Tween girls

ARGHHHH BIRTHDAY PARTY ARGHHHHHHH!!!!








Sozlet wants to invite three good friends -- Kay, who is currently back in the BFF slot, A, who I don't think I'd talked about before but who has been a steady friend since kindergarten, and C, new and very promising, to the new Harry Potter movie on opening weekend. (A local theater has this awesome package, a VIP area done up as the Leaky Cauldron, etc.)

Sozlet blabbed about this possibility to Kay and M, who I've talked about before, overheard and freaked. Sozlet spent a bunch of time calming her down but seems to have done so.

Meanwhile, Esse, after a bunch of rollercoastering (she's horrible she's fine she's nice she's horrible) isn't really a close friend anymore, though she is still a friend. Sozlet doesn't want to invite Esse to anything. Sozlet also doesn't want to invoke the wrath of Esse if she fails to invite her.

Then, on top of everything, I asked parents of the three girls (Kay, A, C) about whether it was OK to take the kids to the HP7 movie before issuing any official invitations. A's mom said "yes sounds great!" Kay's mom said "we're in!" C's mom said um no.

So C can't go and I know she really wants to. Do I take A and Kay and sozlet and then do something else with various others? Do something else entirely to spare C? (I really like C.) Sozlet doesn't want M or Esse at any party really but she's just dreading dealing with the fallout. Have like three different gatherings? Who comes to each? (Past C and Kay and R who are her three best friends, there are like 25 people who have approximately equal claim and are likely to be annoyed if she doesn't invite them.)


Gah.

No advice, but I offer my sympathy.

We went through some of this for Yaya's party. What venue will work? How many people to invite? Can we invite only some people from school? Etc.

Is the HP7 event an afternoon/evening/afternoon&evening thingie?

You could try to do one staggered event.

Soz, Kay and A head off to HP7. C (and mebbe 1 other friend - so it's not so obvious that C wasn't allowed to do the HP7 thing?) join them for pizza. Then home and cake (no gifting either direction) with whoever of the 25 wants to show up.

mrs. hamburger did a couple of staggered parties for me when I was in the 10 - 14 range. The 'real' party for a small group of 6 - 10, then whoever wanted cake (and everyone wanted mrs hamburger's butterscotch pound cake) could join in the games we'd be playing outside after the main party.

I assume MomofC said no because it's a HP movie, yes? Is there a different movie that would work?

OTOH, sozlet is still in that age group where inviting "everyone", meaning anyone who might make her life miserable if they're excluded, is important if only to keep the peace. This means that movies are prohibitively expensive for the larger group. I think at that age we were doing more of a movie rental at the house thing with a sleepover for those who wanted to spend the night.

If she really wants to celebrate her birthday with two close friends then maybe a different outing (skating?) would work for both of them.

Oh... I just thought of another group thing we used to do. Bumper bowling. Most bowling alleys have birthday packages for groups. They provide pizza and drink (and bowling, of course), you provide whatever cake/dessert you want to provide. They also have a bowling pin that all the guests sign as a keepsake.

Is there a possibility to have a small party at school? I used to buy treats for
the entire class when Jane had her birthday, so every kid felt kind of "invited"
and her actual party was with just a few kids. She used to tell her not invited friends "My Mom only allows me to invite x amount of friends, but she promised
that next year I can have a bigger party for all and you can come then"....

It wasn't the perfect solution but having a treat at school for everyone sweetened the deal a lot.

MomofC said no because she wants to see the movie first to make sure it's OK, and their weekend is too busy for other stuff. (As in, I said "what about if you see it Friday and we do this package on Saturday instead?" [it's available then too], she said they have other plans on Saturday.)

The thing that made this perfect is that sozlet just finally read the whole Harry Potter series and is absolutely obsessed with all things Harry Potter right now. C was in the exact same situation as sozlet -- able to read it but her parents didn't let her until she was old enough to read the whole thing, content-wise, since they knew she would tear through the whole series. (One thing I like about C is that she's another smarty-pants, and I think sozlet benefits from that, but C is a NICE smarty-pants instead of the volcano smarty-pants that is Esse.) (Volcano + pants a little unfortunate but I'll leave it.)

So, C and Sozlet have been talking Harry Potter all school year. They have like all of the major spells memorized and stuff. C is being Tonks for Halloween.

Since they are only just getting into this, they haven't been part of the whole Harry Potter hype up until now. They've both seen movies 1-6, but on DVD. Etc. (Actually sozlet hasn't seen 6 yet.)

A has been crazy for Harry Potter for as long as we've known her -- she's convinced she's Hermione.

Kay liked Harry Potter already but has been swept along in sozlet and C's new obsession (they do stuff at recess, etc., etc.) and while she hadn't read the books (but had seen movies 1-6) she is now reading them, and loving them. She's on 5 now and likely will finish the series by the time the movie comes out.

So, this is really Harry Potter-specific. But C is the obvious person to go, and she can't.

To add complication, I made it clear in the emails to parents that I was just doing preliminary feelers and wasn't sure what we'd end up doing, so shhh. But A's mom told her and A is SUPER DUPER EXCITED AND CAN'T WAIT.

Sozlet also complicated things by telling Kay about the possibility in earshot of others (she needs to remember that not everyone in the world has to see her to hear her). (She shouldn't have told Kay in the first place though. But I shouldn't have told sozlet if I expected her to not blab to her best friend. Argh.)

At any rate, right now, A, Kay and sozlet love the idea of going to the special showing.

The swarm of kids coming over for cake etc. might work. Every year I ponder whether I should start celebrating sozlet's half-birthday instead of her actual birthday as the weather is invariably miserable (cold and usually wet and drippy in a cold, near-freezing way) around her actual birthday. I'm not sure if the 25 or so in the house doing nothing in particular would work. Oh god. No, it really wouldn't work. (Just Esse is a terror, Esse + others on that list of 25 would wreak absolute havoc in about 30 seconds flat.)

Meanwhile, I plan to go back to see HP7 with captions, I offered to take C and sozlet to that (I'm sure sozlet would want to see it twice unless it's awful) at some point after MomofC has had a chance to see it. (Captions are usually about a week after opening, MomofC thinks that C and her dad will go on Sunday if the MomofC and DadofC viewing on Friday deems it acceptable.)

I'm puzzling over the keep the peace aspect. If she really doesn't want Esse at her party (Esse always seems to find a way to make drama and complication), should she give in because otherwise Esse will pitch a fit? Not sure.

(Definitely at the thinking-aloud phase, thanks all for sympathy and advice!)

Late-breaking thought -- forgo the VIP package and Leaky Cauldron and Harry Potter-themed games et al (it really does sound so cool though!) and take a group of girls to the movie AFTER opening weekend. I can still do HP-themed stuff at home.

And that still depends on C's parents giving the go-ahead after the movie, which they might not.

Oh and we do that too, yes, but there is usually an expectation of another party outside of school too.

By the way, Esse didn't invite sozlet to her last birthday party. That was intended as a dig, but sozlet, in typical sozlet fashion, let it pass and didn't do anything in particular about it. I also don't want to do tit-for-tat though, especially since it was such a dig.


(The drama.)

We've done the party with a few friends staying over thing for Ducky in the past and it seems to have worked. He's a boy though. (BTW, this thread is a great read and I'm sorry I missed it the first time. Even Ducky is having social issues that are kind of similar and Ducklet will be 9 in December and she's a bit of a weirdo socially, though nowhere near like I was.)

Can you do a simple pizza party but keep K and A after everyone else goes home? Then do the movie thing. It sucks that C can't go but them's the breaks.

Oh, well, that makes it a lot harder for me to advocate the "keep the peace" party. I still need to read about the social stuff this age group, but I think it may never be too early to teach kids that they don't have to do things they don't want to do just because someone else threatens to be angry with them. If she doesn't want to invite her and Esse, in this case, has no real reason to feel slighted, she shouldn't. And it's clear that it isn't tit for tat, so Sozlet can just tell her why. "I didn't want to invite you because I wanted to have fun at my party and not worry about whether you would get mad about something stupid." It may be something Esse needs to hear before she hones her emotional blackmail and manipulation skills.

Yeah, that's about where I am too.

Saying that to Esse is definitely lighting a box of dynamite though. Oy, the repercussions.

But yeah, I just hate the idea of giving in because of the probable repercussions.

Will talk to sozlet about it.

There are still non-Esse people she'd want to celebrate with, though.

I think I'm somewhere like:

- Go ahead and take Kay, A, and sozlet to the special movie showing Friday night. Possible sleepover afterwards. (Bonus, these three girls have all been friends with each other since kindergarten and Kay and A are friends independently of sozlet as well. A's a good kid and I think the three dynamic, which I usually avoid, could be OK in this situation.)

- Separately, C and sozlet celebrate (C's mom suggested that C take sozlet to a pottery-painting place as C's present to sozlet and also as a celebration). In addition maybe take those two girls to the movie later (captioned version).

- Separately (!) R comes over for a sleepover and some cake or whatever.

- And then the class party with goodies. (C is in sozlet's class btw, as is M.)

Oh for crap's sake M has to be in there somewhere. (Not so much for repercussions as for the fact that M considers sozlet one of her three best friends and would be genuinely hurt if she wasn't included at all.)

- Separately (!!) I take sozlet and M to do something special. (Sleepovers don't work well with M.)

If sozlet stuck to one group this would all be much simpler but she's the boundary-buster and is friends with a whole lot of people who normally have nothing to do with each other. (C, R, and M don't really know each other at all for example.)

1. Mean what you say. Say what you mean. Follow through, EVERY time.
2. As long as she is doing what you told her to do ignore all the grumbling she does during it.
3. Say yes when you can and NEVER make promises you cannot/may not be able to deliver.
4. Stay involved with her friends, they will rat her out when needed. Sometimes even on accident.
5. Learn to love being told you are mean or act like a prison guard. That is teen slang for "Thank you for keeping me out of prison, rehab or the morgue."

For reference I have 3 teens on the "A" Honor Roll who still give me hugs in public and who's friends LIKE to hang out at my house, Oh, yeah!!....

Oh, almost forgot.... 6.NEVER pass up a chance to brag about your kids. ; )

Um, did you read the thread?

My own kid is actually fine (for now, knock on wood). There were some issues with how her friends were acting.

Thankfully, and maybe temporarily so I don't want to jinx anything, everything seems MUCH smoother now. The person who was the center of most of this (Esse) has moved on to another group and has a new target, and sozlet and her friends are all getting along quite well. (Especially, she and Kay, good friends since kindergarten, are now back on comfortable best friend footing; neither of them are currently good friends with Esse, but they're not enemies either.) (Oh and the non-invitation of Esse to the party seems to have gone by without a blip. The three girls who went to the movie had a BLAST, and sozlet and C had a great time at their own celebration.)

Anyway, re: the specific advice, I agree with most of it. #1 for sure. I think I'd say something about grumbling. Agree with #3 (in general, not just parenting teens/tweens). Agree with #4, not so much for ratting out as to just kind of stay involved (though I won't push). #5 bothers me a little in conjunction with your other post on the "putting a seven-year-old to bed" thread -- I'd much rather that my daughter has the means to self-regulate rather than me having to hover and enforce rules all the time.

Congrats on how well your kids are turning out, though! I bet you leaven your parenting philosophy as laid out so far with humor and nuance in real life.

I responded to original post only as I rarely change my views and have never had anyone openly admit to changing theirs. OP asked for broad advice, I gave mine. I stayed on topic. Not sure of the problem? Are differing views not allowed here?

FYI, Yes, we live with a huge sense of humor and if I had emoticons perhaps that would show... We live in a LARGE city and are a 6th generation Law Enforcement/Public Safety/Army family, my kids have NO IDEA all I know of their activities outside of my home.

You don't have to agree with me, honestly it effects me not. You have your way, I have mine.
Edit....
I honestly did not even realize you were the same person from the 7 year old post. I am sorry if you may have viewed my responding here as a jab.. I RARELY read user names and joined today....

You misunderstood what the original post was about. Which is fine, because it was fairly general. The rest of the thread clarifies.

How do you get all that info on what your kids are doing outside your home?

Edit: no, wasn't taken as a jab, no worries.

Thank you.... I will read the rest of the thread. I am used to a different type of forum, I guess. I am used to getting put on probation for going "off topic".
Sorry, I really was just trying to answer the original question....

My family has over 18 police officers, emergency management officials, FBI agents, a coroner and a couple detectives...all in a three county area. My husband and I are both Paramedic/Firefighters... Everyone knows who our kids are. Mine get away with NOTHING...ha! Neither did I.

Going back to page one, now...to READ. Thanks again for being so nice.

You don't need to read the whole thread... I think I summarized in my first post to you here today. (Mostly, that some of my daughter's friends were being hard to deal with, but that's largely resolved. She's 10.)

Yeah, this forum is pretty freewheeling, you won't need to worry about being put on probation for going off topic.

During this period, children want to be an adult and do not know what it means.
I explained to them
Adult man is responsible, to himself and others.
At all times I showed to believe in them.
Then they were trying to be grown in this way.
Of course, I was controling their behavior but in a way that their was not insulted.

dramadramadramadrama

Triangle time again. Whee. (Not.)

(Kay and C both think they're sozlet's best friend. Kay and C get along fine, but they're very different from each other and she has a different sort of relationship with each of them and while some all-three time is OK, she also wants to spend one-on-one time with each of them. And each one is hurt if they're the one she's NOT spending time with. She's getting pretty stressed out trying to appease them both.)

Oh, yeah.... BTDT and it doesn't get better for a few years yet. Triangles become extremely difficult and stressful. Are there multiple sections of her grade? If so, are they all in the same section?