Reddit Backs Mom Who Got Scolded By Teacher For Not Inviting 30 Kids To Birthday Party

Birthday parties for kids can be such emotionally charged events. Between the expectations and the food and the gifts and the guest list, it’s almost like throwing a wedding for an 8-year-old. In the case of one mom on Reddit, especially. According to a post on the sub-Reddit group Am I The A**hole, a teacher accused the mom in question of bullying behavior because she didn’t invite her daughter’s entire class to a birthday party. A class of 30 students, mind you.

In her viral Reddit post, the mom of the birthday girl, who she described as a “shy, bookish introvert,” explains that she was trying to plan a special party for her daughter to celebrate. A party that would include just four friends from her class as “some of her classmates are not very nice to her.” As they normally don’t have “an actual giant instagram birthday party,” the plan was to take the birthday girl and her friends to a paint-your-own ceramics activity and have ice cream, especially as she lives in a small apartment.

All appeared to be fine until word got out about the party and her daughter’s teacher got involved. “I got an email from her teacher where she essentially called me out for my ‘lack of inclusivity.’ She said that she had gotten complaints from other kids in her class that my daughter was being a bully for only inviting certain people (re: her close friends) and the teacher told me that now I had to invite the whole class.”

The mom noted on Reddit that she “cannot afford to host a party for 30 kids, or bring 30 kids to an activity. I also was afraid of my daughter getting bullied at her own party and wanted this to be a safe space for her. So I politely told the teacher this and explained that it wasn't even a party but a get together for her closest friends,” but that didn’t stop other parents from emailing her and demanding their children get an invite. To the point where the mom was starting to wonder if she should just host a party at the park to keep the peace.

Reddit users were there to back her up. “It's not bullying to invite a couple friends to a get together, it might be if she invited everyone but a couple people (though it would depend on the people — not inviting a couple of bullies would be understandable for example),” one person commented.

Another person thought perhaps the original poster should consider reporting the teacher to the school board. “OP need to report the teacher. To ask that 25(!) more children gets invited is just a joke. This teacher oversteps so much...,” they commented.

Finally this Reddit user pointed out, “Many elementary schools have a policy that if invitations are handed out at school, the entire class should be invited. Inviting classmates to a party outside of school is fair game and not something the school should interfere in. I am assuming that since the 4 classmates are close friends, OP knows their parents and they were invited via another method.”

The overwhelming majority of comments sided with this mom’s decision to honor her own daughter’s preferences for her birthday, not simply because the alternative would be too expensive, but also because it was simply what she wanted. And it is, after all, her birthday.