What would you do - dd excluded by so-called “friends”

[Notcontent]

Sorry, this is the usual scenario and probably nothing I can do... My DD is in year 8. She’s been in a little group of friends, with two girls in particular that she felt close to and considered her best friends. Well, it seems that they obviously don’t feel the same way about DD - it turns about that a couple of weeks ago they had a sleepover with one other girls that DD wasn’t invited to. DD rationalised it in her head by thinking maybe it was about numbers or something. But tonight there was something they were attending after school. But there was a gap before this event started and one of the girls let it slip to DD that they were going to get something to eat - but DD wasn’t invited.

I think DD is really devastated as she feels (probably rightly) that these girls don’t actually consider her a friend. She has been so happy at school because of the friendships she thought she had and now it’s been taken away from her...

I remember this happening to me decades ago when I was part of a threesome group. It wasn’t bullying in my case - it was immature girls who no longer wanted to be friends with me and were trying to freeze me out/drop “hints”. For whatever reason, they didn’t pick a fight with me to end the friendship and instead set about excluding me from after school stuff for weeks while still pretending to be friends. I finally “caught” them at each other’s house one Saturday afternoon when I went to drop something off.

They were very relieved once I stopped hanging out with them and our friendship was over.

Before running to the school, maybe tell your daughter to back off and stop socialising with them? If they’re quite happy with that, then they just don’t want to be friends. If they try to pull her back into the group, they’re bullying.