agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 9-year-old daughter is in a small school with only 12 girls in the grade. Last year, seven of the girls had their own Halloween party and group costume. My daughter was not invited. I was quite hurt that a couple of their mothers, whom I consider friends, did not reach out to ask if she wanted to be included. It is clear now that she is in the uncool group. This would be okay, except that her best friend is leaving the school at the end of the year. It means she is left with two friends, who could very well be in the other class.

She has a very strong sense of self, much more than I did at her age, and she doesn’t want to be with the cool kids. I admire this quality so much. I brought up Halloween with one mom, who is now freezing me out, so I never spoke to anyone else. I am concerned that fifth grade will be miserable. My daughter doesn’t know that her best friend is leaving, but she will soon. Should I tell her now? How do I manage her (and my) feelings around this?

—Fed Up With Friend Drama

Dear Friend,

Despite the younger generation’s inarguable progress on so many issues, from gender fluidity to body positivity, the sorting of kids at precisely this age into the “cool ones” and the “uncool ones” remains an intractable part of American childhood. Boy, does it suck. I salute your daughter’s determination to blow off the cool kids, a conviction that I, like you, did not share when I was her age. Instead, I was desperate for innumerable Tims and Jims to laugh at my jokes. It took me a few years to realize that it would be much more fruitful to simply be friends with the kids who wanted to be friends with me.

So, it’s good news that she has reached that conclusion immediately. You may fret that this limits terribly her friend opportunities at such a small school, but even with a bestie departing, there still remain more kids than you might think with whom she can form a bond. You can always chat with her school’s principal about your concern, which might persuade her to ensure that your daughter has a friend in her fifth grade class. You can also improve her odds by signing her up for a few outside-of-school activities where she may encounter kids in other grades or from other schools.

And do your best not to get wrapped up in the social ups and downs of your town’s 9-year-olds. I say this knowing just how badly it hurts a parent to see their child rejected by another child—it happens to all of us. But still, as much as you can, allow her to find her own way, and recognize that she seems to have a good head on her shoulders.

And no—if she doesn’t know that her friend is going to a new school, I would not tell her yet. It’s possible her friend doesn’t even know about the upcoming move, and your daughter should not be the one to break it to her!

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Not surprised the other mom went cold, though. How do you think it would go to tell kids that age that they are required to invite all the girls in the class???

Not even "all the girls" - looks like LW just cares about them inviting LW's daughter!

If daughter doesn't want to be 'with the cool kids' did she even want to go to the party? Doesn't sound like it was her friend group, rather the reverse. Not a recipe for a fun time.

In a class of thirty? I agree.
In a class of twelve? A limited invite does seem a pointed exclusion.

Yes.

It’s half the girls. I can’t see how that’s “pointed”, no more than just inviting one or two friends would be. It’s “we don’t have more chairs in our house than this”.

My feelings on this are probably skewed because one of my kids was bullied and was an outsider and had a very hard time making friends at all until he joined band in the fifth grade. Then he found his people.

My feeling is that in a class of 12 people it is not necessary to exclude anyone. Especially when they are nine years old.

But again, this hit me in my feelingz. Not rational.

Again, this is not a class of 12. This is 12 girls spread across two classes in one grade, which sounds to me like a grade of ~25 kids, the rest of whom are boys.

My feeling is that in a class of 12 people it is not necessary to exclude anyone.

My feeling is that I don't want to break the fire code so my kid can have an extra five kids in my little apartment. (Okay, I don't live in a little apartment, but if I did.)

I apparently misread the letter. I thought it was a class with a total of 12 enrolled.

Except it's unclear whether it's a class that is 12 girls, or that there are only 12 girls in a class that also has boys, and LW is ignoring the number of boys, because of whatever reasons of her own.

I think it's most likely that there are boys too and they aren't mentioned because at that age the girls don't want them at their parties. And while that's still noticeable of course, seven and five out of a total of perhaps twenty when you count the boys? Well, it just doesn't seem that outré. That could very easily happen. Seven is a pretty standard size for a preteen girl clique, and there are five girls not in it, which is almost as many as are in it. If you told me that they invited ten girls and left two out, then okay, that seems deliberate and even vicious on the girls' part. But this just doesn't. It looks plausibly like a normal friend group. Not to say that such a group of nine year olds can't be vicious - in fact I remember how common it was for the 'in' girl group when I was that age to bully or ostracize people at school - but a) their parents are likely to give the benefit of the doubt to the idea that their children simply want to invite their own friends and b) if the girls are determined already who they want to hang out with, then forcing them to invite the others could easily backfire with additional ostracism.

Edited 2024-03-15 14:55 (UTC)

::nod:: that girls and boys are often socially separate at this age, but it's not a universal thing (I was friends with boys at that age). So the mother is already constraining the situation, in ways that may or may not be appropriate for her kid, who doesn't even care about the in group anyway.

I was friends with a few boys at age ten as well, I think, but probably wouldn't have thought of inviting them to a party at that age. Parties just were single-gender for kids that age in my school, except for like, big outdoor picnic style things - barbecues and swim parties and things like that. Comparatively rare, therefore. But that part is probably very much a cultural thing, which might or might not apply.

This is not a class of twelve. There are twelve girls in the grade and two classes per grade. I don’t believe that there are only six kids per class. The rest of the students must be boys. (Or AMAB, anyway.)

What people above said, but also, at that age a Halloween party + group costume is very likely to also involve Trick-or-Treating together, and 7 nine-year-olds is already a very large group for trick-or-treating (not just in terms of supervision, but in terms of, like, the logistics of going up to doors.)

If they have to drive to wherever it is they're trick-or-treating then they might simply have been limited by the number of passenger seats.

Is it just me, or is LW making a mountain out of something aspiring to be a molehill?

Her daughter was not the sole girl excluded from this girls-only party, nor even one of just two kids. Half the class went to the party and half did not. "I refuse to host more than six of your classmates, so make a list" is a perfectly reasonable rule for a parent to make! And it's no evidence that LW's daughter is "in the uncool group" - not that LW seems to care if other children are in this group so long as her daughter isn't.

Nor is her child totally friendless. She has three close friends in her grade. Even when one of them leaves, that still leaves her with two more.

I brought up Halloween with one mom, who is now freezing me out, so I never spoke to anyone else.

I'd be really weirded out if somebody came to me to complain that I excluded her child specifically when that's not at all what seems to have happened. And I would definitely not go out of my way to associate with somebody who is so invested in inventing drama involving our preteens.

I agree 100% (but you probably saw that already from my long-winded comment above, lol).

Neither I nor my sister had two spare friends at age 9 if we'd lost our best pals, either.

I think Mom here wants her kid to be The Popular One and the kid is not into it.

I think Mom is entirely too invested in her child's social life. It'd be one thing if Daughter was friendless or bullied or upset in any way by the situation.

I'm now mostly worried about the one girl who isn't in the party group or LW's kid's friends' group - I hope she hangs out with the boys or knows people at a different school!

She doesn't want to be with the cool kids. She doesn't. Want. To be. With the cool kids.

...so maybe stop labeling them "the cool kids" and aspiring to them on her behalf? Maybe think of them as "that other group of girls" or "[most familiar name]'s group" or "the group that likes [thing daughter doesn't like]"?

I know for a fact that there was another group of girls in my sixth grade class that regarded itself as cool, but I didn't hate them OR aspire to be them. I liked some of them fine and found some of them annoying. I had my own friends. Just like in adult life. My group was slightly smaller, but that made it easier to fit everybody in someone's parent's car for an outing or to fit everybody on the floor of someone's bedroom for a sleepover or etc. We were the book girls, they were the New Kids on the Block girls (yes, I am NKotB years old even though I personally am not NKotB years old). There was a third group of girls and I forget what their deal was. It was fine. At one point my mom wanted to go to the lake with one of the NKotB girls' mom, and we went, and NKotB girl and I and her little sister swam and ate snacks and were nice to each other...and nobody's mom had to call anybody's mom about the basic social structure of the sixth grade.

It was like a taste of adult life, and you can give it to your kid for free. Because I promise, there is not some other group of people I have labeled The Cool Group and wish I was included in, there's just the people I'm friends with, some other people I know, some people I don't know who are living their lives.

The closest I get to "the cool group" feeling as an adult are those rare people who find clothes that fit first try. :D

Alas, I will always be hemming my trousers.

You saying that actually brings some analogues to mind, though! When I was a teenager, I had a semi-close friend whose mom had all kinds of ideas about who she should be friends with, because her mom had been like... a debutante and was friends with all these important, connected, city government, jewelry store owner type people, and all their teenagers had to be invited and my friend had to go to their parties sometimes. From what she said, all of them were pretty much equally indifferent to it. But the weirdest part was when she got married, she had to have two 'rehearsal dinner' parties beforehand. Her mom hired an entire boat and had a fancy expensive one that she had to go to with all these people which was mostly actually for the mom's friends, and then she had arranged a second one for her own guests during the day the next day.

The problem is not the party. The problem, if there is one, is that LW's daughter has limited options for friendship. One group of girls does not like her, and she as no interest in them. Her best friend is leaving. That leaves only two other girls, and we don't know how she feels about them. If she doesn't make friends and is unhappy, LW should consider whether they have the option of a larger school.

That leaves only two other girls, and we don't know how she feels about them.

LW calls them her friends so probably she likes them?

Oh yeah, I misremembered. LW's complaint is that they might be in the other class. Either way, my point remains: If there is a problem—and there may not be—that problem is the lack of potential friends in such a small school.

Also, we don't actually know that they don't like her. They might just not be close friends at this point. There's a huge difference between "we all hate Stacy, let's make fun of Stacy" and "Stacy is off doing her thing with Jill and Andrea, we're doing our thing over here." Some 9yos manage the latter, some don't, but I think it's important for the mom not to project the former if the former is not happening.

And I think responses here make it clear how HARD it is for people not to project experiences, whether it's their own or a previous child's. My next-younger cousin struggled terribly with being the little bird the other chicks pecked at; there were years when she very much only had one friend and if that friend had moved it would have been a disaster. But no one would ever have said she had a strong sense of self or was unbothered or etc.

Yeah, by the time I was nine, I was already firmly of the opinion that the cool kids were uncool, and would have rather been alone with my books and bike than been asked to do the sort of things they did to hang out with them. We didn't dislike each other but we were all uninterested. If I'd been asked to come trick or treating in a NKotB group costume it would have been a hard No. (You'd've had to try very hard to talk me into even TMNT. I was a historically-accurate Ancient Egyptian scarab amulet that year.)

It's one thing if daughter is feeling excluded or lonely, but there's no evidence of that.

Best friends moving is hard (I live next to an Army base, so one of my best friends moved every year) and I think it's worth talking with best friend's mom about why the move is secret from the kids (because if it's not secret from BF too, then Daughter already knows) but that would be hard whether she'd been invited to the Cool Kids party or not.

Primate interactions among kids sometimes trigger primate feelings and reactions in adults. (When I read the book that inspired the Mean Girls movie, I got the distinct impression that the author had an impulse to get in there and compete with the other monkeys.)

This would be a great time for the mom to offer her daughter some non-school social groups - art class, martial arts, someplace where everybody's clique isn't already set in stone.

I was the kind of kid who had a small number of friends, didn't pay any attention to how many friends other people had, *and* would've been very unhappy if I had to go to a large party. And aren't the guidelines these days that a party for an X-year old should have no more than X guests?

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