Sad about party

[Tenero2311]

Hi everybody, my daughter is 9 years old , and we live abroad ( I’m from U.K. ) she goes to a school where the local language is not the first language spoken by the kids eg They might speak English or German etc ( so basically they concentrate on learning French ) to get the kids up to a good standard. DD is a very polite and kind little girl , she’s an only child ( ivf ) she is still quite young in some ways , as opposed to some girls in her class who have phones and go to places on their own without their parents. Anyway this morning whilst going to school she told DH that one of the girls in class is having a birthday party today and that the other girls were going but she isn’t invited , even though she gets on with this girl . DD tends to play on her own a bit , but the teacher said she’s not worried as she is friendly and popular . The thing is there’s only ten kids in the class 5 boys and 5 girls . I just feel really sad as she said “ i would have loved to go , but it’s ok ..” she is a bit shy and I do take her to two groups outside school to try and help with that . Hope I don’t sound entitled but I couldn’t leave one little girl out .

You don’t live in Switzerland do you? Where the culture norm is to have as many guests (including yourself) as your age? ie. 9th birthday, 8 guests plus you?

I’d send a birthday present and card in to school with your daughter.
It will either a) encourage friendship b) alert the parents that they missed a girl (especially as she has only been invited to boys parties) or c) kill them with kindness

Im sorry this happened. I’m pretty strict with my kids, they either have just 5 people, all the girls or the whole class (30 children), no inbetween. I also check with the teacher that we haven’t left anyone out of a specific friendship group when having smaller parties/sleepovers.

@User13579367337 · Today 09:17
I wouldn’t straight away put it down to malice. I did it myself 2 years running just out of accidental ignorance. My dd has a class of 30, there’s 21 boys and 9 girls! I didnt even realise the numbers because my heads up my arse 99% of the time, especially on the school run. In year 1 and 2 my DD’s party was in a soft play centre and there had to be a minimum of 8 kids, it’s bloody expensive so I paid for the minimum of 8 and had my dd choose 7 of her school friends to invite. There was 1 girl she didn’t really play with so she got left out both times. Given your circumstances there could be all sorts of reasons why your dd might not have been invited
@escapethemaze · Today 16:41
what about be other girl who wasn’t invited?

Escapethemaze,
DD+7 = 8, so 1 of the 9 girls was left out, not 2 .... my apologies in advance if you realised that and I've misunderstood your sentence;

User13579367337,
How did it all go in the end when you eventually realised, and presumably reached out to the parents of the excluded girl? (Hopefully the same girl hadn't been left out by others too, and it was just an unfortunate blip.)

This is genius, I'd also invite the whole class to your daughter's next party, girls, so the parents know about her and hopefully insist on returning the favour and boys in case the girls decide not to come en masse.

This has also happened to me. Possibly a bit later, maybe 11/12.
I was invited because my brother was, and these kids used to be my friends, but we had drifted...
They ended up actually going into a different room to play, and excluding me completely. So I was on my own in a different room, hearing them all play and have fun.

This happened on 2 birthday parties, close together. I remember I cried quite a bit, I was so upset.

Even remembering it now is bringing tears to my eyes (and Im 40, so this wasnt recent)

I think Id rather have stayed home, at least the rejection wouldnt be quite so "in your face"

I think you need to step up and get to know these parents. When my kids were young and new at their new school, I made connections with the parents and invited other kids over. You cannot just leave it to the other kids and their parents to do right by your child.

Are the other parents native English speakers as well? Or could they be holding off a bit from mixing with other parents because they don't have a common language?

It's quite common for ex-pat parents to have their kids translating for them as they get older.

I genuinely see both sides to this. Generally speaking most people you come across are nice, but not everyone will turn into a friend. It takes more than nice to blossom into a relationship. Your daughter is cordial but hasn’t progressed and made friendships yet, which is why she wasn’t invited. Equally, you haven’t made much of an effort to get to know the other parents or children, so it seems the other children are closer to each other/their families. Now that doesn’t mean it’s kind to leave your daughter out, but equally I don’t think it’s malicious. I think see this as a reflective moment, and put more effort into cultivating friendships and building your child’s confidence

Oh my gosh. That makes my heart break these kinds of stories.

I would say that you and her and going to go and have the most amazing day!!! Then ask her what she’d like to do the most and do that if you can.

make it’s special

Exactly, pity invites or inviting everyone in the class can be insincere. Having an invite doesn’t mean the children will automatically bond and spend the day together. Things like this can happen.

@SpideyVerse

DD+7 = 8, so 1 of the 9 girls was left out, not 2 .... my apologies in advance if you realised that and I've misunderstood your sentence;

That was wrong. Poor child. To be the only one not invited in the class because you and the birthday girl don’t play together generally would have hurt her nonetheless. All the girls talking about it etc.

This

The ball is in your court. A year has passed and beyond passing on your number to the teacher to give to one parent - nothing seems to have been done. Invite them all over for bowling and pizza and go from there

Same her the french do not invite the english to parties. It's just the way it is.

That was always my DC too. One or two were never invited to single sex parties and one was always my DC. It is really hard for us, as parents, to see happening. If anything it made my DC separate even more from the group and not want to mix although I was always told DC was popular.
Things did turn around as they got older and old friendships fell apart and new ones were formed. But DC never formed a bond with the single sex crowd who had left them out.
We started with whole class parties ourselves for the first three or four years to try to encourage friendships (and in the hope that invitations would be reciprocated to be truthful) but it didn't happen until the end of primary by which time it was too late and DC had written that group off.

The thing is there’s only ten kids in the class 5 boys and 5 girls

That’s a really tough dynamic for kids. It’s quite a lot to expect all the girls to be friends just because there are so few of them.

My DD2 went straight into 6ème with no French and the collège gave her individual French lessons - they didn't have funding for a specialist FLE (French as a foreign language) teacher, but they cobbled something together with various subject teachers who spoke good English. She's now in 3ème (different collège) and close to the top of the class in French. If you can find a collège with a UPE2A section that's even better, assuming you've arrived in the country recently enough to qualify.

So in DD2's first collège, she was taught French well, but socially it was a bit of a disaster. She's changed schools and is doing well, but sometimes you just have to go elsewhere if the girls are all in a big gang which yours is excluded from. In our case there was bullying as well, which is of course often the outcome when isolation leaves a child vulnerable. I'd keep an eye on the situation, although it doesn't sound that bad yet.

THIS!!!!

OP this is completely your fault for not trying to make any connection with either parents or invite kids to your house in the year that your daughter has been to the school. Why do you expect them to invite your daughter if you make zero effort to get to know them?

OP this is completely your fault for not trying to make any connection with either parents or invite kids to your house in the year that your daughter has been to the school. Why do you expect them to invite your daughter if you make zero effort to get to know them? You say it like it's easy as a foreigner in another country. Maybe the OP isn't fluent in German or French and the other parents aren't fluent in English. I moved from England to Spain 5 years ago and I was really lucky as DP is Spanish and from the area, so the integration process was much easier for me. Se foreigners here never really integrate fully. Even here play dates are unusual. Not everywhere is like the U.K.

I do feel for you OP. Once my DD been told by friend A that she's not been invited by her "best friend"'s birthday party she was crying!
At age 7, everything arranged by their parents, not much you can do.
Maybe you can break the ice try to invite someone first?

Aw that’s difficult. Sadly this happened to my son at primary school. One of the girls in his friendship group organised a party to Go Ape, but when she gave out the invitations my son was the only boy in the group not invited and she made a point of telling him he was not invited. I felt so bad for him. He handled it really well and brushed it off better than I did.

What a load of bull. Her daughter is at school not her. I know a couple of parents from my kids class that I would say hi to but I don’t socialise with them. The parent of the birthday girl is at fault but it could have been a misunderstanding.

Before arranging a meetup for the girls, I suggest talking with the teacher about how to go about it. The teacher knows the real deal admittedly or not. It would be disappointing to invite the girls over and have none of them show up.

It’s horrible when things like this happen, but I promise it’s hurting you more than her. I would never allow either of my 2 to miss someone out in a small class size and used to say it’s only 1 person or all of them (8 girls in DD class) but realised other parents didn’t check or couldn’t care less if one was left out. Mine are both adults now but I remember those feelings xx

It sounds to me like maybe she gets on better with the boys?…. There’s nothing wrong with that and maybe pizza and bowling with the boys in class is more enjoyable than sat around at a sleepover anyway?!…
My DD always wanted a sleepover… everyone we had here was a failure, with them wanting to go home at 2am and me either walking them home or having to call their mum!!… and the only sleep over my DD has had resulted in her either being left out and falling out with the 2 other girls on a mammoth scale or being kept awake by silliness till 5am on a Saturday night then being too tired still by Monday for school…. She herself now has made herself a no sleepover rule and says she’d rather I picked her up at midnight or something… and she’s never invited anyone else to ours as doesn’t want the drama 😂
win win for me though!!…

As she was invited to the boy’s parties,I wonder if the girls are jealous?
My heart aches for her. You sound a lovely mum and that’s worth a thousand times of being invited to a party.