It’s difficult to not get defensive and maybe a little combative when someone messes with your kid, especially if you’re dealing with a perpetual bully. If they’re young kids, you might approach their parents and discuss the behavior issue.

Hopefully, this conversation leads to the other parent talking to their kid about why their behavior isn’t exactly “the vibe” and that they need to alter their actions accordingly. Because they’re human beings and young, most children will probably need to be taught that lesson several times over.

But if you don’t reinforce this lesson persistently, your actions would demonstrate to other parents that you don’t care enough about raising your kids to not be bullies.

That’s what Redditor @Opposite-Leg2854 said happened with her daughter, Payton, and her school bully.

Op said Payton goes to a relatively small school and she only has about 20 or so kids in her grade. Presumably that means all of the parents know each other and word gets out fairly quickly about how the kids treat one another.

So, OP was very aware of Payton’s bully, who had given her child trouble “several times.” As Payton’s birthday party approached, OP decided to invite everyone in her daughter’s grade except the bully, because she wanted her daughter to have a good time.

The problem is, OP is known for throwing wildly awesome birthday parties and all of Payton’s elementary school friends and acquaintances were excited for the shindig. Everyone except her bully, of course, who was feeling some type of way for being left out of her celebration.

Normally, it wouldn’t be surprising that anyone who was a total jerkface to someone on multiple occasions would not be invited to their birthday party. But that hadn’t dawned on Payton’s bully, either because she’s a child or because her parents never taught her that if you’re mean to someone they usually won’t want to do nice things for you.

Once the bully’s mom heard that her kid wasn’t invited to the party but wanted to go very badly, she attempted to talk to OP about the situation, hoping Payton’s parents could find it in their heart to extend an invitation to the bully because she was feeling left out.

However, OP explained to the bully’s mom that she really just wanted to make sure her daughter had a great time at her own birthday party and unfortunately having her child there would make her really uncomfortable.

The bully’s mom wanted to know whether a letter of apology from her kid would suffice as entry to the birthday party, but OP still declined. This created some bad blood between OP and the bully’s mom, so the Redditor wanted to know whether she was in the wrong for standing her ground.

Tons of other Redditors chimed in in the comments section, stating that OP was right; it would’ve been ultimately detrimental to Payton’s mental well-being to invite the person who’s been bullying her to a day that’s supposed to be all about Payton.

“NTA,” another user concluded. “‘I’m sorry mom, but the time to correct your child’s behavior towards my daughter was ages ago when we had multiple meetings about the way she bullies my kid.’”

This commenter suggested an appropriate response: “With all due respect, your daughter has bullied my daughter…so much so that we have had meetings with the school about it. To date, that behavior has not stopped. Your child is not welcome at the party because of her behavior. My daughter deserves to have her birthday party without having to worry that her bully is going to make fun of her or bully her in any way. I am sorry that your daughter is upset but my responsibility is to look out for my child, not yours.”

“You aren’t teaching your child to be a bully, only to not socialize with bullies,” one user concluded.”Forced apologies aren’t useful to any situation. The other mother needs to move on somewhere. Perhaps take the time to teach her daughter that actions have consequences and no one wants the company of a bully.”

What do you think? Did Payton’s mom make the right move? Or should be have accepted the person’s apology even if it was just to get access to what sounds like a sweet party?