About no invite to sleepover

[Scarfitwere]

My daughter is in a small school and her class is only 8 children. All girls. They have small 2-3 person sub friendship groups but also get on well as a class, theyre a nice group. One of the others is having a birthday sleepover and has invited 5 (so six of the class in total will be there) and left out my daughter and one other. Because its such a small school and class this is her (and my!) first experience of something like this. Usually parties are 2s and 3s or its the whole class. My daughter is really upset because she felt this girl was and is her friend. On one hand I do understand her mum limiting the sleepover ( I wouldn't want more than 3 to sleepover at ours personally, it'd be crazy!) But I feel really upset for my daughter. Am I being oversensitive and this stuff happens all the time everywhere else? Or is it reasonable for us both to be a bit upset by it. I've obviously spoken to her and had a chat about not everyone can be invited to everything etc but it's bothering me.

I would invite the other left out girl round as a distraction.

God that's a bit ruthless but I can understand not wanting 7 kids at your house

I'd also be upset but I can see the hosting family's point of view too. If your DD requested a sleepover for her birthday then most parents would try to make it happen and also want to limit numbers. The issue here is how they have limited the numbers. A better number to invite would have been half or less.

But there is nothing you can do about it other than to help your DD manage her feelings and learn from the experience. Not everyone is kind all the time and people have different priorities. In this case the family has prioritised giving their DD the party she wants. Other families would have taken a different approach.

I would reassure your DD that she and party girl are still friends, that not everyone can be invited every time and give her something nice to look forward to when the inevitable discussions at school about the sleepover happen. Things change a lot at primary school age, friendships ebb and flow (as they do through life really). Its something that we all have to deal with at some stage.

Thank you, yes I've been talking to the other mum and we're going to do that :)

Brilliant. !! Make it AWRSOME !!

Awesome ... even

Your DD will have a lovely time with her friend and yes mske it awesome .

The general rule is invite less than half or all so it’s pretty unkind of this other family. I would acknowledge your daughters distress because that it really tough to experience and allow her space to process those feelings - and make it a fab evening with the other girl… and try my best to be pleasant to other mother going forward!

The general rule is invite less than half or all

^

I'd agree with this

What age are they? Sleepovers are kind of intense for little ones

Nobody gets invited to everything. I'm not sure of the age of your child, but doing another sleepover with her and another friend is a great idea. Kids can ebb and flow with friendships. The less you draw attention to the notion of someone being 'excluded' the better.

What age are they all?

They're 9 so not little. It's a tough age!

I'm normally on the 'nobody gets invited all the time' side of these but this is horrible IMO. Leaving out just 2 of the class is rotten behaviour. The Mum should've just said choose 2/3 at a push and that's it. I can't get my head around thinking this is ok.

This is really weird with it being such a small class. My rule is usually:

• whole class
• all boys, no girls (if you are only really friends with boys)
• all girls, no boys (if you are only really friends with girls)
• Whoever you want (boys/girls) but clearly under half the class total (we usually did around 10 of 26)

It's hard though with 8 children. Like wanting 6 good friends, but actually refusing to cope with more than 6 (or potentially having space for only 6) at a sleep over seems very reasonable. In most schools though that would be a quarter or possibly less of the class. It hardly seems fair to say the girl should only invite say 3 or 4, because it's not the kid's fault she has a tiny class.

When we’ve had similar in the past, I’ve booked something for my kids and said that they were invited but I had to decline as we already had plans.

I think that's really mean. My son just had his birthday. We had a small joint one where he picked 3 of his closest friends, known since he was a baby. And we had a small one at home with all of his old preschool friends. We didn't invite any one from his new school because we didn't think it was fair to I vote some and couldn't accomodate the whole group. All the other parents tend to invite the whole class.