Why Tho: Can we leave out the horrible kid?

[petrea_mitchell]

Actual headline: Why Tho: My birthday kid wants to invite everyone in class to his party - but not this 1 boy

Dear Lizzy,

My son is in third grade, and his birthday is coming up. He’s told me he wants to invite his whole class to his party (at a park) except for one kid.

This kid is a menace, if I am honest. He breaks things in class and yells and hits. He is actually quite mean to my son. I want to respect my son’s wishes here, but is it fair to invite everyone except him?

To Exclude or Not to Exclude

Dear To Exclude or Not to Exclude,

Sorry to say (OK, I am not that sorry to say), you absolutely cannot invite every single kid in the class except one.

You say this boy is mean to your son. Do you want to teach your son that the response to mean people is to be mean right back? Imagine the pain this boy will feel when he inevitably finds out every kid in the class was invited to a party but him.

I guarantee you this kid’s life is already pretty hard, in ways that you don’t know about – happy kids don’t generally break things, yell, or hit people with any consistency.

So, you have two options: Make the party much smaller and only invite some of the kids in the class (though don’t invite all the boys either, and exclude him from that). Do not send party invites to school, but instead reach out to the adults. Make sure your son knows not everyone is invited, and it might hurt people’s feelings if he brings it up at school.

Your other option is to invite the whole class and hope for the best. There will be a lot of adults and a lot of kids. Heck, this boy might not even show up! But if you invite the majority of the class, it has to be the whole class.

Talk to your son and ask him how he would feel if he knew his entire class was invited to a party and he wasn’t. It’s not hard to put yourself in that position and picture yourself totally left out of all the fun.

Consider this: You have a chance to teach your son a little bit about what it’s like to be a person living in a community and how your actions impact other people. It’s not always easy, but it is important.

Good luck!

Lizzy

Comments

Geek Social Fallacy #1

[bikergeek]

In spades, doubled, and redoubled. ("Ostracizers are evil")

If this kid is known to hit people and break things, then he's a threat to other kids' safety, and it's right and proper to exclude him.

Re: Geek Social Fallacy #1

[magid]

Srsly. Not being included after hitting folks shows that there are consequences to actions, and they’re not always the ones you expect.

Re: Geek Social Fallacy #1

[beable]

Ok, but its easy to also turn this into bullying (invite the whole class but one)

Mean kid doesn’t need to be invited, but then the party does need to be smaller.

And we’re talking grade school kids, not teenagers. The connection between action and consequences (invite particular consequences that will get them bullied for rest of school year as the left out kid) is tenuous.

This is not the same situation as Geek Social Fallacies or ignoring missing stairs.

Re: Geek Social Fallacy #1

[rachelkg]

from https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ "In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high popularity games." While "I'm inviting the whole class. EXCEPT YOOOOOOU." is an elementary school popularity game more so than a middle school one, it's still a shitty thing to hear. Theoretically it would be possible to invite the whole class except Gary without that announcement happening, but eight-year-olds aren't known for their tact.

Inviting {the class} minus Gary is still better than inviting the mean kid that the host doesn't want to be exposed to. But inviting a different grouping of people -- either a smaller group, or some kids from class and some kids the birthday boy knows from elsewhere -- would be less cruel.

[cereta]

Every time I read a letter about kids' birthdays, I thank God my kid was born in the summer. We had small, easy parties with exactly the attendees my kid wanted.

[matsushima]

Disinviting someone from your birthday party because they're mean to you isn't "being mean back" it's "setting boundaries."

I guess this might depend somewhat on the child's age; if he's, like, 3, then maybe it would be kinder to invite him as long as parents are also going to be present. If he's 7+ then… well, he should know that actions have consequences and being mean, breaking things, and hitting people will get you left off the invite list.

[teaotter]

What did I just read? Are they equating hitting someone and failing to invite them to an optional event? These are the same now?

Sheesh. Absolutely not.

[adrian_turtle]

Having this kid at the party is a bad idea.
Inviting the whole class except one kid is a different kind of bad idea.
The party needs to be smaller. QED.
An 8 year old is probably old enough be able to follow this reasoning, but LW is allowed to set a headcount (no more than 60% the size of the class) and just stick to the boundary.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have seen the rule "birthday party guests equal the birthday child's age." It seems a logical way to whittle down a guest list if one wishes to do that.

[otter]

When I was that age (8?), I was allowed to invite 8 kids. When I was 5, I could invite 5, etc. I followed similar guidelines with my own kids. I sure wasn't going to allow the bullies that harrassed my kids into our house, or pay for their lunch somewhere.

[mrissa]

Also how about just not making a school class your kid's fundamental unit of identity? Adults need to have more facets of themselves than just They Work In This Department. Kids do too. Invite the kid he really got along with last year who moved to a different nearby school district, invite the kid he vibes with from his sports team or church choir or 4H club, invite one or two people from school, invite a cousin if he has a nearby similar-age cousin with whom he's close. Start setting the clear idea that we are not just one thing, and it'll be easier to get through the interactions with that one thing that don't always go well. Annoying Kid is annoying me at school, I don't have to deal with him at home as well--but I also don't have to only see the people I sit with at lunch.

[otter]

Valuable life lesson, that.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Nobody is obligated to invite anyone to an event. It is the birthday person's free choice to invite people they want to spend time with. It sucks to have someone ruin a birthday party.

[conuly]

Tell your son that he can only invite 15 kids - if you're not doing a home party, a lot of places start costing more after that cutoff. Then encourage him to expand his scope outside of his classroom. If he invites 4 boys and 3 girls from class, and 4 neighbors, 2 kids from extracurriculars, and 2 cousins then he'll be at 15 and he won't be pointedly excluding anybody.

Not that this other boy doesn't deserve to be excluded, but... it feels like he's old enough to know better than to act like that, but not yet so old that we can hold him fully responsible for his behavior. Making it obvious that everybody hates him seems like it'd be incentive to act better, but it probably is just going to make him feel bad without any positive effect.

[ethelmay]

Can't remember if I've told this story before, but I actually did have someone in my class at school (2nd or 3rd grade?) tell me that she was only allowed to have X girls at her party, and there were X plus one (plus her) girls in the class, so she had to leave someone out, and she'd picked me, sorry. I was, of course, hurt, and thought she should just have had her party and not told me about it, but I didn't want to go if she didn't want me.

Then the day of the party (which was after school) her mother cruised up as I was walking home, in her enormous station wagon with all the party-dressed girls in it, and said "Aren't you coming to the party?" I said I thought I wasn't invited, and she said "Nonsense, hop in." So I went to the party and didn't have to get Rude Classmate a present. I remember little about it except that it was Snoopy-themed, but I had a good time and didn't make anyone else have a bad time, as far as I know. (Presumably the moms squared matters with each other by phone.)

But I did think people should be able to invite who they want to a party, just not be mean about it. And I hadn't hit anyone or broken anything, that I am pretty sure of.