The internet is largely supporting a mom in her decision to exclude her child’s bully from a birthday party invite as noted in a viral Reddit post.
Reddit user Opposite-leg2854 posted in the subreddit “Am I the A*****e” on Wednesday, Oct. 12, asking others for advice regarding her seven-year-old daughter Payton’s upcoming birthday party.
The woman — in a post titled “AITA for not inviting one child from my daughter’s class to a party?” — explained that her daughter attended a small school, with just 20 children in the grade. She said the family invited all but one of the children to a birthday party in November.
The child who was not invited had a history of bullying her daughter, she said.
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“The student we did not invite has bullied Payton several times (we’ve had meetings with the school and parents),” wrote Opposite-leg2854.
“Obviously Payton doesn’t want this kid at her party,” the mom added in her post.
A mother who declined to invite a child to her daughter’s birthday party due to a history of bullying explained her actions on Reddit — and asked people for their advice and thoughts.
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The mother of the uninvited child, however, was apparently upset that her daughter was excluded, Opposite-leg2854 explained.
“The other girl’s mother called me to talk about it,” she wrote.
The mother of the disinvited girl said her daughter was “crying she was the only kid not invited and everyone at school is talking about the party,” the woman wrote.
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She added that “Payton’s parties are known by her classmates to be very over the top.”
The original Reddit poster, Opposite-leg2854, also shared, “I explained her daughter isn’t nice to my daughter and that’s the reason she wasn’t invited (the mother knows this). The mother said I’m teaching my child to be a ‘bully’” and that “[I’m using our] wealth to make friends. I disagreed,” the mom of the birthday girl continued.
The Reddit user said the bullying child had called her daughter “chubby.”
Opposite-leg2854 also said that the mother of the other child asked if her daughter could write a letter of apology to young Payton in exchange for an invitation to the party — which Payton’s mom said she declined.
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In edits to the post, Opposite-leg2854 also explained that the bullying child had called her daughter “chubby” — and said that she was not pretty enough to be a cheerleader, among other things.
A group of children are having fun at a birthday party. "Your daughter has every right to feel safe" at her own party, said one commenter to the Reddit poster about how her daughter (not pictured) had experienced bullying.
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She added that she personally gave out the invitations to the other parents — and that the birthday invitations were not distributed in the classroom.
The post about the birthday “disinvitation” received more than 18,000 “upvotes” of support in less than 24 hours.
Most users on Reddit were very supportive of Opposite-leg2854’s decision to not invite a child’s bully to her birthday party.
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“Your daughter has every right to feel safe at her party. This is a thing this girl is going to miss out on and she’s upset about that,” wrote user Inevitable-Okra-3229.
“Your kid deserves not to be walking on eggshells at her [own] party.”
“Which I guess is understandable but here is the thing, [the mom] didn’t offer an apology before the party,” the commenter continued.
“Didn’t pull her kid in line before the party and when it was brought up repeatedly with the school. She is only doing it now because her kid is the ‘victim.”
This commenter added, “My main reason is because your kid deserves not to be walking on eggshells at her [own] party. And I absolutely loathe when parents continue to put their kids in contact with their bullies/abusers. Children or not. Your child deserves to feel safe.”
Some people saw the lack of an invite to a child’s party as a learning opportunity for the bully and her mother — while others had different thoughts.
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Others saw the lack of an invite as a learning opportunity for the bully and her mother.
“This is a great time for the bully’s mom to teach [the child] that actions have consequences,” wrote user CrystalQueen3000.
A common but often ignored rule of thumb for children’s parties is to invite the “age-plus-one” number of guests to a birthday party, a parenting expert told Parenting.com.
“Grade-schoolers have definite ideas of whom they want to invite, so you can use the opportunity to teach them to be considerate of others’ feelings,” wrote Julie Tilsner on Parenting.com.
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Tilsner advised parents to instruct a child to not discuss their party at school if the entire class is not invited. “And then cross your fingers,” she said.
Other parents empathized with the plight of Opposite-leg2854.
Experts advise telling children to avoid discussing their birthday parties at school among other children — to avoid hurting others’ feelings.
“Birthday parties are a very sensitive subject,” one Boston-area mom of two young boys told Fox News Digital.
“On the one hand, you want to be inclusive and invite the whole class, but on the other hand, if a child is mean to your child, do you want to include them?”
“At the end of the day, it’s about our own child’s happiness.”
This mother said that her sons typically have smaller birthday parties, both for convenience and to avoid bruised feelings.
“We handle it by having smaller parties with about five close friends — we can also go more places for a birthday if the group is smaller,” she added.
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“And I don’t have time for bullying parents. Sometimes your kid just isn’t invited, and you have to support them in that, while not getting a chip on your shoulder,” she said.
A mother in New York shared her thoughts on the issue as well. “We handled our kids’ birthday parties very carefully when they were young,” she said. “It is a definitely a ‘thing’ to be treated with thought and care.”
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She also said, “But at the end of the day, it’s really about our own child’s happiness. It’s our own kid’s birthday, after all,” she added.
“So we have to do what’s right for our child’s best interests. We are the parents of that child, after all.”
