Reply to Vent - DD's classmate's mother just called to ask me to invite her kid to my kid's bday party

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Reply to "Vent - DD's classmate's mother just called to ask me to invite her kid to my kid's bday party"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For the sake of harmony, my kids' school has an unwritten but very strong birthday party norm in the lower school that if you're inviting more than 3 kids of a particular gender in a particular class, you have to invite them all. That is: you can decide to have a dinner with your three closest friends only, but you can't invite six out of the eight third grade girls, or 10 out of fifteen boys. I actually think this is a pretty good norm (and just enforced it with my DD, who wanted to invite 13 out of 15 girls to her 10th bday party). OP, is it possible that your school also has some such norm, or that the other mom came from a school with such a norm? If so, perhaps she formed the impression, from her daughter, that your daughter had singled hers out for exclusion, and thought you might not have realized....

I agree, it's really awkward, and I would never tell anyone they "should" invite my child to something. But I feel bad for the girl, who may have felt very excluded, rightly or wrongly. Once or twice this has happened to one of my kids -- once, for instance, a parent had booked an end of year party at a place with very strict space limits, and only invited six of the nine girls in my DD's class. My DD didn't get invited because she just didn't know the hostess as well as the other kids... but boy did she feel left out.[/quote]

What kind of school are your kids at where they think they can force you to invite every child in the class to your home for a party?  Has the world gone completely insane?  Is this Alexandria Country Day School by any chance?[/quote]

No, not Alexandria Country Day. The school doesn't "force" anyone to do anything -- it [i]suggests [/i]that parents do this, and in my experience most are extremely happy to do this. I think things obviously change when kids are older, but for a bunch of six or seven year olds, most parents understand that it's cruel to exclude one or two children from a party that everyone else goes to. [/quote]

Good lord.  I guess I won't be hosting birthday parties then.  I'm supposed to pay for food and entertainment for every single kid in my DS's grade when he gets to that point, and open my home to 25+ kids?  When did we get to the point where we teach our children that their feelings should never be hurt?  I got excluded from parties as a kid and managed to survive.

Yet another reason why so many kids are growing up to be helpless these days.  College mental health offices are packed with kids who are falling apart now that mommy and daddy aren't there to manage every aspect of their lives anymore.  Pathetic.[/quote]

Seriously?  You got from PP's post that the school is "forcing" the families to invite all of the kids?  Are you unfamiliar with the concept of an "unwritten" rule?  Seriously, do you not know what that means?  Or did you just not read carefully?  Honestly I'd love to know.  Because on my computer it would appear that it is a general guideline that parents choose to follow in the interest of a harmonious school community and not hurting the feelings of young children.  The fact that you see no value in that is your loss.  But frankly, I'd be more concerned with your absolute stunning lack of reading comprehension.  [/quote]

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