DD wants to uninvite a girl from her party

[howtohabdle]

DD aged 8 is in a lovely little friendship group of 4 girls. One girl in the group has never invited DD to her party despite them being best friends. I just assumed she doesn’t have one. We invite her every year just for context. One of the girls from the class had a party today and DD came back excited saying “it’s X’s birthday next weekend am I going?” I told her we haven’t had an invite. She got upset and said all the girls from class are going. I re-assured her that sometimes there’s no space for all children. DD now wants to uninvite her which I discouraged but quite honestly I understand how she feels! I have invited her every year and to find out now she doesn’t invite my child. How nasty of the mum. Why accept our invite every year and not reciprocate.

how would you handle it? I’m thinking from next year not to invite her again. Funny thing is she is so warm when I see her at school events. I just assumed as she works full time in a highly stressful job and I never see her at drop offs and pick ups that she just doesn’t do parties.

I wouldn't uninvite (I'm far too awkward to do that!), but I would want to know what's going on so I can help my child to navigate this seemingly one sided friendship. These things do happen, but I'd want to know why?

Because she’s 8 and doesn’t fully understand the consequences of what could happen and will have to deal with the fallout in school making her situation even worse.

Sometimes people just don’t like your child as much as they like them. You can’t force children to be best friends.

This! Although I’d take out the ‘mights’ and be more assertive.

My friend once uninvited a child to her DD’s birthday party. My friend isn’t British, although she has lived here for many years, and wouldn’t dream of not advocating for her child. My friend phoned the other mum, had a clear and polite chat and the kid was uninvited. No great drama.

I would definitely text the mum and uninvite the child, there’s some great examples of what to write in this thread.

She's 8 it can be explained to her , it's important she learns how to stand up for her self, so she doesn't end up a people pleaser like half of mn.

I like this message, straight and to the point.

I wouldn't uninvite and I wouldn't text to ask why she isn't invited. At age 8 and if your daughter is in the group surely there will be discussions around it and she would say she wasn't invited? Then if it is a mistake it will be rectified.
I have never maliciously not invited certain children for parties. For mine it has been a numbers thing and have let daughter choose who she wanted to invite. Have always assumed the same of others.

Yup, this. Many mums at my dd's primary decided who was coming to their dd's bday parties or who they were friends with.

Don't do this it's awful. If there's been a falling out then your daughter would have told you.

I'm an adult. I have the capacity to handle situations. I've never been in the position to have to uninvite anyone from anything. If my child wanted to uninvite someone that had slighted her to her party, and it was valid, I would let her take the lead in deciding how she would like to let other people treat her.

I haven't said how I would handle the situation. The Op asked what she should send to uninvite her, so that is what I would suggest.

Good grief!! (eye roll) Hope you've managed to unclutch your pearls and calm down after my message.

Dramatic much?

We had a girl like this at my daughters school
she was allowed by her mother to exclude people but happily went to everyone else’s party regardless because all the other mothers were too kind to leave one or two out

She never learnt about give and take or consequences of being unkind and the children read in to this that she was very popular

However at secondary when the children were in charge of friendships she struggled massively with friendships-unless your daughter is behaving badly I think the other child needs to learn the lesson here

i think rather than leave out next year when the situation has changed I would do an add on in a few weeks that can only accommodate a few girls ( horse riding or cinema )

You can't uninvite someone.

And sometimes it is the parents deciding who comes and who does not. I have seen this with my dd. The girl that never invited her, would ALWAYS seek her out in the playground after school and whenever I volunteered at school for sporting event, field trip etc I saw the same thing....she would go up to my dd, want to sit next to her and it was clear she wanted to be friends with her and yet dd never got a party invite

You’re going to have to develop a thicker skin and learn how not to get so wound up about petty disputes. Rise above, hold your head up and teach your daughter to do the same. Resilience is an important life skill, drama is the opposite.

I like this reply

Think this be the best way to deal with this, and you could ask tactfully of course the girl while there, why she doesn’t invite your DD to her party's?

I am not a people pleaser in any way shape or form, but I do know what’s acceptable and what’s not. In this situation you can’t uninvite someone. It’s much worse than not inviting someone at all.

If OP teaches her child it’s okay to uninvite someone if they do something she doesn’t like then warn her not to be suprised if someone does she same to her.

id be standing up for my daughter here and asking the mum why she is excluding my daughter ...

Sorry for your loss.

Primary school party invites are a minefield! So much potential for hurt and misunderstanding. Parents getting friendship groups wrong or leaving lists to the whim of their forgetful kids who blow hot and cold on friends from one day to the next.

Unless the girl is bullying your DD I don't think you can uninvite her. At the moment you are the bigger person. It might be this girl gets invited to everything and the mum hasn't twigged who her special group of friends are, or it might be that this girl means more to your DD than vice versa.

This year, try and enjoy the party. Next year, no invite.

I am horribly unforgiving and my DS and his best friend were left off a whole class invite even though party boy had been to DS' small birthday party the week before - and brought along multiple siblings! I never invited the boy back and I also never invited his sister to DD's future parties. So petty I know but it was very hurtful at the time.

The other girl just does not like your daughter much. My son was in a small friendship group and did not like one of the boys in it ( who picked on him for a while). He did invite this boy to his parties as he realised it would make the friendship dynamics difficult if he didn’t ( I explained he did not need to invite this boy if he didn’t want to but he was adamant he had to). In the long term, him and this boy did become properly friends, so my son did know best that he shouldn’t burn bridges. I am glad I listened to him.

But my point is, , just because kids are in a friendship group, it does not mean all those kids like each other. Often the groups form because one more popular kid likes two different kids so draws them into a friendship group, but those two kids never really like each other. Friendship dynamics can be difficult. (And I don’t know why people think it’s simpler with boys, there’s been a whole load at drama throughout my eldest boys junior school friendships!)

Me too, I think if you’re going to say anything then this is the best however I’m always inclined to leave these things alone and let children navigate their own friendships. You definitely can’t uninvite the girl. I personally would explain to my daughter that it’s up to the person hosting the party who they invite and not to take it personally, just focus on enjoying her own party where she has decided the guest list and will hopefully have a great time.

I think it’s very sad that grown adults are encouraging their children to play the tit for tat game.

As a child, I only ever attended 2 birthday parties because my mum wouldn’t allow anyone to visit our house so I never had friends over and definitely not a birthday party. (No extended family to visit either.) In fact my first and only birthday party was my 40th that my husband organised.

My mum suffered from severe anxiety although other school mums wouldn’t have known that as someone else took me and collected me from school.

This only happened once, to one of my children.

The boy was always at our house, and came to ds's parties, and his mum was always asking me for favours - taking him to swimming, picking him up from football.

When I discovered that he was having a really big party in his garden - so no restrictions on numbers - and that ds wasn't invited, I was quite hurt. DS wasn't bothered.

I'm not the confrontational type but the next time she asked me for a favour I said 'I've always helped out because I thought they were friends but when ds wasn't invited to your party I realised that mustn't be the case so, from now on, I won't be able to help out with lifts.' It felt good. Assertive.

@lemonmeringueno3 did you get a response to that?

Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an admin error, either the Mum accidentally missed your daughter while doing the invites or it got lost and is languishing in the bottom of someone’s school bag. I would text to double check.