Aibu to be angry about this - dd left out group/party

[Lago1]

So a bit of background, my daughter is a lovely, yet shy and reserved child, who has been dancing for a few years with a group of girls and has grown in confidence around them. One particular girl, she sees as a good friend and they share another hobby which they do weekly together. This morning at dancing she hears some of the others discussing a sleepover and asked in front of the mum if she can join and the mum says of course. She comes home excited and gets her things ready, then I received a text 15 minutes before I was due to drop her off saying I'm sorry dd doesn't want her to come. Now I know maybe she shouldn't have asked but it was nice to see her confidence and she would have not even considered that her friend didn't want her there and probably thought of it as an oversight. There were no excuses made, and not even any effort to try and protect her feelings in this all. I am so sad for her. Aibu to feel really pissed off?

I can understand how you’d feel as her Mum and the disappointment for your daughter but I would tell my DD not to invite herself to peoples sleepovers, I assume as the girls were discussing the sleepover they already decided they didn’t want to invite your DD. I guess the Mum was put on the spot and her DD may have told her she only wanted the friends there she invited so then had to message you to say that she was now unable to come. I know how it feels OP, I was the girl at school who was never invited to sleepovers, I had a group of 4 friends who never invited me and used to discuss it in front of me and what a great time they had.

YANBU
Your DD texted friend to ask if she had done something to upset her. The reply was that DD hadn't but was just not invited. Sounds like friend and other girls were enjoying a bit of a power trip there. I imagine they will have known exactly what they were doing discussing the sleepover in front of your DD (which was disgusting behaviour btw). I am so sorry that your DD is understandably hurt and confused and I totally understand how you must feel OP. Kids can be cruel at times. I would take your DD for a treat today and tell her not to mention the situation to her "friend" or the other girls. I wouldn't play into their hands and give them the satisfaction of seeing they had upset DD. Oh, and I would stop the lifts and outings with friend too. I really cannot abide takers and users. Hope your DD gets over it quickly and finds new friends.

It's very helpful that they don't go to school together.

From your update whilst it was handled very poorly, this girl is clearly not as friendly with your daughter as she thinks and there is a subset within the dancing group that doesn't include her.

If they had been discreet, it wouldn't have arisen.

I think you need to strongly encourage her to move on to other friends and definitely do not extend any further invites.
Save them for friends that are reciprocal.

Where does the OP say that any other child overheard?

I too suspect it was some powerplay, my dd is so innocent to this type of behaviour, and could never imagine feeling so strongly about a certain individual not coming, unless that person had done something to upset her.

I agree - poor 12 year old girl just wanted to go to the party - she isn’t old enough to understand etiquette about not inviting herself - if I was the other mum I would have told my daughter that she was coming and that was that - how horrible for her to be left out!

@Lago1 but she didn't say it to your daughter. She said it to you. If someone called me to say my DD couldn't come and came up with a random excuse I'd be extremely disbelieving, realise what was afoot and would rather the mum was honest because it would give me the opportunity to ask if there was any backstory I wasn't aware of.

Either way, it's been unfortunate all round and I hope your DD gets past it and enjoys the rest of her weekend.

This is a mess that is primarily of the other Mum's making, she shouldn't have said your daughter could come when she wasn't wanted at this particular sleepover and should have let you know much sooner.

However being at a sleepover that she wasn't welcome at could have been horrible for your daughter so consider that a bullet dodged. I was at at least one sleepover when I was around their age that ended in tears and parents coming to collect their child in the middle of the night and others where a girl didn't go home but probably wished she had.

Friendships are complicated at this age and can be outright brutal, support your daughter in finding other friendships and understanding that just because you consider someone to be your best friend that they don't necessarily feel the same way about you.

How awful for your daughter.

If I was the other mum I would have told my daughter that it would be too cruel to tell your daughter with 15 minutes notice that she couldn't come and used it as a good opportunity to explain about the importance of being kind to people.

Perhaps the other shared hobby & shared lifts have skewed your daughter's perpective on how friendly the other girl is?

Presumably though your daughter has been happy enough to see her even though it isn't reciprocated?

How long has that been going on & have you mentioned it at all before now or have you also been Ok with it because your daughter was?

The great thing is though that she does have other friendship groups & can cultivate those!

Yes, and she said she recently invited herself to her best friends sleepover 😂Her and her best friend know each other from horse riding but go to different schools and when her friend was having a sleepover with her school friends, she asked "can I come" and her friend - because she's an actual friend - said "yeah of course". No drama. We also had on many occasions had girls spontaneously ask if they could stay over at ours, even though it wasn't planned and they weren't originally invited. What the mother did is incredibly rude and hurtful and I would drop this friend immediately.

The way that it was done is pretty hurtful! Yes, perhaps it was a bit tactless of your dd to invite herself (but also very tactless of the others to discuss it in her presence); but the mother could have said 'sorry; not this time' rather than saying yes, and then letting her down at the last minute in this nasty way.

Like some pp, I suspect that it isn't that the friend herself has something against your dd, but that she's under pressure from one or more of the other girls. 12 is a notorious age for this sort of 'ganging up'

(no dd and the other girl don't go to school together, a lot of the other girls going to sleepover do, but there were others exclusively from dancing, but no not everyone)

Crikey how big was this sleepover @Lago1 ?
When I replied earlier saying I thought it was another child trying to muscle in on the friendship who likely didn't want your DD there I thought you were talking about a sleepover of 3 or 4 girls in total but this sounds a much bigger event now!
Most parents I know, unless it's a birthday party, don't allow their DC to have more than 2 or 3 friends at a time for a sleepover

Christ @Lago1 , stop blaming the other mum who was put on the spot. Yes she reacted badly but why didn't you contact her to find out the arrangements when you knew your daughter had invited herself ?
Why didn't your daughter ask the girl herself if they were discussing it in front of her , why wait for the mother to appear ?
You've got to own part of this

Yanbu that mother should not have left one child out. Even though your DD shouldn’t have asked, the mother should realise that her Dd was wrong to leave one friend out and covered it.

My own take on this is that the adult should have followed through and your daughter attended. And then made sure that your daughter was treated well. This is manners. This is how to treat people. This is the kindness adults should model to their children. It's shocking that she's been so cruel to your child. I'm sorry OP. I would be very upset for my child too.

8f the other girl didn't want your daughter there she shouldn't have been talking about the sleepover in front of her. At 12 she's old enough to know that.

I think her mother has behaved rudely as well. No wonder her daughter has bad manners.

The adult shouldn't be forcing her dd to have someone she did not invite to a sleepover.

That's ridiculous.

FFS! You aren't doing your dd any favours OP. Careful YOU don't become a hindrance to your childs social life.
It sounds like this group of girls are an actual friendship group, not just 'dance friends'. Especially if they go to school together. I mean, it's clear they didn't arrange this at dance class so it's something they'd planned and were excited about. Why not? They are 12. There was no exclusion. Just your apparent desperation to insert your child into this group. Feeding off the drama llamas on this thread won't be helping 🤷‍♀️

She didn't leave one child out did she?

Some school friends were invited & some from the dancing.

But she’s a friend and she should be talking to her child about not leaving one person out or at the least not talking about events in front of those not invited.

So this was (a) a best friend (b) she asked the friend herself, not the mother?

Do you not see how the dynamics would be different in a looser friendship group? What did you do when someone from the looser group invited themselves and another member of the party didn't get on with them? We don't always know the details of our childrens friends and acquaintances - I never made mine have an overnight visitor unless I was absolutely sure they wanted them but I had more than one occasion of another child coming to me implying mine had invited them.

@CJsGoldfish I havent said this to dd obviously - I can't be so wildly wrong when so many agree. Though I can see many don't agree and their input is appreciated.

But the other girl never invited her in the first place! Your daughter shouldn't have invited herself.

Stop making such a drama of this or frankly you will be having a nervous breakdown before you get through the teen years.

Teach your daughter not to self invite, partly because its rude, partly to avoid this kind of situation. Put it down to experience and move on, encourage her to broaden her friends. She doesn't even go to school with the other girls - its not surprising if the group dynamics overlap in different ways.

And frankly teaching girls to put up with overnight guests they don't want to "bekind" is a really, really bad message to give them.