Mom Wants To Know Why Her Daughter Wasn’t Invited To Classmate’s Halloween, Learns “The Truth”
Kids’ birthday party invites can often be a source of constant drama for parents. After all, they need to manage the number of invitations, the expectations and desires of their children as well as the demands of other parents. For their kids, adults can quickly become advocates, making angry calls when their offspring is excluded.
A parent wondered if they were wrong to allow their eleven-year-old daughter to not invite the class clown to her Halloween party. We reached out to the person who shared the story via private message and will update the article when they get back to us.
Parents can be pretty quick to make angry calls when their kid doesn’t receive an invite
Image credits: wosunan/Envato (not the actual photo)
One parents got into some drama when they explained why another girl wasn’t invited to their daughter’s Halloween party
Image credits: YuriArcursPeopleimages/Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Excellent-Berry5172
Excluding someone is often pretty painful
Image credits: cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo)
As the variety of differing comments suggested, this was a controversial post. On the one hand, it’s not at all normal or even expected that random other people can suddenly tell a pre-teen girl who she can and can’t invite to her party. This much is and remains true. The main input the parents should have is to make sure their kid doesn’t accidentally invite way too many people.
However, as some commenters noted, excluding a new kid is a surefire way to make sure they stay excluded. The parent in this story has the opportunity for a teaching moment and has decided to not take it. It is important to note that there are perhaps a multitude of details we are not aware of, but, at the same time, most folks who post these sorts of questions to the internet don’t really include lots of mitigating information about the other party.
Some folks refer to their own experiences of being excluded as an emotional appeal to this parent. This is all well and good, but it’s also worth considering what the “alternative” ending here looks like. Say the parent is convinced by the comments and decides to make their daughter invite the other girl. Maybe the party goes well, maybe she really is disruptive, but there is a good chance that the hosting girl now holds some resentment both against their parents for changing their invite list and against the girl.
This Halloween party drama is about more than just some invites
Image credits: maksimovata/Envato (not the actual photo)
This is a considerably more tricky position than one might think, given that the context is a girl’s Halloween party. It’s one of those complicated issues where acting “within your rights” doesn’t necessarily mean you did the right thing. There is no argument that random third parties can’t tell someone who to invite. But, at the same time, excluding a new girl might seem easy to the kid hosting the party, but the parents should know better.
Just as no one can force this girl to invite someone, no one can also tell this parent how to be a parent. Could this be a teaching moment? Yes, but equally, we can’t be crowdsourcing parenting decisions to the internet. Every adult knows their own kid best and, generally, has a lot better information on hand. It’s easy to judge a parent “at a distance,” but it’s a hard job when it’s your child.
The fact that multiple parents are involved at this point is just a testament to the fact that the stakes are a bit higher than one party. If this person is a “class clown,” a term which seems perfectly engineered by a kid to make a parent side against them, then it still doesn’t seem like they would be so disruptive. Kids have a way of learning their parents’ buttons. After all, most “class clowns” do what they do to make their classmates laugh, not to bother them. Perhaps the results are annoying, but that’s true for most attempts at getting some attention.
Some folks wanted more details
Many thought the parent was in the right
But a few thought it was mean
Some thought everyone was being unreasonable
Poll Question
Thanks! Check out the results:
A teacher said there was an official rule at her school where either everyone had to be invited, or a minority of people. What makes this teacher, and this school, believe they have the right to (try to) impose this rule outside of school hours?!
I wonder if the rules is for invites that are done through school, like the example one gave of passing out invitations via school cubbies.
Load More Replies...Poor kid's probably just trying to fit in. Then again, it's probably best to learn that sometimes "no" is a valid response
I agree for the most part but having been that girl (not the class clown or new per se), it sucks when there's a ton of birthday parties going on and you know about them but don't get invited. It sucks
Load More Replies...I wouldn't want to "put up" with an annoying attention seeker who tries "to be funny" (and isn't) in situations where it's not appropriate (in class, not at recess). I knew kids like this who grew up to be coworkers like this and I can't stand them. Seems harsh that "everyone doesn't get invited to every party"? Too bad. That's life. Feedback given (they aren't inviting you because of how you act in class) is constructive and should be taken to heart before "class clown" behavior at 11 soon becomes "video making prankster " or "look at meeeeee I'm an influencer " behavior in their teens and beyond.
A teacher said there was an official rule at her school where either everyone had to be invited, or a minority of people. What makes this teacher, and this school, believe they have the right to (try to) impose this rule outside of school hours?!
I wonder if the rules is for invites that are done through school, like the example one gave of passing out invitations via school cubbies.
Load More Replies...Poor kid's probably just trying to fit in. Then again, it's probably best to learn that sometimes "no" is a valid response
I agree for the most part but having been that girl (not the class clown or new per se), it sucks when there's a ton of birthday parties going on and you know about them but don't get invited. It sucks
Load More Replies...I wouldn't want to "put up" with an annoying attention seeker who tries "to be funny" (and isn't) in situations where it's not appropriate (in class, not at recess). I knew kids like this who grew up to be coworkers like this and I can't stand them. Seems harsh that "everyone doesn't get invited to every party"? Too bad. That's life. Feedback given (they aren't inviting you because of how you act in class) is constructive and should be taken to heart before "class clown" behavior at 11 soon becomes "video making prankster " or "look at meeeeee I'm an influencer " behavior in their teens and beyond.
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