The Guest List.

My soon to be six year old is a very social boy.  He really likes and gets along with everyone.  This is truly one of his strong points.  He plays family with the girls as easily as he plays Star Wars with the boys.  He's never has only one tight group of friends and he's never shy or worried about entering a new group.  He's always been this way, ever since he was a little baby.  This has always been a source of pride for me.  Until now.

I've spent the better part of the day planning and working on Zachary's birthday party.  This included finalizing the guest list and emailing out the invitations.  (I used Pingg, BTW, and am really impressed with them.)   Zach's sociability is proving to be a financial liability for us for if we invite every friend that my boy has, the party budget would be through the roof.  As it is, the party costs a certain amount if the party is 25 kids and then goes up if we have 35 kids.  That cost is just for the place and entertainment.  Then you will need to factor in favors, food, drinks, etc.  Par for the course.

For this 6 year old birthday party, including ONLY friends since babyhood and a select few preschool friends, we are already at 25.   We planned for this party to be smaller this year so we didn't include younger friends, friends we don't see very often, we're trying to dissuade siblings...  Zach has already become tight friends with the kids in his K class and wanted to invite them.  He basically wanted to invite everyone -- except one boy.

This one boy is the bane of Zach's existence.  Just his very being bothers Zach to no end.

At first, they were friends.  They both like Super Mario Brothers!  They both had the same shirt!  They both went to the same swimming class during the summer!  They both live in Venice!  Yippee!!  But then something turned.

I think it was during D.E.A.R. time (Drop Everything And Read).  This is a time before the real school day begins when the parents can come into the classroom and read with their kids.  It's a lovely way for all of us to begin the day.  Well, once I was reading with Zach and this boy didn't have a parent there.  He wanted to join us and that was all well and good.  I tried to give both boys equal attention and that was a huge mistake.  Major backfire.  By the end of our reading, Zach was so jealous that he deemed this boy no longer his friend.  Aloud.  "I don't like him," he actually said.  I had to get a teacher to intervene!  Honestly, I didn't know what to do! He's allowed to not like someone, but not allowed to hurt feelings...what do you do?!

He started coming home saying this boy smelled bad.  He'd complain about this boy often.  One day, my husband did the DEAR time and while there witnessed Zach GROWL at the boy.  The boy told my husband that Zach was always mean to him.  Another day, while I was in the classroom, this boy came up asking me when we were going to have a playdate.  I tried to put him off and said I'd need to talk to his mom and then out it came.

"Ummm...excuse me?"
"Yes?"
"Ummm...Zach is really disruptive all the time in class and he's mean to the teachers and he gets sent out all the time."
Pause.
"Ummm, ok, [boy's name].  Thanks for telling me that."

This boy is a tattletale.  This boy isn't making any friends.

I ran into one of Zach's teachers and she assured me this was not the case and Zach was actually having a really good day.  (p.s. Zach IS really disruptive all the time.  That's just him.)

So back to the birthday party.  We've decided to bite the bullet and allow for up to 35 kids (OY!).  We STILL cannot invite the whole class unless a lot of other people fall out.  I decided the best way to do this was to just invite all the boys.  There are eight girls in Zach's class that I know Zach wants to have there; all of them over the annoying boy.

When I told Zach about my decision to break up the invites by boys/girls, he growled.  He immediately asked about the boy.  I said yes, he's invited but maybe he won't come.  I tried to explain about how we don't have to like everybody but we do need to be good people.  We don't want to hurt people's feelings, we don't want people to feel left out, and we need to try our best to be good friends.  I told him, if the boy does come, he can just say hello to him and then ignore him for the rest of the time.  He said, "He's just a weirdo trying to bother me all the time."  And then he cried.

So what do we do?  I'll tell you what I did.  I told him there are A LOT of weirdos trying to bother ALL of us all the time and all we can do is smile and try to be a nice person.  My baby HATES this boy.  Innocence lost.