Bully and party invite

[bonnieweelass]

My DD is going to be 9 in a few weeks and is at school in scotland. There are two classes for her age group due to pupil numbers and every year they tend to change pupils around. There's another wee girl (let's call her jenny) who until this year, with the exception of primary 1, has been in the other class.

Jenny has taken a real dislike to my DD this year. Kicking, pulling hair, shouting, scratching. DD has not yet retaliated but I worry it will happen as she's getting more wound up by jenny.

Jenny's mum until this year was a teacher at the school but now teaches elsewhere.

I've spoken to the school twice now both by phone and by letter. Most recent call was yesterday so will see if anything changes. Both girls were spoken to apparently but Jenny refused to apologise or shake hands DD tells me.

However DD has given out her party invites. I told her not to exclude Jenny because she needs to be kind even if Jenny is not. DH number on the invite and we've just had this text from Jenny's mum:

"I am texting you with regards to the invitation we have received to your child's party. Jenny will not be attending this party".

I'm a bit as there's no "thank you" or "sorry" and it's all really formal, not even mentioning DDs name which she knows having taught DD two years ago.

DH has not replied, he's just shrugged his shoulders and said "tossers".

What do MNetters think?

Haven't RTFT can't be arsed with the sniping but maybe OPs DD wanted to be the bigger person and invite Jenny, or maybe she just didn't want to exclude anyone. I'm sure if OPs DD had been distressed at the idea of Jenny coming, she wouldn't have been invited. shock horror, maybe a mother knows her child better than the MN mafia

I agree with others that it seems like you have had a lucky escape. I'm with you about not excluding children - I had 45 children attend my twin's 5th birthday party as I did not want to leave anyone out!
But at the same time, you have mentioned 'Jenny' has been both physically and verbally abusive to your daughter. You sound really lovely so I am sure you didn't mean to - but the message you just gave to your daughter is if someone is physically and verbally abusive to you, that you should do your best to stay nice to them and keep them in your life.
I try and give a message to my children that they shouldn't write friends off if they are not perfectly well behaved all the time to them - people have bad days and everyone makes mistakes. But for children who are regularly verbally and physically abusive to them....that they should stay well clear of them.
I'm not sure I have the right formula obviously - but I'm trying to encourage my children to choose relationships which are positive and nurturing to them as opposed to those which could be destructive and negative.
I appreciate you are coming from a good place - but at the end of the day you will still be a good person if you keep your daughter's emotional and physical health as your priority - I'm sure 'Jenny's' mum will do the same for her.

You could hang on to the text and if the bullying happens again ask the school if someone has spoken to jenny's parents (and what have they said?) "because we got a very rude text when we invited jenny to DD's party because we were trying to build bridges - looky here! - it's almost as if she thinks DD has been bullying Jenny. Can you explain?"

Saor - the OP has never said her dd was OK with the bully being invited - that would be very important piece of information, so I doubt she would have left it out. Hence, I suspect her dd was not happy to invite the bully.

The OP was, however, pretty concerned about how the bully and her mum would perceive it, if the bully were excluded from the party.

We can only judge on the information we are given - and from the information we have here, I doubt that you are right about the OP's dd being happy to have her bully at her birthday party. As the victim of bullies myself, I cannot imagine ever wanting to socialise with them - why would I?

Why do you think any child would want their bully at their party?

I've only read the first page. My reply would have been "that's a relief". But then I don't like bullies and wouldn't have invited her even if she was the only one. Balls to what anyone else thought.

I don't, and I know full well what it's like to be bullied and unfortunately, so do my kids. Personally I don't think excluding a bully would have been horrible, but I commend the OP for trying to include her. I think if her DD had been distressed by the idea she would have mentioned it.

To be honest, I think this is the usual MN bunfight, where posters add arms and legs to the OP to get into a scrap. Ironic really, on a post about bullying, that it's descended into a playground farce.

I doubt the OP would have said that her dd was distressed by the bully being invited.

Imagine the response if she said "Dd was very unhappy about having to invite the bully, but I insisted" - people would surely have told her how horrible it was, to force your unhappy child to invite their bully to their party!

So maybe she wasn't distressed???
I haven't a clue whether she was or wasn't, I just thought that tempering the ridiculous "OP is a horrible mother and clearly doesn't give a shit about her own child" type posts with a different option.

If she wasn't distressed, I'm sure the OP would have said - because it would have support d her decision. The fact she hasn't said it, says pretty clearly to me that her dd didn't want the girl at her party, and probably was upset.

I just cannot imagine any child being happy to invite their bully to their party. At best, they might say they were, to please their parents - but I cannot comprehend why any parent would choose to reward their child's bully with a party invitation, and wouldn't see what a dreadful and unkind message this would send to their own child.

My son's bully has invited my boy to his party soon. (Last incident was just a few days ago when he strangled my lad) It's a whole class invited sort of thing and as much as I would love to say, "No thanks, I don't want the birthday boy putting another permanent scar on my child to match the other three" I shall be making an reasonable excuse and giving a small gift because "taking the high road" etc . The school have actually stopped telling me of the incidents now (bully's mummy's a teacher too) so I assume the anti-bullying policy only applies to other kids. I rely on DS telling me. I hate bullies.

In this instance I would be very tempted to reply "Great! Thanks for letting me know! 😁😁" Let her take that however she wants. It's not like you guys wanna be friends, right?

Mykids why on earth are you buying a present!!! Just decline politely if you want to keep the moral high ground.

Hi all, DD says Jenny has been "quite nice" those past few days, but still keeping an eye on it. School have given DD a certificate for kindness towards others...methinks they are trying to shut me up maybe?

as for the party, slightly off topic, but any party bag filler ideas for 9/10 yo kids? no cheap tat, something a bit more age appropriate?

Bonnieweelass. Can my DD have Jenny's invite then? I'm the OP of the other thread that's been mentioned

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2826807-DD-is-the-only-child-in-her-class-not-invited-to-a-party

and I agree with you, I couldn't leave just one child out either, I would just be keeping my fingers crossed that they wouldn't come.

And no, AmeliaJack, my DD has never hit, bit, scratched or kicked anyone. If I have rose tinted glasses then so must every teacher she's ever had. Yes, posters on my thread have only my word for that and gave me advice and support on the information I provided.

Yes the mother is rude

But on the up side at least you know the bully will not be coming to your party and surely that's a relief?

Multi pack of books from book people
Cake
Balloon (pre write thank you for coming on it)

yes I discussed with my DD and she said she didn't want Jenny coming. I pointed out Jenny would be the only child not invited and if that would be a nice thing to do. I know some on here disagree with Jenny being invited but I didn't push DD, I just encouraged her to think about it and she came back and said she didn't think it would be nice to leave Jenny out. I do encourage DD to be kind and not nasty in return.

Party bags - by that sort of age, I was doing a bagful of sweets - I couldn't afford very spendy party bag stuff, and most of the inexpensive stuff was cheap tat (back then, anyway). I used to go to Poundland and get packs of nice sweets like smarties, and make up selection bags - for what I used to spend on plastic tut, I could give a generous bag of sweets.

One year I bought each child at ds2's party an art kit, and explained this was instead of the party bags. One little girl handed it back and said she'd rather have the party bag - I had to explain it wasn't an either-or situation - or it was, but it was art toy or nothing, not art toy or party bag. I really hadn't thought it through.

I went back to sweets after that.

Always being kind in return will not help your dd in future. Be kind when you meet someone- yes, be kind to your friends and families- yes, be kind to people as a general default- yes, but being kind to bullies/people who are mean does nobody any favours.

All it does is send a message to your dd that her feelings are worth less than the bullies, this is a terrible lesson. What happens in the future if she has a bullying co-worker or boss, an abusive partner? It says to her she should worry about their feelings before her own!

My sisters and I were brought up like this, as adults we have confessed to each other that all of us went further with various boys over the years than we wanted to because 'we didn't want to hurt their feelings' as we'd been taught to be kind always. Unfortunately there are literally thousands of people who are out there to take advantage of kind people so you need to start now, validating her feelings and say that actually if someone is unkind to you especially on a regular basis you owe that person nothing and to stand up for herself.

I think that you are unreasonable to force your child to not only face her bully in her own home (her safe space) but to actually have to invite her there.

There is nothing less like being on the "moral high ground" when you tell your child that her bully's feelings are more important than hers.

AmeliaJack, I guess because he's only 5 years old and it's not his fault he's a total thug. His family are all completely ineffective parents/grandparents. Not one would dream of actually telling him off (no SN by the way) for bad behaviour. They know he's violent as the school teachers discuss his behaviour that day, every single day upon pick up. They don't however speak to me or the other mums anymore unless their child is marked. And even then it's not a guarantee that they'll be spoken to.

OP, Party bags I would highly recommend little girly jewellery pieces and lip balms. 9 and 10 year old girls love that stuff. Claire's accessories always have a good sale on for things like that. It's certainly better than the old go to items like a balloon, a whistle, bouncy ball and colouring pencils....

I don't think telling my daughter to be kind will lead to her being unable to say no to boys...thanks for that!

there's been quite a few OTT and hurtful things said.

Thanks to the supportful few.