Parents rudeness

[happymom92]

Dear daughter is 4.5, reception class. She went to a trampoline park with my sister on saturday because I was working that day and by pure coincidence she met some of her class friends there.
One of them was having a birthday party(basically a booked table or 2 with a few adults and kids in a open space area). So ofc my DD was playing with her classmates and going to their table. The birthday girl mum ignored my daughter and literally turn her back on my daughter and offered all the other kids a slice of pizza. My sister noticed that and tried to remove her from there.
After a while ofc they had cake with Elsa(my daughter’s favourite character) and she was crying and being so upset why she can’t join them celebrate her friend’s birthday and have some cake too.
I do know she had no obligation whatsoever to include my daughter, but I just find it so rude and cruel to act like this with a 4 year old, especially being from the same class. I could never do it. I am thinking to privately message her or put a message on the parents group class(not giving names ofc) that we should all be nicer people(clearly she isn’t), maybe to learn something for the future. Am I overreacting? Should I just let it go and not stir things up and make it awkward when we meet eachother at school pick ups

PS in case she didn’t recognise my daughter, one of the other mums invited with her daughter at the party definitely knows my daughter and she didn’t say anything either (not her place to say it, but just for the record )

🎵 Let it go, let it go...🎵

Your sister wasn't supervising properly. Probably scrolling.

Your child saw a party group. She didn't understand that she wasn't invited to the party.
Your sister should have spoken to her.

Your sister was amiss here , not birthday child's parents.

😂

@Citycentre3

I have vast experience of nearly every country on earth, and believe me no one would treat a child like this. It is very damaging to their wellbeing and yes bullying behaviour by adults.

Does your vast experience include countries were 4 year olds are sent out to beg while carrying their younger siblings?
Or where 4 year olds who are lucky enough to go to school, take themselves there while their parents are at work?
Or where 4 year olds are neglected and beaten by their parents?

I am sure they would have been happy to be at the trampoline park even without food.

Where the hell was your sister throughout, OP? She’s close enough to watch DD apparently be shunned but not close enough for the adults at the party to notice or address the random lurking woman. And at no point does she directly walk up and intervene? Sounds like a lesson for her to be more involved when taking a child out rather than rely on other kids to entertain her, and a lesson for you to realise your DD isn’t the center of everyone else’s universe.

Btw - have you even bothered to buy and send over a present to the birthday girl, seeing you think parties should be open to everyone. Or does it only work one way?

If you read my updates, she did intervene. My daughter is not randomly going to other kids just because they have a birthday party and cake. She met with her school friends in the trampoline area and they followed her to sis table and viceversa. The “party” was in the main public cafe where everyone sit and eat, not a separate room.

Read the updates. She did intervene

She didn't need to offer any food, could easily have said ' sorry I've only ordered enough for the children I've brought '. Even if the birthday child had an issue with your daughter, there is no need for parent to be rude to her as a child.

Exactly! That’s what got me angry. You can talk to someone not plainly turning your back on them. I find it rude no matter if you do that to a grown up or child

I did read. She intervened after she watched DD walk from her own table, to a table where there was an active party going. She saw kids being called for lunch but didn’t intervene then. She watched - from afar, seemingly - until it was clear your DD wasn’t getting fed by another group, then she bothered to collect her.

This is all on you and your family making a little girl’s party awkward.

Exactly! That’s what got me angry. You can talk to someone not plainly turning your back on them. I find it rude no matter if you do that to a grown up or child

The other child’s mum shouldn’t have been put I that position. It’s all a bit awkward. It says a lot about you that you’re so hung up on this mum’s ‘rude’ behaviour but seem to think nothing of your sister letting your daughter scrounge food at a party she wasn’t invited to. Your daughter is not at fault. The other mum is not at fault. Your sister is - she would have happily let your daughter join the table for food despite not being invited by the sounds of it - and what’s worrying is it sounds like had you been there you would have acted just like her.

The sister is young and doesn’t have kids, how is she supposed to know mummy mafia etiquette

Exactly! That’s what got me angry. You can talk to someone not plainly turning your back on them. I find it rude no matter if you do that to a grown up or child

You don’t know that that happened, though. The mum might not have seen her at all, or maybe was distracted, or had no idea who she was. Or she might in fact have actually spoken to her nicely and your sister didn’t hear -the sister seems to have been quite far away.

I mean I anyone should really apologise it’s you on behalf of your clueless sister…
‘I just heard about what happened at the trampoline park - I’m sorry, my sister didn’t really think, I know what it’s like organising and running a birthday party! Hope your daughter enjoyed her birthday.’

i don’t think op will ever see this from the party mums perspective.

she won’t even concede that she wasn’t there so doesn’t know exactly what happened

she wants to be outraged.

she has years of confrontation ahead of her. She will rush in to angrily put people in their place without thinking things through.

we all know people like OP.

At 26, I didn't have kids either.
But if I had had a 4 year old in my charge, I wouldn't have let her get involved in the trampoline party, & as soon as I realised they were little friends she knew from school, so would be upset, I'd have whipped her out of there with a distracting promise of ice cream.

Because at 26, it's quite easy to make the correlation between "would I go up to a random party of adults I wasn't invited to & expect inclusion?" & a kids' party.
No. Same 'etiquette' applies, whether you are 4, 26, or 75.

Instead of doing that, OP's 26 year old went into detailed & possibly inventive description of eg backturning & 'rudeness' & wound the OP up enough that she needed to come here to vent. It's what immature (not talking years here either) people do when they are socially embarrassed or caught up in awkwardness - they cast around for somebody else to blame, so they don't have to address the fact that their own coping skills failed.

To be honest it is a new mummy learning curve getting to know how nasty and horrible other mums can be. The sister would not of had a clue she was heading for a cesspit.

Um no... There was a reason your dd wasn't invited. That doesn't give her the right to crash the party. If the other parent is especially considerate, she may explain why if you ask nicely, but she has no obligation to tell you anything.

I get what you are saying, a 4yr doesn't understand and perhaps that's true but this is where you start teaching life lessons. The fact you want to put this off into someone else is a red flag.

YABU.

If I were the party mom, I would have offered your daughter some cake, if there was enough to include her . I actually have done this, a little guy (we didn't know him) noticed we had cupcakes and wanted one. We had plenty, so I gave him one.

That said, the other mother was under no obligation to include your daughter and your sister should have nipped it in the bud.

Okay maybe I overstated it a bit in my original reply but I was looking at it from the perspective of a four year old....or the mother of a four year old (which I am). They get devastated over things that us adults would brush under the carpet. Anyone who has ever been in the situation where your kid comes home from school one day and tells you sadly "nobody would play with me today" and you feel like crying will understand the feeling. Perceived rejection at that age is hard to take. And so for a four year old, seeing a group of kids she thinks of as friends having a party and clearly not being involved or invited would be very, very upsetting to her. Granted, the sister doesn't appear to have handled it ideally but if I put myself and my daughter in that situation in my head, I can see it would be very upsetting for her and thus also for me. I have some empathy for OP in this situation and even more so for her kid, but I do still recognise that party Mum had done nothing wrong tbh.

Hope that makes sense now and I seem like less of a drama queen now!!!

Okay maybe I overstated it a bit in my original reply but I was looking at it from the perspective of a four year old....or the mother of a four year old (which I am)

But why do you think you are the only PP on a parenting site predominantly populated by mothers to be able to consider a 4 year old's perspective? The vast majority of us have, or have had, a 4 year old ...

Handled properly, the DD would only have been upset for a couple of minutes, if her aunt had read the cues & whisked her away with talk of adventure elsewhere.
Can't entirely blame the young & child-inexperienced aunt for that, but I do blame her in over-egging her 'report back' to OP, & the subsequent melodrama that stirred up. It's an everyday storm in a teacup, which the little girl is going to have to learn to navigate in some form or other through her girlhood.