Neighborhood mom upset her daughter was not invited to birthday party

[Anonymous]

This is one of those "you made your choice, accept the consequences" situations. OP chose to have an extremely fancy party and limit invitations in a way that pretty much guaranteed that the 4th neighbor girl would feel left out. That was OP's choice and arguably not unreasonable. But OP has to live with the ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE consequences of the girl feeling left out and the mother talking about it.

You don't get to both throw exclusive parties, and not have people hurt and upset when they don't get invited to your exclusive parties.

Agree with other PPs that the person you really hurt was your DD. You should have considered the social dynamics and allowed her to invite neighbor #4.

[Anonymous]

OP Here. Thanks for the replies. I will not confront the mom, I wasn't planning on doing that anyway, I was just annoyed by what she was saying. I will let it blow over. To clarify, there are tons of kids in my neighborhood. My daughter has known the two girls that were invited for a bit over 5 years. The three of them are close. If my daughter had only chosen one of them I would have told her that the other one needed to be part of the 10 or that neither could be part of the 10 because including only one would be plain mean, the three are close. The new girl likes to play with them, and they do play together, but it's just not the same bond. My daughter likes her, but not as close as her other friends (even those who were not invited.) BTW, there are other girls in our neighborhood that come to play with my daughter and he two friends, but not as often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to coach your daughter to politely respond to other children “I was turning 10, so I was only allowed invite 9 people”. She doesn’t have to justify why she picked the 9 she did.

When you see the other mom, you need to say “I heard Larla was sad that she was not invited to the party. I’m sorry we could not invite everyone, we only allowed Princess to invite 9 people, including her cousin.”
If the mom balks or is a bitch about it and has the guts to say you should have made sure that the 4 neighborhood kids were part of the 8 - just say “we set the limit and respected Princess’s choices”

Life is going to be hard for the other mom if she holds onto this grudge.

You have no obligation to invite everybody in the neighborhood or scale back the party or do whatever it is that society thinks you need to do. You had a party for your daughter with certain limits and that's fine. Life happens and not everybody gets to be included in everything.

True, but the consequences of what OP and her daughter did include people talking about them excluding one 10 year old girl. Just as life happens and that girl was left out, life happens and neighbors may now have a poorer opinion of OP and her daughter. One thing that always annoys me about people excusing sh**ty behavior as "life happens" is that those people usually aren't willing to accept that "life happens" also means they have to deal with the fall out of their sh**ty behavior.

This all sounds like something out of Big Little Lies, btw...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to coach your daughter to politely respond to other children “I was turning 10, so I was only allowed invite 9 people”. She doesn’t have to justify why she picked the 9 she did.

When you see the other mom, you need to say “I heard Larla was sad that she was not invited to the party. I’m sorry we could not invite everyone, we only allowed Princess to invite 9 people, including her cousin.”
If the mom balks or is a bitch about it and has the guts to say you should have made sure that the 4 neighborhood kids were part of the 8 - just say “we set the limit and respected Princess’s choices”

Life is going to be hard for the other mom if she holds onto this grudge.

You have no obligation to invite everybody in the neighborhood or scale back the party or do whatever it is that society thinks you need to do. You had a party for your daughter with certain limits and that's fine. Life happens and not everybody gets to be included in everything.

That's true. And the natural consequences of that is that the excluded ones feel hurt and may talk about how they feel to others. That might be a natural consequence that OP is ok with for herself, but what about her daughter?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It wasn't very nice, but it's done. You created an exclusive birthday party and even lavished them with fancy gift bags (that would prove they were there and make other girls jealous).

Are you a preschool mom?

Bybaround second grade kids start hosting smaller birthday parties.

By age ten, the parties are almost all just close friends of the birthday kid. OPs partybis a notmal size with a normal type invite list (a few from sports, oldest friend, a couple from school and a couple from the neighborhood.

Whether it is a fancy party or an informal home party, burthday kid can pick her guests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of those "you made your choice, accept the consequences" situations. OP chose to have an extremely fancy party and limit invitations in a way that pretty much guaranteed that the 4th neighbor girl would feel left out. That was OP's choice and arguably not unreasonable. But OP has to live with the ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE consequences of the girl feeling left out and the mother talking about it.

You don't get to both throw exclusive parties, and not have people hurt and upset when they don't get invited to your exclusive parties.

Agree with other PPs that the person you really hurt was your DD. You should have considered the social dynamics and allowed her to invite neighbor #4.

You people are nuts. From what OP wrote it seems her daughter plays with this girl, but is not close with her. If she had added another girl, what makes you think her daughter would have chosen girl #4 and not another mate from school? I have a 15 and a 12 year old and we throw small parties for their birthdays every year. Only a few (usually 8-10) are invited. It gets more and more exclusive as kids grow and make closer friendships. It is part of growing up and a lesson to learn, you can't be part of everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:... She invited ... 3 neighborhood friends... In the neighborhood my daughter plays with 4 girls. She is close with 2 of them and we have all been neighbors for 5 years.

Based on the original post it sounded like her daughter + 4 neighborhood girls play together, 3 of which were invited -- the 2 she is close with and a third.

Of course, OP's post has introduced new details and new math, so I'm sure the original post was inaccurate and the neighborhood is suddenly teaming with 10 year old girls.

[Anonymous]

5 girls in the neighborhood play together (inclduing your daughter) and you excluded 1? You should not have included the third girl since your daughter was closer to only 2 of the 4. Leaving out one person in a group is extraordinarily mean spirited.


http://www.worldpulse.com/en/community/users/kujamac12/posts/64595

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:... She invited ... 3 neighborhood friends... In the neighborhood my daughter plays with 4 girls. She is close with 2 of them and we have all been neighbors for 5 years.

Based on the original post it sounded like her daughter + 4 neighborhood girls play together, 3 of which were invited -- the 2 she is close with and a third.

Of course, OP's post has introduced new details and new math, so I'm sure the original post was inaccurate and the neighborhood is suddenly teaming with 10 year old girls.

Since OP is clearly not a reliable narrator, I'm going with OP and her daughter were being mean about this whole situation based on the fact that multiple people from her neighborhood, who know the actual math and circumstances, are saying she acted poorly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to coach your daughter to politely respond to other children “I was turning 10, so I was only allowed invite 9 people”. She doesn’t have to justify why she picked the 9 she did.

When you see the other mom, you need to say “I heard Larla was sad that she was not invited to the party. I’m sorry we could not invite everyone, we only allowed Princess to invite 9 people, including her cousin.”
If the mom balks or is a bitch about it and has the guts to say you should have made sure that the 4 neighborhood kids were part of the 8 - just say “we set the limit and respected Princess’s choices”

Life is going to be hard for the other mom if she holds onto this grudge.

You have no obligation to invite everybody in the neighborhood or scale back the party or do whatever it is that society thinks you need to do. You had a party for your daughter with certain limits and that's fine. Life happens and not everybody gets to be included in everything.

True, but the consequences of what OP and her daughter did include people talking about them excluding one 10 year old girl. Just as life happens and that girl was left out, life happens and neighbors may now have a poorer opinion of OP and her daughter. One thing that always annoys me about people excusing sh**ty behavior as "life happens" is that those people usually aren't willing to accept that "life happens" also means they have to deal with the fall out of their sh**ty behavior.

This all sounds like something out of Big Little Lies, btw...

Got excluded from too many parties, huh? What OP did was not "sh**ty" behaviour. Small parties are normal for 9 and up kids. There are even smaller parties of only 5 kids. It is inevitable that some kids will not get invited when parties are that small. It happens to all.

[Anonymous]

When only 1 girl in the neighborhood did not receive an invite and they all know each other and play together, the 1 girl who got excluded is going to feel like crap. You're trying to justify all this to us, but this doesn't change how your decision made the girl feel. Maybe try to see things from their point of view. And in the future, perhaps this will help you make more compassionate decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP Here. Thanks for the replies. I will not confront the mom, I wasn't planning on doing that anyway, I was just annoyed by what she was saying. I will let it blow over. To clarify, there are tons of kids in my neighborhood. My daughter has known the two girls that were invited for a bit over 5 years. The three of them are close. If my daughter had only chosen one of them I would have told her that the other one needed to be part of the 10 or that neither could be part of the 10 because including only one would be plain mean, the three are close. The new girl likes to play with them, and they do play together, but it's just not the same bond. My daughter likes her, but not as close as her other friends (even those who were not invited.) BTW, there are other girls in our neighborhood that come to play with my daughter and he two friends, but not as often.

The 3 girls who have known each other forever have included the 4th new girl in their regular play together. I'm sure that the new girl was happy to make 3 friends like that. In fact, since she's new, these girls might be her only friends so far. To be excluded from a party invite would have stung. Think of how your own daughter would have felt if she was the new kid on the block and that had happened to her.

It's understandable that you wanted this to be a special party for your daughter and it's understandable that you had to limit your invite list but it is also completely understandable why the new girl was hurt by the exclusion. It was wrong of the other mother to complain to other neighbors about it. Although remember that this mom is new, too, and maybe she was trying to figure out what, if anything, she or her daughter had done to be left out.

[Anonymous]

I don't necessarily think it was wrong to not invite the 1 girl, but I do think this could have been an opportunity for OP and her DD to be gracious and discreet about this kind of thing. It's the polite thing to do. OP's post makes me think it didn't play out this way which is why it's being discussed in the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

I understand why the girl was hurt, but I also understand you had a limit and that your daughter wanted her closest friends for her birthday. I don't think you did anything wrong, but growing up sucks sometimes and these types of parties are very common with older kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't necessarily think it was wrong to not invite the 1 girl, but I do think this could have been an opportunity for OP and her DD to be gracious and discreet about this kind of thing. It's the polite thing to do. OP's post makes me think it didn't play out this way which is why it's being discussed in the neighborhood.

The party was located at an out of the neighborhood venue but the invitees all came to the house afterwards for a sleepover. If the excluded girl lived nearby she probably saw the girls arriving and maybe even playing outside. Possibly the other girls (and maybe even the birthday girl) talked about the party beforehand and afterwards.

I agree with the pps who have stated that something was a bit "in your face" about the whole thing to make other neighbors get offended on the girl's behalf.

Op was probably too involved in party logistics and keeping costs within reason to realize that excluding this neighbor girl would be an awkward thing to do.