AITA: Mom called out online for not inviting son's autistic classmate to his birthday party

If there’s one thing Reddit’s Am I The A**hole? forum does well, it’s holding up a mirror to folks who might be a little blind to their own bad behavior.

Case in point: a mom who decided to invite every child in her son’s 10th-grade class to his birthday party—except one. The boy she excluded was a “high-functioning autistic” classmate named David. As you can imagine, the internet was not having it.

Mom excludes autistic child from son's birthday guest list

The woman and her husband planned a big birthday bash at a noisy arcade for their 10-year-old son. She made invitations, gave them to her son to hand out to his classmates (all 15 of them), and deliberately left David off the guest list.

Her reasons? She heard a rumor about David having a "meltdown" at another child's birthday party. She thought the environment might not be suitable for him—because, you know, it’s loud. 

In her Reddit post, she explained, “David is a high-functioning autistic child who was put in my son’s class to help him socialize and to help the other kids learn to not discriminate against special needs people... From what I know about him and his mother, they are just doing their best, and I have nothing against either of them. However, there have been incidents with David before.”

“Last year, through friends, I had heard that David had a meltdown at another party he was invited to. I don’t know if I believe it, but parents who were there say that it was because he wanted to open presents like the birthday boy and when told no, freaked out. There are other logistical problems as well (The party will be in a loud arcade) so in the end I decided to not invite David," she said.

She added that she didn’t even confirm the rumor with David’s mom, nor did she consider reaching out to discuss the arcade situation.

Unsurprisingly, word spread like wildfire that David was the only kid excluded. And when David’s mom found out, she went straight to the source and called the poster “awful” — accusing her of teaching her son to discriminate.

"Well, after my son passed the invitations word spread around that we had excluded the special needs child in his class. This got back to David's mother who called me last night and confronted me about this. She told me that I am awful for excluding her son and that I'm teaching my son to discriminate," she continued.

"When I brought up the logistics and the past incident she told me that I'm an a--hole for assuming what her son can and can't do before hanging up. I woke up this morning to a passive-aggressive post by her and many other parents are siding with her."

Feeling the heat, the birthday boy’s mom turned to Reddit for validation, “I just want my son to have a good party and didn’t mean anything by this. AITA?”

Redditors deliver a reality check to the mom

One Redditor called out the woman for not even trying to talk to David’s parents or find a middle ground.

“YTA [You’re The A**hole]. Look, I understand your concern about the meltdown. But you could have spoken to his parents beforehand about the environment and potential ways to mitigate that; you could have spoken to your son’s teacher to see if s/he has advice for how David is in group situations," they said.

“This would have been a good chance to teach your son to include people, and instead, you taught him it’s okay to exclude someone if their disability makes your fun time slightly more difficult," they added.

Another Redditor wrote, “YTA. This happened to my son A LOT when he was younger. It's hurtful to deliberately exclude with no warning. For anything my son was invited to I would either go and stay with him, leaving early if needs be, or if I checked out the venue in advance and thought it wouldn't be practical I would decline the invite but say thank you. Excluding on the basis of a disability isn't something to teach your child. You could have discussed it with his teachers first if nothing else.”

Someone else fumed, “YTA. How cruel. Yeah, it's your party. You can invite who you want. But how f---ing cruel. If you don't want the autistic kid to come, then only invite a few kids from the class. But to invite everyone except him? That's monstrous.”

One comment read, “100% YTA. If you really cared about David's wellbeing at the party you could have contacted his mother to understand how to help him. His mom's right in saying you can't just assume what's best for David as you've only heard rumors. You're discriminating against this kid and using fake empathy as an excuse for it.”

Another Redditor wrote, “YTA. I was an autistic child who got excluded from a lot of birthday parties. It is horrible to know that you weren’t allowed to go and have fun with everybody else in class because of something you cannot control. Especially as your son and his classmates will likely talk about his party, so this poor boy will have to hear all about the party he didn’t get to go to.”

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.