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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP version 1 of story:

"The school counselor must have said something to their teacher and teacher said something to child. The other mom reached out to both the school and me. I declined the meeting and said to the other mom that this is not a big deal and hope girls can work it out themselves."

Op version 2 of story:

"I declined to have a meeting with the school. I had 2 conversations with parents, including one with the father. The father called and went to the school. The teacher called me after the father went to the school as did the school counselor. Even their teacher told me she was surprised the family requested a school meeting. I told the mom that they were making a small event bigger than it needs to be. I did not log a complaint against their kid."

OP this is inconsistent and leads me to believe you are not telling the full story OR that you are a bad communicator generally which has contributed to this issue.

Also now I am wondering what the underlying issue is. I am now thinking of a situation with one of my kids that was originally described as excluding behavior but turned out to be something more complicated. I actually did still land on "let's see if the kids can work this out on their own" and in the end it did work out and was a growth experience for my child for sure and hopefully for the other child as well. But it was very useful as a parent to have gotten the full story from my kid, the other parents, AND the school because everyone had different information and sharing that info helped everyone better understand what was happening and support both kids through the situation.[/quote]

In attempts to be anonymous, I was trying to be vague but I realized that it sounded like I never even spoke to the parents so I added more detail.

From our side, there is nothing more to the story. [b]Girls were friends. Then the girl stopped talking to my daughter and excluded her so she basically dropped my child as a friend.[/b] My daughter was upset over this. School has counseling sessions. It is more like a class during advisory.

When I spoke to both the teacher and counselor, I actually told them they seems to be making the situation worse, not better by involving parents and that is when the teacher said they never contacted the other parents. It was them. I guess the girl had a version she told her parents where she may have gotten in trouble for being mean to my daughter. [/quote]

[b]You are missing info. The other girl did not wake up one morning and decide to start randomly not talking to your daughter and excluding her. Something prompted this. You might not care what it was, but there was an inciting event. That event might involve your daughter being less than perfect. Or it may be no one's fault but help explain the other girl's behavior.[/b]

Once my daughter was accused by another child of "excluding." I was concerned about this so spoke to my kid, the teacher, and the other child's parents. What came out was that the other child was trying to force my kid to play with her by saying "if you don't play with me, no one will" and then she would cry. My daughter felt guilty when this happened so she would play with the girl, but felt resentful especially because this meant she could not play with other kids. Over time that resentment led to her engaging in excluding. So it was complicated. My daughter *was* excluding, and was not acceptable. But the other child was being manipulative and trying to coerce my kid into being friends with her (and only her). It was a dysfunctional situation and both kids needed to learn better ways to deal with conflict.

You assumed your daughter's version of events was complete and correct, and you are assuming that the other girl must have told her parents' a version that wasn't true. In reality, both girls likely told an abbreviated version that omitted details that made them look bad. That's why it's helpful to compare notes and talk it out, which is what the other parents wanted to do. By refusing to do that, you've made them wary of you and made it harder if there are ever future issues between the girls. So they didn't want to bring their daughter to your daughter's birthday because it probably seemed like a can of worms. You think their daughter was 100% at fault for the conflict, their daughter is saying that's not true, it's understandable they wouldn't be eager to bring their daughter to your house.

I suspect no matter what we say, you will dig in and insist you are right and they are wrong. Well, there you go. Your daughter will also learn this way of behaving, and will be unyielding and noncommunicative with friends when they have issues and try to solve them through talking. Expect this scenario to repeat itself in different ways throughout your life and hers.[/quote]

I mean, they're 8.  Do you have any recollection of friend dynamics when you were 8?  I got glasses when I was 8 and some rando girl in my class branded me a dork and that was enough for my BF at the time to drop me.

I would have accepted the meeting though.[/quote]

Yes, that is what your 8-yr-old self perceived. Understandably!

However, as an adult and a parent, your job is not to see the situation simplistically through your child's eyes. Your job is to use the decades of extra experience you have in life to see the situation more clearly. The "rando girl" in your class called you a dork for reasons. Nothing you did, it had to do with what was going on with her, internally. If a teacher or parent wanted to stop that behavior, they would need to know what those reasons were. Likewise, when your BF dropped you because the other girl called you a dork, there was a reason for that too. Again, your BF's parent or teacher may have benefitted from learning more about that situation in order to figure out why she would drop a close friend all of a sudden.

I am very familiar with 8-yr-old girl relationship issues and I know they actually have a lot to do with the insecurities, jealousies, fears, and anxieties that girls will carry into puberty and likely beyond. Probing into some of their conflicts, talking them out, and providing them with skills for addressing friend problems or working through their own difficult feelings is one of the BEST things you and do for girls at this age. Assuming their interpersonal conflicts are random or unimportant because of our cultural tendency to discount the feelings of children (especially female children) sets kids up for repeating these patterns as they age.[/quote]

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