Birthday Exclusion

It is always sad to witness that.My son hardly got invited, he has Asperger's.It was heartbreaking...my daughter on the other hand was invited most of the time.But I did explain to all of my children very early on, that will happen, try not to take it personal...it's hard anyways.But yes, they do have to learn dissapointment...
They are teenagers now and my little Aspie has so many invites now...he is making up.He doesn't like to remember those times,but he is fine.
I always believe, talking to kids openly...I would do it right in the classroom as so many other subjects.
I would tell them, that sometimes you noticed, that some kids get invited and some don't....like maybe a little roleplay...sometimes, maybe a child can only choose a certain amount of kids and that doesn't mean, they don't like the left out child, .....
I have always noticed, if you talk about and explain things....it makes it easier on people....communication always....

I do teach my child the she will not be invited to EVERY birthday party and will not ALWAYS be included in everything, things will not always go her way, and she needs to learn to deal with disappointments, etc., etc. But I also would never want her to be the one who is blatantly excluded either. Unlike this mother, I'm teaching my daughter to have respect, empathy, manners, tact and some plain old common sense.
We are not able to invite every child in my daughter's class to her parties. She is also not necessarily friends with ALL of them anyway. At the beginning of the year her teachers explain that invitations are not to be handed out at school unless the entire class is invited, so we mail or hand deliver to their homes.

This is totally inexcusable. The mother of the birthday child should have mailed the invitations, called the invited parents, or e-mailed the invited parents. To hand out invitations at school when everyone is not invited (in Kindergarten) is just mean and thoughtless. I didn't read the below responses. Maybe the school's policy should be if you don't invite everyone, invitations can't be handed out at school. That's been the rule at my kid's school for years.

A few people have commented that children need to learn to accept that they won't be included in everything instead of setting rules for how to give out invitations.

What is being overlooked is that this very same rule is in every adult etiquette book: do not make it obvious that you are hosting a social event to people who are not invited. It would be very rude to ask one couple to come to your dinner party next Saturday right in front of two other couples. It would be rude to openly distribute invitations to your 30th birthday party to several members at your club meeting in front of all of the people who were not invited.

Children cannot be trusted to pass out invitations discretely, so if it is necessary to hand deliver invitations at school, it should only be done with the direct supervision of the parent who has first made it very clear to child how to do so quietly. Perhaps the child could slip it into the other child's backpack to be viewed later, or walk out to the car together and give it to the child away from everyone else. True, children need to learn to cope with being left out sometimes, but children also need to learn to be kind to others and avoid predictable ways of hurting feelings.

It is true that life is life, but that wasn't really a lesson that needed to be learned at this time. My school has a no bday party invite hand out at school unless that whole class is invited. If you want only want to invite certain children, you're asked to hand them out personally parent to parent and not have the child do it unless it's to deliver it directly to the guests house. It's made things so much easier. If your school doesn't have that policy, I would still make it a classroom policy.

I love that policy and I wish that my school had had it when I was a child. I was often the target of bullies growing up. I remember one such year a girl started to hand me an invite to her party and then deliberately pulled it back saying, oh, wait, she'd changed her mind and she tore it up in front of me. I was the only child in the class NOT invited. And while I don't think it was a case of bullying in this aspect, it was just thoughtlessness, it's best to not have that avenue open at all. It's not always so cut and dried as "not being invited". Children can be right cruel little buggers, especially if they know the weakness of their target. I feel the same way about valentines cards!

I would tell the mom how much she hurt one of the children in the class so she knows not to do that again.
It is funny tho, when I was a kid there was no rule about that stuff. If someone brought invitations and you didnt get one it was an "oh well" moment. We also didnt have to give valentines to EVERYone in the class either, only to the kids we wanted to give them too... and at the end of the day we would count and see who got most and who got one from whom. I think that is the more realistic way to teach life to the kids, not all this BS we do now. Learning how to deal with hurt feelings is better than fake sentiment if you ask me. JMO

You're right that the damage is done in this case. However, as a former teacher, I will say that I would (very nicely) let the offending mother know that in kindergarten the class rule was that if invitations were going to be handed out at school, then everyone got one. I don't know what that mother was thinking, but I do know that IS a class rule in a number of preschools and elementary schools around here. People are free to invite only certain classmates as long as they don't hand out the invitations at school. Even if that's not a rule at your school, I would certainly make a class rule and send home a memo letting all parents know about it.

i agree with Grandma T. i have dealt with this for years with my older ds (now 12). The idea of having to invite everyone or make it a "secret" so the other kids don't get hurt feelings is ridiculous to me. We didn't have this rule as kids and it's how you learn to handle dissapointment. I feel sorry that the child had his feelings hurt but this is a great teaching opportunity with him.

This is another example of the entitlement we as a society feel we have now. If one person gets it I should too.....that's not life. Don't we all remember mom & dad telling us life isn't fair???? it's not and that is ok. How are our kids going to learn that if we put these false pretenses in place from the beginning. What happened to honesty and teaching your children to cope with life's dissapointments.

I am all for teaching children that life is full of disappointment and that you don't always get what you want. Kids that know this grow up to delay and earn their rewards instead of expecting things to be handed to them on a silver platter.

But I am an even bigger advocate of teaching civility and basic good old fashioned manners. Something sorely lacking out there. I think it is fine to invite select friends to a party but I think it is uncivilized to even subtlety rub others' noses in it. Aside from the etiquette breach, it leaves teachers to handle the fall-out.

We could all afford to stop and think (like this kind kindergarten teacher has) and ask ourselves, "How does what I did make others feel? How would my child feel if the shoe was on the other foot? I know I have not done anything wrong or purposely mean but could I have done it differently?"

At our school invites are to go to EVERYONE or in the mail to select people. At the beginning of the school year the parents are asked if they would like to be on the contact list. There are no exceptions to this. It is the only way to avoid hurt feelings like this. Although it wont help in this instance I really think this needs to be a rule in you classroom. Especially in kindergarten where social skills are still being learned.

Maybe you can make it a classroom rule that all invites go to you and you will quietly dole them out (put them in their lunchboxes or something) before the end of the day, maybe while the kids are at recess.

Of course, the left outs will eventually figure it out and you can't always invite everybody (or want to) but that might help the blatant invites in your face thing.

If it's usually not a problem, I'd talk to the parent involved and tell her to please either hand them to you or be more discreet about it and do it herself.

Our school district had a policy that invitations are not allowed on school grounds at all, just for this reason. They must be mailed to the students or handed out off of school grounds.
Kids do need to learn about disappointment and they always dont get what they want, but that is just rude. Maybe you can talk to the principal about getting a new policy? I know that doesnt help the situation right now, but maybe for future heartbreak.

This is an old, old problem.

And this is the reason that parents should MAIL invitations to parties. It's too bad that stamps are so high, but that's no excuse.

No child (not even any mama) can be discreet ENOUGH to hand out invitations without others noticing what is going on. Kids who may not see that teacher wants them to be quiet will be sure to see when a classmate has invitations in his hand!

Can you lay down the law, at least for your own classroom? Snail mail or e-vites or phone calls - but no party invitations handed out at school unless they're handed out to every child!

To those that think we should not protect a 5 year olds feelings.. and just have them "suck it up"..
Imagine if only 1 child in the classroom was not invited? And the way they found out was right in front of their faces?
Now imagine it is your child?

Yes, back in the day we learned people will hurt your feeling deal with it.. But how about now we teach empathy and explaining to your child.. "Ok you do not want to invite that 1 child, how can we not hurt his feelings and humiliate him in front of everyone including his beloved teacher and his parents when you hand out the invites?"

Come on, I would be more hurt that my child did this to another child, than anything else..

We did a lot of things back in the day, but we are more aware and do things better now because we are better than that..

I think the reason for this policy whether in writing or not. Is not only to not upset or hurt anyones feeling, but to show and teach our kids That little things like this do hurt peoples feelings and that's something we don't want to do(or let our kids think that it's not a big deal if another Childs feelings were hurt)
Yes our kids are going to learn about disappointment ....but if we can, at an early age, teach then to be aware that if we can avoid hurting someone ...why not do it.......and especially this little and just getting accustom to school you don't want to discourage them in any way........
If it was my child left out.....I would feel horrible and ask the teacher to please send home a letter asking that invitations be sent home in folder or mailed..........

Aimme you are a great person and teacher for caring for this child.
I'm sure kids don't mean to purposely exclude kids in class but yes inviting every child to a bday party is sometimes not doable .....

Welcome to real life. I know it's hard to deal with it at age 5 but it will make it easier when you are older. Not everyone is going to or want to be your friend even if they are your next door neighbor.

Somewhere the in the last 30 years kids feel that they have a right to everything or we are going to hurt little Johnny's feelings. Gone are the days when kids would say they didn't like you to your face and you felt bad but moved on and played with someone else.

The only thing you can do is what you did, give him a hug and let his parents know about the lack of invitiation to the party. The only thing you can do is to resend the note home about invitations to remind the parents. It is just another lesson in life.

The other S.

I know this has been answered, so I thought I'd entertain you with stories of clueless, tactless parents at my kids school (which by the way has the policy that unless everyone, all boys, or all girls are invited, you cannot hand out invites at school). And I know you cannot be included in everything and every party. I don't expect my kids to be, nor do I want them to be, but the lack of tact of the parents boggles my mind sometimes. Here's my two favorite stories:

Daughter's Class, First Grade: Mother mails invites to kids since not all are invited. Mix of boys/girls invited. Mother coordinates with all parents with kids attending that she will drive the kids to the party (her and another mom) since the party is right after school. But to get the kids to the party on time, she has to pull the 12 kids (boys and girls) out of school early and doesn't bother to notify the teacher. Teacher finds out about it last minute and shoos the other kids outside for an additional recess so that they don't notice the 12 kids making a 30 minute early exodus. Don't even get me started on the parents that think it's OK to leave school early in front of the other kids that were not invited. And I ask you, what again was the point of mailing the invites again?

Son's class, Kindergarten: My son is in line behind two other boys. Mom of one of the boys in front of us says to the other boy in front of us "Did you get your invite to [boy's name]] birthday party in the mail yet? We hope you can come, we're going to have so much fun." Boy confirms that he did get it and birthday boy, boy in line starting talking all about the party while ignoring my son who's standing right there and clearly not invited. The boy behind my son was also not invited - they started asking each other if each other was invited, and figure out they are both not invited. They are upset. Again, why mail the invites if you are going to announce it to everyone at drop off in front of non-invited kids?

Oh, wait one more: the opposite way. Girl A in my daughter's class always invites all the girls in the class to her parties and one of the parties will take place right after school on Friday. Girl B does not get along with Girl A and doesn't want to go to her party. Girl C feels the same. Instead of just RSVPing "no" to the party and doing their own thing that evening or after school, Girl B and C make a big show of getting into each other's car with sleepover stuff as the "party girls' are getting into carpools for the party. When a passing parent says, "see you at Girl A's party" Girl B's mom makes a loud show of saying, "Oh no, Girl B and C are NOT going to Girl A's party - they don't even like her. I don't even know why she keeps inviting them - we've RSVP'd "no" the last few years. So we're doing our own thing since all the other girls are going to the party." Fine if they don't want to go to the party, but hello parent, have a little tact! She was in hearing distance of the girls going to the party and apparently it was quite the topic of conversation at the beginning of the party among the girls.

Thank you for teaching our youth - best of luck to you.

In my kids gradeschool, invitations were not allowed to be passed out in school period.

Each teacher compiled and distributed a class list of all students addresses, email, phone numbers (parents had the right to not be on that list of course if they so chose). And that was to be used for any invites.

Personally, I LOVE this rule!

:)

I agree that kids should be taught that all kids cannot go all birthday parties. That's just not the way life works. However, what would we say about a person at work who approaches a group of 3 and hands out their wedding invitation to just 2 of them? Of course no one HAS to invite someone to anything. I always tell my girls they are not owed an invitation to anything by anyone. Everyone celebrates differently, and that's OK. But handing out in person to 2 of 3 is an obvious snub. That is just plain bad manners! It is 100% rude to approach a group of 3 and only invite 2 of them for anything. 5 year olds can and should be taught this. Adults should know better. I would talk to the parent and ask that he/she NOT bring birthday invitations to school in future years.

You would think parents would know better. I also remember sadly at school pick up one year watching one boys Mom pick up a whole group of boys together to go out for her son's birthday party. One little boy with tears in his eyes asked her if he could come too. I watched this Mom try to explain to him that he was not invited. But yet the party really got started at school dismissal with all the invited boys (6-8 from one kindergarten class) all whopping it up. I just remember thinking that was not the best way to handle a small group party.

WOW! I can't imagine being a kindergarten teacher...however, I could imagine how I would feel if my kindergartener was that one left out!!! Obviously the damage is done, but maybe next year, you can include it in any beginning of the year info: If you want to hand out invites, they need to be addressed & given to YOU to distribute by either putting them in back packs yourself or YOU handing them out more discreetly. Every time we have done birthday invites for our children & wanted to invite some (but not all) of kids in a Sunday School class, we have requested addresses & sent invites through the mail. I don't know if you can work that idea into your beginning of the year information, but it is definitely worth considering. Besides, what 5 year old doesn't like to get something in the mail addressed to him/her?
As for what to do now, I would maybe express your concern to the birthday child's parent - exacty as you did here..."I know not every child can be included in everything & that is the child/parent's perogative, but I think that the child's parent should know (for all anyone knows, the child was left out by accident & the parent didn't realize). I don't know if there is anything else you can do outside of that....Good luck - my heart hurts likes yours does!

What if you ask the parents to give you the invitations? Then you can put them in bags without any of the children seeing (during recess, lunch, etc.). This would mean that no one would open them until they were at home. The other option is to tell the parents that invitations are no longer allowed to be passed out at school. You could always send a list of addresses (if one hasn't already been sent out) and explain that from now on, invites need to be mailed to homes.

At this point, I don't think it's worth saying anything to the mom, but make sure you send a note home explaining the new procedure. She may realize it was because of them that this happened, but maybe it will get her to think about these kids feelings as well. Good luck!

That is horrible. Poor little guy. I realize not everyone always gets invited to things, but she should have mailed the invitations. Some people just don't think. At my daughters school birthday invitations for at home parties are not allowed to be handed out at school. They have to be mailed. This is school policy.

My self imposed policy with my own children was that everyone got invited or no one got invited at all. It can be tough logistically, but it was the only way to be fair to everyone.
One year, my son's 11th birthday, we not only invited his classmates, but his baseball team as well. He had kids in his class on the team so we just invited everyone and had a bbq at the park. The kids had equipment to play on, we played baseball, we had cake and hot dogs. It was awesome! And surprisingly, not that hard to manage or expensive. We invited the parents and siblings....half the darn town was there. Obviously, we didn't throw a bash like that every year, but it sure was fun.
Now....there have been times when my kids had maybe only one friend or two over to go to a movie or something, but it wasn't called a party. No formal invitations were given or anything. It was just some friends getting together and that happens on any given weekend throughout the year anyway.
When I was little, my mom raised us to know that if you don't have enough to share with everyone, you can't share. Gum, for instance.
Kids do need to know it's not necessarily personal if they don't get included in everything everyone does, but parents should have some tact about it and they hopefully will pass that on to their kids.
I do like the idea of sending out a little newletter to the parents and include your policy of birthday invitations being passed out at school.
You have a sensitive heart and I bet you're really a great teacher.
I hope you get some really great suggestions.

At all the school where I have worked or where my childen have attended the policy is that if you are passing out invitations at school all children in the class must be invited or all the girls or all the boys, no exceptions. Families that choose to invite just a few need to either call or mail the invites.

The above policy works. It does not alleviate hurt feelings entirely but it lowers the risk of a situation you just described. I would talk to your partner teacher and see if you both could write a letter to your class modifying the rules. This may be something you want to do on a school wide policy.

Updated

At all the school where I have worked or where my childen have attended the policy is that if you are passing out invitations at school all children in the class must be invited or all the girls or all the boys, no exceptions. Families that choose to invite just a few need to either call or mail the invites.

The above policy works. It does not alleviate hurt feelings entirely but it lowers the risk of a situation you just described. I would talk to your partner teacher and see if you both could write a letter to your class modifying the rules. This may be something you want to do on a school wide policy.

I'm surprised this happened in liberal, ahead-of-the-times California. Are you a new teacher as well? I would bring it up with your team grade teachers...they'll have plenty of head turning stories.

With all the great advice you have received thus far, I would recommend you be the trail blazer, type of your classroom rules for the future and send it out in your next parent letter. I would even make mention of the hurtful situation that you witnessed and you know that you do not want other children to be shunned in the same manner. Just keep the comments anonymous. The mom will know who she is.

Every elementary school I have been at for the past 10 years or so has had a "no birthday party invitations passed out at school rule", unless ALL are invited. But then most schools have a student roster, if the parents signed the waiver and submitted their personal info.

At my kids school its not a "school policy" but all of the teachers require it... all invations must be handed to the teacher and the teacher puts them in the childrens take home folder before the end of the day. That way nobody knows who is/ isn't invited.

For right now if its possible maybe make the left out boy your special helper for a day. Maybe descretely give him a treat of some kind. Explain to him you know how upset and left out he felt hopefully this will brighten his day or something.

I think you should pull the mother aside and tell her that unless she is inviting all kids in the class, no invitations are allowed to be given out in the school building (or even go so far as to tell her that it would be appropriate to mail invites to the select few). Do tell her how the the child cried, and ask how she might feel, as a mother, to see her own child so upset by such a thoughtless act (just a little bit of effort would've help avoid that). Try not to be confrontational about it--she may not have known that that was the end result.

Make a rule that no invitations are allowed to be passed out in class, unless the whole class is invited.

You might also check with other teachers on how they handle it (like the 1st & 2nd grade teachers).

It's bad enough that the poor kid would've likely learned about it later from the kids talking (Tommy hears 2 kids taling: "Oh, you're going to Billy's party? So am I" and realizes that he's not invited), but the giving of them and directly excluding is so cruel and thoughtless.

If you can get in touch with the mother of the child you should let her know. The child of kindergarten age obviously doesn't have tact down and the mom may never have considered that scenario and can maybe make room for one more.

Since my son goes to daycare and public pre-school i had to pick and choose or we would have had 20 kids and our house was too small. (I assumed a 50% acceptance rate for his 4 year old party since i had never met any of the parents and was surprised when over 90% of the invites came back as accepting, so you really do have to limit it)

I could invite just the boys at daycare, but the public school rule was all or mail, - one of my son's best friends at school didn't have their phone number or e-mail on the directory so I couldn't invite him. Since I work and the school bus takes my son to pre-school and back I had no way of contacting that mother, but it did keep me up nights hoping that poor child didn't hear of the party and know he wasn't invited.

I don't think there is anything that you CAN do for the little boy who's feelings were hurt, except maybe let his mom know that it happened so that SHE can deal with it.

However, you could send out a "reminder" note to all the parents that it is your "Classroom Policy" (if it isn't the school's) that "any invitations to outside activities (i.e. parties) in which ALL the students in the class are not invited, must be disseminated by the teacher. Please send any invitations for your child's classmates to me for distribution." Then you could put them in the children's take home folders or whatever when they are busy with something else.

I would contact the mom and tell her that what she did was unacceptable and caused a child in your class, unneccesary pain. She should have done this privately or sent them by mail. I would tell her that she needs to do this off of school grounds next time if she is going to act like an idiot!

M

Wow!! I just experienced this for the first time yesterday.... one of the mom's at school asked if my daughter was going M's bday party on Sunday, I said my daughter didn't get and invitation, but we were here on Tuesday, is that when she gave them out, she said no, it was last week. She only asked me bc we are friends outside of school also and wanted to see if I could take her daughter, when the bday girls mom showed up she asked who all was invited, and she my friend, just her daughter, I was so mad, how do you invite just one kid (in a class of 8 for that matter!), in a class of 3 and 4 year olds, they talk and someone feelings are bound to be hurt, and let me tell you if it is my child, that mother will have a mouth full from me! I see no reason to hurt any child's feelings for being left out!
I want to commend you for being such a caring teacher!!!!

At my children's school your are not allowed to hand out invitations unless you hand them out to the entire class. This is for the entire school. We have a school directory where you can contact children directly if you dont want to do that.

It is hard with some school districts to do as others have suggested. In kindergarden the teacher did a class list with parent names, phone numbers and addresses so that you could contact eachother for play dates and parties. you only wrote down the info you wanted the other parents to have and could choose not to be included on the list - I thought this was great. In first grade they were not allowed to do the same thing - we were told that we could send a note to another parent thru the childs folder and the teacher would distribute the notes or invites for us - we invited all the boys in the class but not the girls. not sure what we will do for party this year as that classes do not move as a whole and he now has friends in other classes as well as his current class room and we have to go thru the teacher to distribute invites.

Have a strict policy, that if not all the children in the class are invited, then invitations need to me mailed to the kids at home.

If i were in the position as teacher, I'd consider phoning that mother and pointing out to her how her actions devastated that boy. Some people are CLUELESS about how their actions affect others.

Other than that, a letter to all the parents instructing them that if invitations are to be handed out at school, they are to be given directly to you so you can discretely distribute them in their take-home folders. (we have 'friday folders' here that the teahcers can put notes into)

You should make a form saying it is a classroom rule to not hand out birthday invitations exclussively. If they must hand out invitations then they must hand them out to everyone. That is so mean and cruel what the boy did, although they probably don't realize it was mean and cruel. But it hurt feelings and that should probably be mentioned on your take home note as well. That recently there was some hurt feelings over exclusive invitations and you will not allow handing out of exclusive inviations in your classroom again. This should probably be a rule from here on out and I would make the parents sign the paper just so you know they have seen it and agree to it.
I have always made sure if we have a party to either hand out invitations to the whole class or to call the parents myself. I would never ever want any child to feel left out. That's just mean.

Oh- I would make a deal about this...very uncalled for. Here is what you really should do. First-you call the offending parent and tell her what happened and you say in the future if she is not inviting the whole class then she will need to send them by mail. And please do tell her about the child crying...she NEEDS to know this for sure.

I would THEN make up a flyer to send home to all of the parents or email reminding them of school policy. By doing this you are letting the other parents know that you realize what happened and will not tolerate it in the future.

Our school district has a firm policy (which could be enacted per classroom if not district-wide) that if any distribution (such as treats for birthdays, Valentines, invitations) is going to take place on school grounds, it is everyone or no one. Perhaps a notice could be sent home with the class to that effect. But that could be helpful in the future and doesn't help you for this particular child right now (other than specifically pointing out to those parents that their choice wasn't very kind). Something that could be done now is some empathy training in the class--talking about how others feel when left out and what we can do to be more inclusive. The left-out child could even be given some leadership duty in the role-playing to regain some feelings of self-confidence and inclusion. The situation stinks and is really hard to watch. Of course, not everyone gets to do everything in life, but that doesn't mean we should train our kids to disregard the feelings of others. As they say, "Discretion is the better part of valor."

My kids schools allows this to and my kids haven't said anything but I don't allow them to go to parties anyway since I don't know the parents. Most of the kids have a party at school so all of the kids are invited. I don't think many people allow their kids to go to classroom friends parties anyway.

Maybe request that parents do the classroom party instead of handing on invites. My youngest birthday is Feb 6th and is already talking bout her classroom party, she wants me to bring in cupcakes.

My son's school has a policy; unless everyone is invited you can not give out invitations at school. I couldn't invite everyone in my son's class to his party so I sent evites to the parents.

I agree that this was an insensitive way for this mom to handle the invitations. But I also agree that not everyone should necessarily be invited. I only let my kids invite their very good friends---usually about 6-8 kids. Sometimes they want to invite a "new" friend, but I only let them invite ones that they have been playing with for awhile. I tell them we can invite the new friend for a playdate sometime soon, but not to the party. I am always sensitive about people thinking you are fishing for more gifts. I think if you are going to invite the whole class, you should state "no gifts." If they are good friends, they will probably still bring one. I find it offensive when my child is invited to a party of someone in their class that they don't normally play with and perhaps don't even get along with. To me it seems that parent is just wanting their child to get 20 gifts.

Honestly I think parents need to do a better job of teaching their children that not everyone is included in everything. It drives me crazy that we have become so PC that we either have to include everyone or no one! The child that was upset will get over it and hopefully his parents will explain that when he has a party he can't invite everyone in his class, so he can't expect to be invited to everyone else's party.

In my son's Pre-School there is no rule about party invitations. As for the Grade School there is...and it's because of this exact reason.
Is this boy not a real close friend of the birthday boy? Maybe the birthday boy could only pick so many in his class of "friends". Who knows the reason why the little guy didn't get picked or chosen to be invited to the "birthday party."
But this is what I don't get - I know we try to be fair and teach our kids about being fair. But when does it stop? We all know that the world today isn't always fair. This is a life lesson...yes it sucks for the little guy. But how can people be mad and put blame on the mom or the birthday boy for inviting the people that he wants to? They didn't do anything wrong in my eyes. I remember when I was a kid that if you didn't get invited - oh well....but then again I knew mostly if I were to be invited I couldn't go anyway. My parents wouldn't let me go anyway - it cost to much in gas to go anywhere.... So, it didn't matter to me anyway.....

Most schools I know of have a rule that if not everyone is invited then you need to mail the invitations. This is a rule both at our preschool (private church preschool) and my son's public elementary school. I recently had my daughter's birthday party with a Fairy theme and we only invited the girls in her class. I mailed the invitations- and even mentioned to a few of the boys moms about the party so nobody was hurt.

In my daughter's school I asked the teacher 1st to see what the policy was. NOTHING was ever sent home about it. I knew we were not going to be able to invite everyone (more then 20 kids). I knew that some schools had the policy of "all or none" but at least our district realises that it is unfair to ask that parents to take on that kind of undertaking (parties CAN be expensive!). We are also not allowed to get a list of the parents names, numbers, adresses or ANYTHING even when we (as class mom's) need help with things. My daugher's teacher said that I could send the invites into school in the folder, and she would put them in the correct kids' folders to go home with. I was happy with this. As it was my daughter did NOT want to invite everyone! (just 9 kids) and that worked out for us very well.
As for that little boy, there was not much you could do. I do think that they all need to learn that they dont get everything all the time, that is still no reason for rudeness. Everyone had good ideas, tho about how to deal. Good Luck!!

Like you said, there's nothing you can do to stop this little boy from feeling hurt, because he already feels that way. i think if I were you, I would send him a note to all parents and just say that this situation occurred without giving names and letting them know that in the future, invitations should be handed out a little more discreetly in order to avoid any hurt feelings. I know my granddaughter has seen invitations handed out and not been the recipient of one and she was a bit hurt but I simply acknowledged her feelings of being hurt and we moved on.

Aside from suggesting a little tact in your next newsletter, maybe try to arrange a play date between the shunned child and another (ask their parents during pick up.) If it's a go, mention that you noticed that he was hurt by not being invited to that party, but now HE'S got something fantastic to attend for just him and his play date partner. Might help to mend those feelings a bit.
Ouch.

That is terrible. My son's teachers always give the invite talk at the beginning of the year that if you are not inviting everyone then please give the invites to the teacher and she will have them put discreetly in the backpacks. Unfortunately the damage is done however I would not let it stop there or this mother will do the same thing to another kid next year. I would either take her aside one day or speak with her at the next parent teacher conference and just explain to her that that is not how you normally do things and as a result of her actions she hurt another child's feelings and he went home in tears. Even though she cannot make it up to the boy maybe she will think twice next time. Good Luck!