To me, in this situation, the answer is easy. You call the mom and say "DS told me he and Johnny would like to play together outside of school. Any chance Johnny can come over on Saturday?" Then maybe the other parent will say "Oh, actually we were hoping to have DS over here. I was planning on calling tomorrow.", or maybe they'll say "Sorry, we have plans" or maybe Johnny will end up at your house.

I would CONTACT that parent and say "John invited Alex over for a play date. I'm sure it's just kids talking, but it sounds like a great idea! Where could we meet so the kids can play?" I wouldn't ignore the fact that John and Alex want to play with each other outside of school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have traditionally been the first to cry outrage when kids are excluded from parties. However, this year as my kids rise in elementary school it's more and more difficult to deal with
kids who are out of bounds all the time. Both my kids (I have twins who are now in second grade) have kids in their classes who hit, kick, swear at the teacher, tell sports coaches "make me!" when asked to do things, etc.
And this is in upper NW DC. These are kids from "good families".
I assume that some of these behaviors arise out of special needs. In some cases the parents are very involved and in others they are not.
I am guilty of excluding these kids from my kids' parties. I excluded the second grader who taught my kid the word "bitch". I excluded another child who defies me every single time I've had the kid over to my house.
He has told me repeatedly "no, I don't have to listen to you".
If your child is being repeatedly excluded, perhaps its time to take a long, hard look at their behavior.

I'm not sure what motivates people to post all about poorly-behaved children they know in this thread, and explain why they exclude them. *OP's child does not have issues with birthday parties*. Is it just open season on SN kids now and any thread is a chance to pile on?

Not the PP you quoted, but where does OP say this?

Did you read the thread? OP posted that her DS is always well-behaved at birthday parties.

I did read the thread, but don't see that quote from the OP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This misrepresents the situation here. This isn't a mom just calling/emailing out of the blue -- this is the result of a child having been told by the birthday girl that he is invited.

Yeah, it's distasteful -- for everyone. But guess what, sometimes adults have to step up and be adults and deal with situations kids create. If you don't want to get the occasional call about a situation your kid created, don't have kids.

The problem is, it just isn't reasonable to call under these circumstances. A boy in my son's class (aged 6) told my son that he should come over to his house to play on Saturday. But I know that a 6 year old doesn't have authority to issue invitations. If the parents were willing to invite DS over, they would contact me. The boy's statement isn't a reasonable basis for me to call and ask his mother if my son is invited to come over on Saturday.

This.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This misrepresents the situation here. This isn't a mom just calling/emailing out of the blue -- this is the result of a child having been told by the birthday girl that he is invited.

Yeah, it's distasteful -- for everyone. But guess what, sometimes adults have to step up and be adults and deal with situations kids create. If you don't want to get the occasional call about a situation your kid created, don't have kids.

The problem is, it just isn't reasonable to call under these circumstances. A boy in my son's class (aged 6) told my son that he should come over to his house to play on Saturday. But I know that a 6 year old doesn't have authority to issue invitations. If the parents were willing to invite DS over, they would contact me. The boy's statement isn't a reasonable basis for me to call and ask his mother if my son is invited to come over on Saturday.

Not quite. If my son came home and said John invited him over, I would CONTACT that parent and say "John invited Alex over for a play date. I'm sure it's just kids talking, but it sounds like a great idea! Where could we meet so the kids can play?" I wouldn't ignore the fact that John and Alex want to play with each other outside of school.

Anonymous wrote:

This misrepresents the situation here. This isn't a mom just calling/emailing out of the blue -- this is the result of a child having been told by the birthday girl that he is invited.

Yeah, it's distasteful -- for everyone. But guess what, sometimes adults have to step up and be adults and deal with situations kids create. If you don't want to get the occasional call about a situation your kid created, don't have kids.

The problem is, it just isn't reasonable to call under these circumstances. A boy in my son's class (aged 6) told my son that he should come over to his house to play on Saturday. But I know that a 6 year old doesn't have authority to issue invitations. If the parents were willing to invite DS over, they would contact me. The boy's statement isn't a reasonable basis for me to call and ask his mother if my son is invited to come over on Saturday.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have traditionally been the first to cry outrage when kids are excluded from parties. However, this year as my kids rise in elementary school it's more and more difficult to deal with
kids who are out of bounds all the time. Both my kids (I have twins who are now in second grade) have kids in their classes who hit, kick, swear at the teacher, tell sports coaches "make me!" when asked to do things, etc.
And this is in upper NW DC. These are kids from "good families".
I assume that some of these behaviors arise out of special needs. In some cases the parents are very involved and in others they are not.
I am guilty of excluding these kids from my kids' parties. I excluded the second grader who taught my kid the word "bitch". I excluded another child who defies me every single time I've had the kid over to my house.
He has told me repeatedly "no, I don't have to listen to you".
If your child is being repeatedly excluded, perhaps its time to take a long, hard look at their behavior.

I'm not sure what motivates people to post all about poorly-behaved children they know in this thread, and explain why they exclude them. *OP's child does not have issues with birthday parties*. Is it just open season on SN kids now and any thread is a chance to pile on?

Not the PP you quoted, but where does OP say this?

Did you read the thread? OP posted that her DS is always well-behaved at birthday parties.

Anonymous wrote:

This misrepresents the situation here. This isn't a mom just calling/emailing out of the blue -- this is the result of a child having been told by the birthday girl that he is invited.

Yeah, it's distasteful -- for everyone. But guess what, sometimes adults have to step up and be adults and deal with situations kids create. If you don't want to get the occasional call about a situation your kid created, don't have kids.

The problem is, it just isn't reasonable to call under these circumstances. A boy in my son's class (aged 6) told my son that he should come over to his house to play on Saturday. But I know that a 6 year old doesn't have authority to issue invitations. If the parents were willing to invite DS over, they would contact me. The boy's statement isn't a reasonable basis for me to call and ask his mother if my son is invited to come over on Saturday.

This misrepresents the situation here. This isn't a mom just calling/emailing out of the blue -- this is the result of a child having been told by the birthday girl that he is invited.

Yeah, it's distasteful -- for everyone. But guess what, sometimes adults have to step up and be adults and deal with situations kids create. If you don't want to get the occasional call about a situation your kid created, don't have kids.

Anonymous wrote:
This thread has been very eye opening.

I now have more sympathy for parents who can't invite everyone and have to deal with the awkwardness of moms who call or e-mail them to ask if they forgot to invite their kid. Awkward...

I can't really blame them if they don't respond to those phone calls or e-mails because the other parent put them on the spot--even though the inquiring parent emphasizes that they will understand if their kid really wasn't invited.

While it might be OK to double check with friends and family, it is distasteful to poke social acquaintances.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So to sum up the special needs child and parties:

- Every parent should know every who every special needs kid is within a class - or maybe it's an entire grade - despite the fact that most parents won't spend enough time with the entire class to know much about individual kid's needs in the class and will generally only hear about kid's behavior from their own child's reporting and sporadic observations.

- Every parent should know, even if their child is not friendly with, doesn't play with, or is never spoken to by the special needs child, the special needs child should always be invited to every birthday party.

- It doesn't matter how outrageous, annoying, destructive, rude, etc a special needs child behavior is, it's acceptable and of course should be embraced especially at your child's birthday party.

How are you getting that from this thread?

Anonymous wrote:So to sum up the special needs child and parties:

- Every parent should know every who every special needs kid is within a class - or maybe it's an entire grade - despite the fact that most parents won't spend enough time with the entire class to know much about individual kid's needs in the class and will generally only hear about kid's behavior from their own child's reporting and sporadic observations.

- Every parent should know, even if their child is not friendly with, doesn't play with, or is never spoken to by the special needs child, the special needs child should always be invited to every birthday party.

- It doesn't matter how outrageous, annoying, destructive, rude, etc a special needs child behavior is, it's acceptable and of course should be embraced especially at your child's birthday party.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have your child tell the party kid that he can't come to her party because he didn't get an invitation.

The party kid can communicate this back to the parent and then either give your kid a formal invite or tell him that he cant come because my mom said there are too many kids, or the party is only for girls, etc.

This thread has been so interesting for me because on the one hand, if my child was not invited to a party, I cannot imagine saying anything to the birthday child's parent! I am definitely in the making other fun plans camp. On the other hand, if I was the parent of the birthday child, I would absolutely want the other parent to reach out to me and I would figure SOMETHING out to include the other child. So basically this is a tough situation with no good answer, except maybe the one proposed above. I will say my child recently did not recieve an invite for a party I had heard about, so I made a play date for him that day with a non-school friend. Two days before, the birthday child's mother reached out to me because we hadn't RSVPed - turned out it really was an oversight. I had to decline because we had already made other plans but was very sad because I know my child would have strongly preferred to go to the party. So it might be worth floating the lack of invite somehow - either through a mutual friend or via your child and the birthday child.