Not Inviting 2 Classmates to Birthday Party Led to Complaint to Swedish Parliament

I think it was very wrong of a parent to give his kid invitations to pass out at school, when not all the kids were invited. That is just bad manners. We need to teach our children that they do have the right to invite who they want, yet...discretion and tact should be implied. My daughter is going thru the same issue. There are 36 kids in her class. I told her to invite 5-7 kids to take to the movies. We will be mailing the invites.

The school and teacher have got this absolutely spot on. The venue for the party had obviously not been vetted prior to this (unauthorised) bash, the adults who were to attend had not had their CRB checks processed, the public health department had not given a clean bill of health to their kitchens and the play area for the party was not certificated.

More bizarre assumptions to suit your argument: because the invitations were taken away, the teacher didn’t take him aside. Huh? That association simply doesn’t follow logically. And confiscation, by its nature, is not necessarily permanent – but you've just described it as such, only because it plays into your point of view. (You don’t get your pot back because pot is illegal; invitations are not.)

You’ve been doing this in nearly every post, and it’s bizarre to me that you don’t even see it. Or maybe you do, but you ignore the inconvenience. The thing is, you make some valid points, but they’re really easy to disregard when they’re surrounded by so much nonsense and empty hostility.

Actually, kickinkirby, if the child had the invitations taken away, then the implication is that the teacher did not take him aside and say something to the effect of, "You can't do that here" or "Do it on your own time". The invitations did not go back to the child at the end of the day, as the word "confiscation" implies. If you are driving with an ounce of weed in your car and the cops confiscate it, you aren't getting back are you? I am sure that even if the teacher didn't stand this boy in front of the class and call him a selfish little beast, that if anyone was humiliated and upset, it was that boy. After all, what we do know is that the boy took it pretty hard, and we do know that the invitations were not taken away until after he had handed them out, which means that everyone in the class saw what happened and was in fact, a part of the whole scene. It's not like the teacher saw the invitations in his book bag and took them without making an issue of the whole thing. Nope, she gathered them all up when she saw that two of the kids didn't get one. And yes, that's rude, humiliating, and rotten.

So, while I will admit that yes, I strongly worded my statements, I don't believe that based on the information we have, that it is entirely inaccurate. As far as I am concerned, that teacher is a tool and a harpy.

I'm not worked up over this, personally. I'd be hard pressed to get "worked up" over much. I have fun with stuff until it bores me. I just find it strange how people are quick to defend the two uninvited guests when we have no word on how they even feel about it, and do know that they are not friends of this child. While I also think that the dad would have done better to rip the teacher and school administration a new one, that he is suddenly a jerk for defending his kid who had property stolen from him at the highest level he can is pretty crazy to me. After all, people defend parents who go to stupid lengths for far more frivolous things. And, for all we know, that is the only way to handle it in Sweden. I am not up on Swedish law.

Anyhow, I've been pretty bored with this post for a long time, so I'm done.

"I have made it clear if something is unknown." Uh, nooo, you haven’t at all. I’ve been following these comments since the top, and you’ve attributed all kinds of behavior to the teacher that the article just doesn’t support. For example, just one post earlier: "So this kid is left with no invitations for his friends, an adult humiliating him and dressing him down rather than tactfully explaining what was wrong with what he did." That’s four "facts" in just one sentence, none of which have any apparent basis in truth. And not a clarification to be found.

I've enjoyed watching you and c-dub get yourselves all twisted up over this, and while I don’t really agree with either of you, at least he stuck to the facts of the article. I’m not sure why you’re so bent out of shape about the teacher anyway, since they were doing their job according to school policy. (Sure, you can dispute the policy, but I wouldn’t expect a teacher to violate it on something as small as this, even if they didn’t agree with it.) Hurling absurd insults around like "harpy" and "tool" without any evidence either way just makes you come across like a lunatic.