General Chat

i agree with the price of partys.

my *main*point was why not give out the invitations outside of school.then there is no problem:)

your very fortunate to not be scared by the PE situations.but i know many who were:)

Is this for real mildred? it sounds so ridiculous!!

Surely we have all had different kids at our childrens parties?


Caz xx

It's a bit much when an 8year olds birthday party is going to be the topic in parliament...don't they have better things to talk about over there? infringing human rights, utterly ridiculous. where do you stop? Invite the whole school and their siblings and cousins... everyone who lives in their street..oh wait that would be a postcode lottery. Idiocy...what happened to freedom of choice. And lets face it, if you don't invite me to your party then you're not coming to mine!

What I wanna know is where the party was being held and was there gonna be party bags? Finally, surely the teacher impeded the human rights of the child whose party it was? Surely that's a bigger *crime* being that they're supposedly a grown up?

There would still be a problem if the invites were handed out after school hours.
When the kids all get together on the next school day and discuss the party - those two children will still feel excluded.
Perhaps the teacher could ensure that the rights of those children are not furtherinfringed by not allowing the rest of the class to talk about it.

Where will it all end?

You need to learn to deal with disappointment as a child - or else the adult world will knock the stuffing out of you.

xx

gotta say we had a problem at our school recently.

One mother invited only 8 children to the childs party. My son was invited,and tbh i wouldn't have been bothered if he hadn't. But my sons best mate wasn;t invited. His mother was frosty towards me cos my child had been invited.


I have four kids, and to make ends meet, I allow them to have a party every other yr, on their odd birthdays. So 5, 7 etc last one is 13. And the only time they had the whole class, was in reception as all four of them had small class until the Easter intake as it was. And I do it this way as all four of thier birthdays are within 4 weeks of each other, so this way my daughter and youngest have parties in the same yrs they are opposite end of the four weeks, and the twins of course share the other yr.


Bet my kids will be seeking counselling later in life cos they only had their parties every other yr LOL

daughter is having a treat this yr as she'll be sweet 16!!! next treat will 21!!! and boys will be treated the same.

Hi Mildred
I can't understand what message the school is trying to pass on to the children!!
Most of us remember not being invited to a party or picked last for something because we weren't good at it or were out of favour. It's tough but its one of lifes lessons we have to learn.
Imagine if you got to 16 when you leave school & had been cushioned from any hurt or feeling left out?! The world outside would be a bit of a shock!
x

My kids have all had 2 full class parties (well youngest will be having her 2nd one next year) and that's it. the rest are just teas at home. If your kids feel hard done by Shelli get them to talk to my 3.
I think this is rediculous. If my child wasn't invited I'd just try and console them that they didn't want to go anyway.
On a different note, on my son's last party, he only invited 2 from school as he said he didn't really like the rest. Saved me a fortune. Regular party animal my boy. lol

Helen

Must admit not one of kids has moaned, they know the score money wise.

Actually I lie my eldest my daughter had a bit of a moan at 15 as she felt she should've have some sort of party. As it was an odd birthday. Told her no, and she soon got over it. She's going for pizza with a few mates for her 16th. And to laser quest, we;ve said we'll fund or other but not both. She's fine with that. As a lot of her friends now celebrate their birthday by going to pizza hut or TGI's but each party goer pays for themselves. Much like when we as adults go out with our mates!!!

Shelli
We gave my 16 year old cash to take her mates out for lunch and a film. Well worth it for the lack of hassle. It was on the understanding that there would be NO Sleepover! lol

This is PC going wrong. Isnt apart of growing up to expect the highs and lows. At a primary school our children attended it was the going norm to invite the whole class. I didnt instead i gave our kids the options of cinema or BBQ at the beach.

Another thing Birthday cakes were banned from the schools or anything unhealthy to celebrate a childs birthday. But school fetes are allowed an alcohol lic as a source of revenue.

Oooooooooooh Siiiiiiiiiiiigh.

"What about the rights of the child giving out the invites - why should he be forced to invite those he doesnt like or have not got along with ??"

NOBODY was being FORCED to do ANYTHING.

There is a school policy about distributing invitations on school premises.

The child's actions violated the policy.

Period.

Cripes.

Just like the stupid baby's-bottom controversy.

Schools have no desire or need to get involved in arbitrating situations between children that have nothing to do with school.

Birthday parties have nothing to do with school.

If a child wants to invite only boys, or only Christians, or only Europeans, or only close friends, or everybody but the one Muslim lesbian girl in a wheelchair in his/her class, because his/her parents don't want wheelchairs in their home, the child is FREE TO DO SO.

Just NOT ON SCHOOL PREMISES.

The parents in this case are the ones who have chosen to make a great big honking deal out of it. They could have avoided the entire situation by FOLLOWING THE RULES.

Helen

you sound like my type of mum LOL I love no hassle and my kids aren't allowed sleep over either!!!


Cripes mine are deprived aren't they pmsl

well think kathryns just about summed it up lol.

Kathryn

There are no such rules in my daughters school here in England

Children are free to give out party invites in the playground before or after school, to whom they want to, and allowed to bring them into class, to be distributed as they line up to go out to the playground to be met by parents & carers.

We even have a special lunchtime table on a Friday where we pick one child from each class who has behaved well over the week, the choose a friend from the class to join them.

I wonder if the school in Sweden would consider that discrimination ??

probably :o))

Actually, I just remembered the inverse situation of this that I had at the age of 16. Between 13 and 15, every year, my parents had taken me and three friends from school camping in Wales on the weekend nearest my birthday.

But by the time I was 16, the idea of sleepovers had lost its appeal for my friends - they wanted to go out for meals by then. At the time, though, I had been through a period of being borderline anorexic and really hated having to eat in public (it used to make me very stressed) so I mentioned the idea of a sleepover, nobody was bothered so I never officially asked anyone and never really had a sleepover.

My sister only really had one sleepover - her birthday always fell during our long holiday to Anglesey in the summer and she had lots of friends there so my mum let her have parties in the caravan, but she did have one sleepover when she was 15.

As Mildred mentioned, the team picking in games is another good example of dealing with being chosen or not. Because of problems after I was born, I am limited in what I can do with my left arm and hand. At secondary school, our very bright teachers always used to pick four team captains for netball etc who just happened to be in the netball team and they would pick from the rest of the group. I was always amongst the last half dozen to be picked.

Well, Mildred, your school can do what it likes, I guess! Unless and until it runs up against problems, which it doesn't seem to have.

Is it discrimination for a school to reward children who behave well?

Forgive me if I say that's such a silly question I can't even imagine answering it.


Kate's tale of not being picked is likely something most of us have experienced in one way or another, although there always did seem to be those kids who were just perfect in every way ... got good marks, played sports, were attractive to the opposite sex ... I wasn't one of them.

A school allowing children to exclude other children like that, particularly when the child in question is already socialy excluded to some extent, just because that's what children do to other children, is extremely unwise. Not being "picked" for a team conveys a much more negative message than just "you aren't good at this", it conveys "we don't want you".

I don't think it's done that way much anymore.

i always remember the not being picked bit in games.then i figured out i must be good at something.well rounders was it.i learnt to con the players into thinking they knew where the ball was gonna go.then i hit it the other way.once they started picking me ,the teacher let me be team leader.i then picked jill ,a big girl who could,nt run.so i said hit the ball behind you.lol.once in the stinging nettles she could take her time round the posts.were still mates now.and still laugh at what we did.
she got quite good in the end.we had a thing called team work going on.and a rare sense of humour.

quote

"Is it discrimination for a school to reward children who behave well? "

In my opinion no its not discrimination to reward the pupils who work well.

However,would it be seen,if it was in that country, In that school, to be discriminating those children deliberately left out of the fun & games because of adverse behavior ?

My point is, if they feel 2 kids were possibly discriminated purely on the basis of not receiving an invite
How would they view that some of their children may be excluded in fun events AT SCHOOL because of behavior...where would the said children's rights be there then ?

How do they know those children never got an invite on the basis of their own bad behavior towards the birthday child ?

or does every child get included in every fun activity at the school regardless of behavior ?

It just makes me wonder...thats all...

BTW

Kathryn

You will find in England, that many schools welcome the giving out of invitations, after all, parties are part of children's growing up.

Its also accepted that you cannot be picked for everything.

In our school, invites are given out in class at the end of the day, or in the playground before or after school.

As long as the process in school is done whilst the coats and bags have been collected and learning is not disrupted, there is no problem at all.

As for being picked last, yes it still happens in some secondary schools, in some lessons..maybe not all but they do have 5 different lessons a day (with different teachers).

I used to be picked last, i wasn't popular, neither was my mate. I went through a tough time in my early teens watching mum battle cancer, and later die from it, I was shy (still am) nervous and embarrassed.

My friend and I often laughed as adults about being last.

It hasnt scarred me at all., I grew up, and got more confident. The bully who tried to take the cake I made for my ill mum had more impact, I never forgot that, but I did move on.

I do appreciate all are not the same and some it may make an impact, but I would imagine there is much more to each case as when adult issues come into our lives, school issues (albeit bullying) tend to fade away and become less important.

Mildred ... do you know what discrimination means?

It doesn't mean rewarding someone for his/her good behaviour while not rewarding someone for less good behaviour.

So ...

"However,would it be seen,if it was in that country, In that school, to be discriminating those children deliberately left out of the fun & games because of adverse behavior?"

-- I just really don't think so, do you?

I think schools have to be, and are, much more senstive to things that could adversely affect children's development than they used to be. I think they properly try to reward children for a range of good behaviours, not just in areas that certain children excel at and others don't.

Good behaviour is something that all children can excel at, even those who are crap at sports and crap at academics. Even a child with behavioural problems who actually makes an effort and shows improvement can be rewarded that way.

"How do they know those children never got an invite on the basis of their own bad behavior towards the birthday child?"

IT DOESN'T MATTER. Yeeeeesh. The child was doing something on school premises that is NOT PERMITTED on school premises. It doesn't matter WHY the child did it. It was NOT PERMITTED.

The child was absolutely perfectly entirely free as the free-est bird to go hand out those invitations to whomever s/he pleased OFF school premises.

The effect on excluded children could be just as bad -- but there's nothing a school can do about things that go on out of school. All it can do is try to teach children about the harms their behaviours can cause ... and hope their parents aren't meanwhile teaching them to be vile, bigoted, cliquish bullies, I guess.

"My friend and I often laughed as adults about being last."

I reconnected with a friend I hadn't seen in 35 years a while ago. She and I were both unpopular, unattractive, unathletic eggheads throughout school. Well, except that right at the end, I turned really cute and ran away to university and threw myself into feminism and political organizing and everything else the tail end of the 60s had to offer, and had all the boys I could eat for a long time. She never did. She has always been the socially awkward, unattractive, working class kid we both were all those years ago, excluded by the rich kids with straightened teeth and lithe bodies and backyard swimming pools we went to school with -- despite her Ph.D. and obvious acomplishment in her life, and obvious value as a person. And she still suffers the pain of her childhood. Not everybody gets over it. And the fact is that I never really got over it either.

And the fact that people get over it really doesn't mean that anyone should have to go through it.

And if schools making rules to prevent it being done on school premises has even a little persuasive effect on kids and thier parents, then I think that's fine.

The point is, even though it wasn't permitted, they let the child give them out anyway...AND only intervened when they realised not all the kids had got an invite.

Maybe the boy & his parents felt the discrimination rule diddnt apply, as they felt they were not discriminating against the children concerned, but rather it being a personal choice of choosing friends only. ?
Remember we are talking 8 year olds here !

If it wasn't allowed then they should have been told to give them out after school, instead it was allowed to happen even then it should have been left there after the child being told to hand them out after school.instead of going to parliament, which I'm afraid will have more adverse affects on all the children concerned than not being picked for a school sports team or the like


DISCRIMINATION
treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the GROUP, CLASS, or CATEGORY to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.

Dont say anything about
Not inviting peers because of a row or clash of personalities, nor does it say anything about not inviting another child because the birthday boy was snubbed himself by him regarding his party.

I wonder if the second boy in question was told he was discriminating his peer when he failed to invite him to his party...most likely not !