Not invited to best friend's party due to weekend clubs

[DisappointedforDD]

DD8 has only just started to make a close group of friends at her school. She was aware a few weeks ago that they were discussing invitations but didn't know what they were for.

She's discovered this week that they are for the birthday party of who she thought was her closest friend in school. They spend every break and lunch play together either playing or chatting. The rest of the group are all going to the party.

She's told me that she didn't get an invitation as she has activities on weekends. This is true, but we have always skipped her clubs in order to attend birthday parties, as I felt that parties were an important part of building and maintaining friendships at that age.

However, in this case we didn't have the option to skip her club as she wasn't given an invitation at all to accept or decline.

Now I know that there might be other reasons - the obvious one being that the other child might not consider the friendship as important. However, from how my DD talks after school this doesn't seem the case and the other child has invited my DD to their house in the past as their 'special friend'.

I'm also aware that the issue might be me and that the parents might not like me. To be honest, I don't know them well but from what I can make out we've always got on well at the school gate. Or at least I thought we had.

DD is obviously very upset, and I'm doing my best to comfort her and focus on other positive things. I also have no plans to mention this to any other parents in the class, let alone the birthday child's parents.

However, I am struggling to understand why she wasn't invited. Is this normal? Would you automatically not invite a close friend of your child to a birthday party because you had heard that they have clubs at the weekend?

Thanks

Maybe the birthday child has lots of other friends you don’t know about - neighbours, family friends, cousins, friends from clubs etc. It sounds like the parents made the call on the invites, so maybe they have focused on their friendships rather than hers. It’s a shame for your child, so I would get her to focus on other friendships or try to build a few more.

She'll probably have been told she can invite ?? Number of friends from school, ?? From gym class and ?? From karate along with siiblings and cousins etc. don't read too much into it.

Sounds like the birthday girl cares about her to make that excuse so I’d view it as a positive. Inviting kids to parties is a minefield when you’re trying not to spend a fortune and it’s probable that as this friendship is new the DP decided to prioritise the more longer standing friendships. It’s also possible that they only prioritised children who previously invited their child - so if you haven’t had a party yet it might get resolved next year.

In any case you need to tell DD that having a party invite (or not) makes no difference - they can still be good friends.

I wonder if it could it be that there is a set number of children allowed and they assumed that your child would decline because of the clubs so rather than have a 'spare' place and then invite another child to fill that space (who might realise they were a 'plan B') they didn't invite your child?

I would take the word of the birthday girl as the reason. They thought your DD would decline because she is busy at weekends and they have limited numbers. It could just be a case of the mum being practical and trying to invite people she thinks will be able to make it.

I wouldn’t overthink it at all

I once forgot to invite one girl from the class, it was a complete error on my part, I didn’t see the other parents much. I thought I’d invited them all.

The mother never spoke to me again.
Not even my daughter had realised we’d missed her friend out, until afterwards

It may be a numbers issue and your DD’s been left off because she’s new. Don’t take it personally, I would perhaps try inviting her around etc and help the relationship flourish. She was invited around, perhaps return the playdate.