A dad has taken to social media to reveal how his son's teacher requested that all the students in her class be invited to the boy's birthday party.
I'm sure many of us can remember our old school days when we would run around the playground handing out birthday party invitations to our friends. However, nowadays, it turns out some schools now have a rule in place that means if you want to hand out invitations at school, you need to invite the whole class.
Taking to Reddit under the handle @AITAFOTEACHER, this dad was forced to ask social media users for advice after his son's teacher informed him about the rule.
Providing fake names throughout his story, the dad said that he recently received a call from his six-year-old son's teacher, Ms. Goldbaum. She informed the father that if his son, Al, wanted to invite some members of her class to his birthday party, he would need to invite all his classmates.
The post was titled: "AITA For Telling My Son's Teacher to F*** Off When She Tried to Force Me To Invite 24 Kids to His Birthday Party" - so it's immediately clear that their conversation did not go well.
"She tells me that she understands he is having a birthday party and that he invited a few of his friends from class, but not everyone," the dad explains in his post. "I said yeah, there are a few kids in there that he has problems with and also I don't think we can really handle hosting 24 kids and their parents."
The dad then writes: "She then tells me that there is a rule that if any kids in the class are invited that all kids in the class are invited."
After learning about the rule, the dad says: "I told her it is an event off school hours on private property in my home. She can no more tell me what I do there and who I can and can't invite [any more] than I can decide who is invited to her Thanksgiving dinner."
Ms. Goldbaum explains that the rule is in place to prevent kids getting "their feelings hurt if they get left out".
"I pointed out to her that there are 24 kids in the class," the father continues. "If their parents attend the party with them then that can be upwards of 72 people and I told her that's just not a reasonable thing to ask. I also point out that he has friends from other classes attending, so do I have to invite that whole other class too?"
In response, Ms. Goldbaum tells then dad: "Al is in my class. He is under my supervision. This is my rule."
After the pair go back and forth over the phone, the dad admits he "lost his cool" and told the teacher: "Lady, it's pretty clear that you're too used to bossing around kids who have to listen to you and that you don't seem to understand that your little fiefdom ends at the end of the school day and doesn't go further than schoolhouse gates."
"I am not a 6 year old in your class," the dad continued. "I'm a 38 year old union electrician planning a private event in my own home, off school hours. If you think you're the one to make the rules for me, in my home on which I pay the mortgage on, you can go f**k yourself and there isn't a goddamn thing you can do about it."
The phone call was then ended.
The father adds that although his wife agrees that Ms. Goldbaum is out of line trying to set rules for his own home, she does believe he went "too far" in telling the teacher to "go f**k herself".
Although the father admits that he regrets cursing the teacher out, he says that "someone needed to take her down a peg since she was getting too big for her britches and deserved a lesson about overstepping".
After the father's post went viral on the social media platform, many other Redditors took to the comments section to share their thoughts, with the overwhelming verdict being that he was NTA (not the a**hole).
"NTA, Ms. Goldbaum is ridiculous," one person wrote. "My kid's school policy is that if you don't invite kids to your kid's party, don't expect to get invited to theirs. Common sense."
A second added: "NTA. Stupid rule that's kind of unspoken in elementary schools for some reason. No reason you can be financially or logistically expected to host an entire class."
"NTA, The moment she kept on after you told her no, she earned the f**k off," commented a third.
