Your kid's party's coming up: venue sorted, food sorted, now all you need are the guests. Write the invitations and get your child to hand them out at school, right? WRONG!
A school in Glegnormley, Belfast, has put an all-out ban on their pupils giving out party invitations – to avoid 'upset and disappointment' to any children who don't happen to get invited to a particular birthday bash or who perhaps get excluded from most of them.
Parents of children at the school received an A4 letter about the new rule, which said:
'We understand that school is the most convenient forum within which to distribute invitations to parties, however we would ask that you distribute invitations out of school time as it can cause upset and disappointment to some children if they don't receive an invitation.'
Perhaps not surprisingly the letter has caused some parents at the school to complain: one, who wished to remain nameless, said: "When you are two parents, working full-time, it is hard to try and organise stuff outside of school. Most of the kids don't have mobile phones or use social networks, so how do you invite your child's friend to a party? You are left to go hunting for addresses or stalk people on Facebook.
"Yes it may be to stop those not getting an invite from getting upset, but you can't wrap the children up in cotton wool until they get out in the real world - they'll not know what hit them.
"Part of the school's job is to prepare the kids for life outside school. Even in primary school. Plus with the cost of parties these days you just can't invite the whole class.
"My child has had a party and we just said who do you want to invite and left it at that. I can't think of any child that has been upset and last night on the school's Facebook group there were around 20 parents all saying the same.
They were just gobsmacked at the total ban."
Here at MadeForMums we do get this parent's point of view, but we can also see how heartbreaking it could be if you're the parent of a child who rarely gets invited to parties and doesn't understand why they're not always included.
What do you think?
Do you think the school is out of order to ban party invites or do they have a fair point? Tell us in the comments below.
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