you're just doing to do what you want which is exclude those 2 girls and convince yourself that those two 9 year old girls don't care that they haven't been invited to a single party this year by any of the girls in your daughter's class and your daughter is just doing what everyone else is doing. But your daughter is doing it worse, because the other girls followed the rule of inviting half of the girls only it sounds like.

She wants to invite 7 kids out of a class of 22.

You can call it noise. It was a big deal for an actual friend group when not everyone gets invited to a Halloween party. Wait until your kid is a tween/teen in middle or high school.

You're changing things to make it sound better. No one cares about the boys in the class. There are 10 girls, including yours, so "inviting 7" means the party is 8 of the girls in the class and specifically excluding only 2, which clearly breaks the well established norm of inviting half or less if you're not inviting everyone. And again, no one cares about your middle schooler's halloween party that he got invited to, which is not relevant at all to your third grader's birthday party that you are hosting. I am really baffled why you keep mentioning it.

[Anonymous]

Pity invites know they are pity invites and it doesn’t make them feel better. These people are just virtue signaling about being inclusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pity invites know they are pity invites and it doesn’t make them feel better. These people are just virtue signaling about being inclusive.

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. You still can’t exclude just 1 or 2 kids out of 10, especially for no good reason other than “meh my kid says they don’t really play together”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pity invites know they are pity invites and it doesn’t make them feel better. These people are just virtue signaling about being inclusive.

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. You still can’t exclude just 1 or 2 kids out of 10, especially for no good reason other than “meh my kid says they don’t really play together”.

Sure you can. Why would someone who doesn’t play with you expect to be invited to your party? Why would you expect to be invited to theirs? My neighbors have parties that I’m not always invited to. I have parties that they aren’t always invited to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pity invites know they are pity invites and it doesn’t make them feel better. These people are just virtue signaling about being inclusive.

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. You still can’t exclude just 1 or 2 kids out of 10, especially for no good reason other than “meh my kid says they don’t really play together”.

Sure you can. Why would someone who doesn’t play with you expect to be invited to your party? Why would you expect to be invited to theirs? My neighbors have parties that I’m not always invited to. I have parties that they aren’t always invited to.

OP here. I was just at my kid’s school. Kids sit in mixed groups of boys and girls. The girls aren’t just one big group. Many girls talk to the boys. I was waaaaay overthinking this whole invite all the girls nonsense.

She just got invited to another two parties. Every party has around 10-15 kids and no one is inviting all the girls or the whole class.

[Anonymous]

This is crazy. The consensus here is that you should exclude more actual friends in order to avoid excluding non friends? The actual friends are the ones more likely to hear about the party and more likely to be hurt by being excluded. Whoever makes these “rules” is nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is crazy. The consensus here is that you should exclude more actual friends in order to avoid excluding non friends? The actual friends are the ones more likely to hear about the party and more likely to be hurt by being excluded. Whoever makes these “rules” is nuts.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

I think stop doing all-class parties in around third grade (turning 8 or 9). They can be expensive, and to be honest, even if the whole class was invited an 8-year-old would only be playing with his or her friends. BUT I would ask your DD and see how she feels. If she wants to just invite her friends, I would say do that.