'AITA for not inviting the child of a mom I chat with at school pickup to my son's party?'
"AITA for not inviting the child of a mom I chat with to my son's party?"
Last week, my son sent out invitations to a Halloween party to a small group of kids at his school. He’s in grade 1, so I wrote the names of the children he wanted to invite, and limited him to 8 kids due to space constraints in our house and goodie bag item quantities.
On Thursday, one of the moms I frequently chat with at school pickup asked if we had any Halloween plans, so I absentmindedly mentioned the party, not immediately realizing her son hadn’t been one of the names my son mentioned when creating the invites.
To be fair, we do chat frequently after school as the mom and I have some things in common. However, our kids have never really hung out together and my son never really mentions wanting to. Nothing against her kid, from the limited interactions we’ve had he seems great.
But regardless, he was not invited and I didn’t really want to have to go pick up more goodie bag things (they come in packs of 8 for a lot of items I bought) and find another chair to squish into the corner of my 8- person table.
Today, I got a text from her asking if her son did something wrong, or if we were excluding him for some reason. Apparently she told her kid about the party after our conversation Thursday, and the kid was hyped to come and talked to my son about it at school the next day.
And since I was clear with my son about the capacity limits, he told him he wasn’t invited. (My son isn’t the best socially and was likely pretty deadpan and honest with the delivery, which I can see being a problem here too) The moms now under the impression I’ve un-invited or excluded her kid, which just isn’t the case.
So, AITA for mentioning the party her kid wasn’t invited to during our daily chats at school pickup, or is it unreasonable for her to just assume her kids invited when our kids never hang out and she didn’t actually get an invitation to start with?
Also do I just invite this kid now and deal with the hassle the extra kid brings? I’m worried this will turn into a bigger issue socially, and the optics likely aren’t great either.
Here's what commenters had to say.
Rookie mistake. Never talk about parties in front of parents unless you have an envelope in your hand.
YTA for mentioning the party. I too would have assumed you were talking to me about it because my kid was invited because otherwise that is a really rude thing to do.
YTA. Why would you mention an upcoming party to someone who was not invited?? That was rude and hurtful.
I think the mistake was mentioning the party without considering that she might tell her son, not keeping the guest list small. She's understandably upset that her child got excited and then felt excluded, but she also shouldn't assume an invitation was implied. Apologize for the misunderstanding, explain the space limits, and don't add another child unless you're comfortable doing so.
OP later shared this update.
I didn’t expect this to blow up so badly, a lot of folks are assuming a lot of things in the comments so I’ll just throw this here. I did end up inviting the other kid, I just felt it was weirdly presumptuous for her to assume a passing comment about weekend plans was an invite.
My explanation of the party favours and table space was to explain why we capped at 8 instead of inviting the whole class, but given this situation it’s not the end of the world.
I am also autistic and this is probably the first party since I was in elementary school that I’ve been involved with that isn’t just a family party, but I appreciate all the info and explanation of social etiquette I was definitely missing. Hadn’t realized that if someone talks about a thing they’re doing that they’re inviting you to do that thing.
I'm getting downvoted a bunch for saying I don’t have the kids addresses, and I think this may be a regional issue? Only about a third of the kids my son is friends with have a parent pick them up at the bell, others take the bus or are in after school programs, so school is the only real option for getting invites out. I don’t have any of the parents contact info because this is his first party.