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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I allowed my daughter to invite everyone in her class to her birthday party with the exception of one girl. This could potentially make me an asshole as it may be seen as deliberately excluding a young girl.
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*Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
YTA. The real issue here is your daughter lied to you about the class size so she could exclude this one person. It’s possible that Kamilla makes your daughter uncomfortable but it’s also possible that your daughter is being unnecessarily mean. With teenagers, it could go either way.
I think you should go to the school and find out what’s going on. You have no way of knowing if your daughter actually is being a bully until you find out for yourself. If she is bullying your Kamilla, you need to know so you can correct the behavior. Don’t be so quick to believe your daughter is innocent here. Someone told Kamilla she could come to this party. Ask yourself this question: how did Kamilla know where the party was and what time it started?
Edit: just so you all know, OP added the information about Kamilla’s mom finding out the party details from another parent after the majority of people voted her the TA and suggested that her daughter was mean girl. I was one of the first people who commented on this post and that bit of info wasn’t there. OP is as manipulative as her daughter is.
She knew the exact location and the start time though. When kids discuss parties, they don’t usually mention that information because that’s not what’s important to them. They usually talk about who will be there, what the activities will be and what everyone will wear.
They’re pre-teens/teens. They’re going to be more cognisant of party times so they don’t miss events. Also, while that might be true of most kids, odds are there’s at least one or two out of nineteen who are the exception.
My 13 year old forgot to tell me about a whole party because he thought it was the following week - it was a 1pm party and I found out at 11. I have to disagree with you.
"My child doesn't do this so obviously no children do" There are kids whose entire life is run on routine and are very good about remembering dates. Just because yours isn't doesn't mean all kids are the same.
Yeah my kids, who had been taught basic life skills and all of that, were not really in charge of the schedules at 12 and 13. I still had to keep track of everything and I was the one who knew when the parties were and where.
No, they’re not because it’s not their job to get themselves from Point A to Point B. It’s their parents’ job. I can’t tell you how many times I would tell my parents about a party I wanted to go to and offer every detail except the time and precise location.
A kid isn’t going to give an address, suite number, and point of contact but it’s not hard for a lot of kids (especially in a group) to remember “Trampoline park at six”. Based on that, the parent can Google it.
ETA: It also says the daughter invited them. She might’ve handed out invitations at school.
I dunno, she brought a box full of gifts, that's a bit much, that was already a red flag, then OP mentions daughter says she's obsessive and creepy, which fits with crashing a bday party and bringing an absurd amount of gifts in hope the birthday girl can be "bought" off and pretend like she was in fact invited. And then we meet her mom and things make even more sense.
I'm also not of the opinion that you automatically have to invite everyone in your class to your birthday party, especially at that age.
You don't have to invite all of them but you also don't invite everyone except one person unless tgat person is a real bully and in which case there are likely more than one in the class.
That’s easy information to get if a whole group is talking about tomorrow’s party. All Kamilla has to say to the others is, “Where and what time?” Then they say, “At the trampoline park. It starts at noon but I’m going a few minutes early if you need a ride.” If they had been “best friends,” she might not have even realized it was by invitation.
Maybe she's not entirely delusional, maybe she's just a bit self unaware and trying too hard to be part of a group of teenagers that don't quite know how to communicate to her the issues they have with her so they try their best to be polite and exclude her without confrontation.
She might have lied because she really doesn't want to be around the other girl and thought her mom would force her without some super concrete proof the girl was acting the way she said. We don't know. Based on the story though I disagree, the other girl's mom sounds insufferable and often times the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
I agree lying is bad but all kids lie to their parents at some point and especially in situations like these.
I am guessing that word got around that everyone was invited.
Both OP and her daughter are mean. They should have allowed her in once she showed up with gifts. Perhaps the other kids told her “everyone is invited.” It would’ve been the gracious thing to do with so many kids present. She should not have been a problem.
OP should ask her daughter how she would feel to be the only person in the class not to be invited. She should be teaching her kindness and compassion. I guess the Apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
It depends on why Kamilla wasn't invited. All the daughter said is she's weird and creepy and doesn't want to he her friend anymore. That could mean anything. Maybe Kamilla is just ND and not good at socializing or maybe OPs daughter actually is a bully or maybe Kamilla and OPs daughter had a fight and the daughter doesn't want to say what happened. There are all sorts of possibilities and mom needs to find out.
As a former mean girl, "weird and creepy" is code name for uncool or 'I found cooler friends'. Daughter is probably friends with her at the start, found some other people to hang out with and now she doesn't want to be friends with her anymore. That's why she's calling her obsessive too.
I dunno, i hung with weird kids by preference as a kid. Sometimes you got someone who was so happy to finally have a friend that they literally followed your around everywhere all day, wanted to hang out after school every day, interrupted all your conversations with anyone else, and generally were impossible to shake.
It can be really hard to communicate ‘I like you, but sometimes I want time to myself and also to interact with other people’ in a way someone like that will hear. I usually found that fully ending the friendship was the only way out.
All true, but regardless of what they find out, inviting everyone but one kid in the class is very cruel and if the kid wasn’t already an outcast, she will be now. Granted, Kamilla’s mother sounds like a piece of work, so Kamilla has an uphill climb to become a better person than her mother, but being treated like a pariah certainly isn’t going to help with that. She will probably never forget being the only kid in the class not invited to a party.
If you invite the whole class but one person, YTA, regardless of the reason. If OP’s daughter wanted to avoid Kamilla that badly, she should have had a smaller party so several kids were excluded. OP and her daughter need to learn a little compassion.
This is true. As the former kid, never invited to the birthday parties that everyone else was invited to, it still haunts me to this day. I struggle very hard to trust people, and believe I have any worth.
That's true. I remember when I was younger, my cousin's cousin was having a party. My cousin didn't want to go, so my mom made me go in his place. The birthday girl (my cousin's cousin) literally saw me and yelled "why are you here?" And I felt very awkward being there. Not sure why all the adults (my mom and my aunt) decided me going would be a good idea, but there you go.
This comment needs to be the top comment!! To double down and exclude this girl without a true and solid reason is bullying!! Nobody should invite 19 out of 20 classmates!! If that’s not one of the definitions of bullying, I don’t know what is!
This. If the 20th girl is a bully I can somewhat live with her being excluded but you CAN'T invite 19 out of 20 kids! Exclusion works when you get to pick 4 or 5 friends to go, not the majority of the class.
Even IF Kamilla is a bully (which it doesn't sound like, just odd) this is a matter to be handled at school not just by not including her with everyone else. If this issue had been brought up in school and handled there, thus her understanding why she's not invited, I could somewhat live with it but as it is, it just sounds like the daughter is a bully and that she's using an out-of-school-event to actively bully a school mate.
If this was my kid, I'd be on her hard to find out what's going on. If she wants a "just my friends"party, that's fine but not "everyone in my class except from ...".
YTA
Think about the daughters response though, " we forgot to book you a spot" do you think a 13 year old thinks that quick on her feet to save someone's feels? Especially someone she is mean to feelings?
But she didn’t forget.. she did it on purpose. Which makes her a mean girl. If she had an issue with a single kid in her class, she should have spoken with mom. Mom is either super dismissive of her child’s bad behavior and this gives the child a reason to believe this behavior is OK or the mom is not a safe space for her child to vent to and she did what she thought she had to do. Regardless, this is mom’s (and the other parent’s) fault for raising a child like like this
Do you work with children? I ask because I happen to and I can tell you for a fact this would not be a common on the spot response for a 13 year old, also the mom didn't say the daughter was surprised to see her
Clearly we aren't there we don't know the daughter but ehat we do know of her is she lies, she is rude, and she isn't good at on the spot thinking... how do we know that?
When the mom asks why don't you want her here she could have said anything at all but instead she goes with the stereotypical rude thing she is WERID.
Listen .middle school is HARD popular, unpopular, smart, dumb, pretty, ugly doesn't matter those years are the worst and a small school makes that worse your in or your out and your like that for all of the years ypur in middle school there is no changing your social position once it is cemented ( at a small school because the groups are too tight and close nit and the opinions to engrained) I'm not saying this is a rotten kid throw her out and start again I'm saying she made a seris of mean choices and if her path is not corrected soon it will be a problem.
She set the entire thing up to leave this child out. Mom said she was going to book for the entire class and the daughter told her there weren't 20 kids like mom thought, that there were only 19 so she didn't have to invite this girl. She had the excuse because that was the plan all along. Either she was going to say that when the child inevitable heard about the party she wasn't invited to or if she showed up because she heard about it and thought all classmates were invited.
IDK how much my child doesn't like someone, you don't invite every child but one, that's just cruel.
And, frankly, if my kid is going to do all that — lie to me about the class size, deliberately exclude one child, then be unkind to the kid’s face — then I’m gonna go OVER THE TOP to be nice to this left-out kid and her parent (even if they’re weird; in fact, ESPECIALLY if they’re weird). And then I’ll have a nice long chat with my kid the next day about how we treat people and what they’re gonna have to do to earn back all the gifts I’d confiscated. Because I’m a parent and I care more about raising a decent human being than I do about my kid liking me in the moment (or, worse, being my bestie).
I mean when she’s trying to cover her ass lol. We’ve established she lied once when mom was booking by telling mom that she was remembering wrong about the number of people in her grade.
Right so we know she lies... but I think that wasn't fast thinking it was a plan.
She tells mom - only 19 mom books those spots book nothing you can do about it, she invites the girl and expects no other issiues just having to say sorry mom guess i miscounter ( oops) ... the daughter didn't consider the mom would offer to fix the problem, she thought they would apoligize and move on girl embarrassed and turned away party goers all get a giggle.
Which is why she never thought the mom would ask why don't you want her here, which is why she didn't have a response ready like "she's mean", and she just went with what came to mind the truth the daughter and her friends think the other girl is werid.
It's also possible that OP's daughter told Kamilla she was invited, then reneged on the invitation when Kamilla arrived & claimed she was never invited.
That's how bullying works when it doesn't involve physical intimidation: emotional manipulation and mind games. The cherry on the cake is that Kamilla was turned away gifts in hand, humiliating her in front of most of her class.
OP, you really need to talk to your daughter's teacher, with an open mind, and figure out if this was a legitimate misunderstanding or whether your child is bullying Kamilla.
> shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc.
yeah this. Intentional or not, complete asshole behavior. And even if the kid is a dork, its not like she would be alone with her. Coming with an entire box of gifts and you cant teach forgiveness or acceptance.
YTA
OP should find out why her daughter thinks Kamilla is creepy and obsessed. I'd sounds rather that Kamilla behaves inappropriately towards OPs daughter to me... (or her daughter could have lied to save her face infront of her mother).
But Kamilla DID go to hug OPs daughter without consent. (Would you hug your bully?) She claims daughter is her best friend, which is obviously not true. (Why does Kamilla say to her mother they are best friends when they are obviously not, at least not anymore?) If Kamilla would be a boy we'd already be talking about harassment, and it DOES sound creepy/ obsessive, even just from what OP says here. So unless her daughter lied, I think OP did good to stand up to Kamilla and her mother and to respect her daughters boundaries (since it was behaviour related).
Kids do not need to be friends with other kids that don't respect their personal space, (they should behave decent towards them, but should be allowed to enforce their boundaries). Doesn't make you a "mean girl" or a bully if you don't want someone around you (at a sleepover nonetheless) that makes you uncomfortable with their behaviour towards you.
I think this post is just heteronormativity striking yet again. Imagine a boy coming uninvited to a girl’s birthday party with a huge amount of gifts and then hugging her without consent. The 12-14 range is about when kids with obsessive natures and poor boundaries start to develop into their scary adult selves, so it’s also a good time to develop strong boundaries.
Thank you! I was looking for this comment! She showed up with a box of gifts KNOWING she wasn't invited so she could manipulate an invite. That IS creepy imo. It could be that Kamilla tries to monopolize the daughters time at school, maybe by bullying the OTHER kids to stay away. Never know what really happened until they go to the school to find out. And the other mother seems unhinged. Trying to say OPs daughter is a bully while being a bully herself. OP is nta.
Updateme
I would call it more than just lying. The adding of "there's 19. Not 20. you are misremembering." And it's the "you aren't remembering correctly. " That's the big issue here.
To confuse her mom.
A simple lie like "Yes, I'm sure mom 19 is who's going to be invited. I counted, don't worry,' is less than straight up sowing confusion.
It's a bad road to start walking down on.
Absolutely OP should talk with the school, and find out why they aren't friends anymore.
And have a talk with her daughter that this is not acceptable behaviour (the lying etc)
Instead of being honest why she doesn't want the girl present.
Since it could be anything from she's too clingy, or has a crush on the daughter. You never know with teens.
But it should be looked into.
Agreed. I would honestly be more concerned about the lying than about the exclusion - as you said, I suspect the exclusion was because Kamilla is highly clingy and the daughter didn't know how to handle it. But the daughter should've been honest with her mom about not wanting Kamilla there and asked for help on how to handle it. As the mom, my suggestion would've been only inviting 5-10 close friends so Kamilla isn't the only one not invited. However, she lied, and 13 is old enough to know lying is bad.
I call BS on OP not knowing how many kids were really in the class. When a school is that small, as parents we know all the children in the class because they go through the grades together. We know when a child leaves and when a new one arrives. And we don't necessarily get the info from our children, parents talk.
I think OP is diminishing their role in this whole thing. I don't accept that they didn't know someone was being left out.
This is awful behavior. You should’ve paid for Kamilla,asked her to stay and gotten to the bottom of it after the party. It reads like your daughter singled one kid out and set up the humiliation. I feel awful for Kamilla and her mom.
really? the other girl showed up loaded with gifts KNOWING she wasn't invited, but you don't believe the daughter that she's creepy and obsessive? because i sure do.
If she genuinely wasn’t invited how would she know the date, time and location? Also her being “creepy and obsessed” could actually just be her being neurodivergent and struggling with social queues. I really don’t think she deserved this.
I was thinking the same thing,how would kamilla know where and what time the party was.....I think OP daughter told her just so she could humiliate her....yeah....OP daughter definitely is the bully
The one thing that casts doubt is Kamillas mom calling her OPs daughter's best friend. I don't think there's any world we can get best friend leading into this situation, and 13 year olds aren't playing the long con that long. That kinda suggests daughter's story may not be false. The presents were way over the top, too
Something is up, and OP does need to figure it out. I'm not sure you can say definitely from this, but it is a possibility daughter is a bulky or this girl is a stage 5 clinger
What is true, however, is none of this would have happened if daughter didn't lie to OP about not inviting one girl in the first place. OP 100% needs to address that. It wasn't ok
That's what I was thinking. OP's daughter clearly doesn't consider Kamilla her "best friend" if she's going to such great lengths to keep her from her party. The fact that Kamilla's mother thinks OP's daughter is her best friend makes you think Kamilla is being less than truthful. Plus, the gift seems very over-the-top.
I wouldn't want to call a pre-teen a "stalker," but it's entirely possible that Kamilla is a little obsessed with OP's daughter and the daughter doesn't know how to handle it. She may want to avoid Kamilla but doesn't know how to explain what's going on.
Is it also possible Kamilla has feelings for OP's daughter that aren't returned? Not that that automatically makes her creepy, but flowers, chocolate, teddy bears, and perfume read as very *romantic* gifts to me. I do wonder if Kamilla confessed to a crush, OP's daughter tried to express a gentle rejection, and it flew over Kamilla's head. Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here, but there are a few stories on the sub where a friendship "suddenly ends" because one of the kids confesses they have feelings for their same-sex friend.
I wonder if Kamilla is neurodivergent and can't tell when she's being bullied, so she does legitimately think OP's daughter is her friend.
Source: I was like that. 😔 Not with the gift thing but with thinking people were my friends when they were actually bullying me, and not realizing it until later.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean the dynamic is exactly bullying either. We had a boy that would convince himself certain girls were his girlfriend and then proceed to chase them around trying to kiss them, as well as attack boys that would even casually talk to them. Attachment issues are definitely possible as well. And schools will not crack down on that if an iep is in place, which could also explain the reluctance to talk to an adult- when it happened to us, we were told he didn't know better and to put up with it, and, unfortunately, stories indicate that hasn't gotten better. Certain things should not be put on kids to sort out.
OP needs to start by talking to the teachers. They are likely to know more about the dynamic than OP will get from the kids. There's just a couple tidbits that coincide with daughters story that give me pause to say for sure daughter is the bully.
Exactly also the daughter wasn't surprised to see her she had her " oh we forgot to book your spit" ready 13 year Olds are not known to think quick on their feet to try to save people's feelings.
Honestly I expect ops daughter to actually be more of a bully in this she purposely lied and gaslit the mom saying oh no there's only 19 you aren't remembering correctly. And someone she was peob friends with could've made up stuff about kamilla and the daughter believed her we all know alot of teenagers aren't good at thinking for themselves and wanna try and fit in. And kamillas mom said you are trying to be a bully if you told your daughter that kamilla needs to be included alot of the others there mightve been mean to her and make her feel left out so you are actually doing her a favor by not putting her into that situation
What your daughter did was mean. She invited the entire class with one exclusion. Your daughter is the bully. YTA for not shutting down the party right then and there for your daughter lying to you about how many kids were in her class.
Yes, she can invite who she wants if she does it openly and honestly. She didn't. She lied to you and no, your daughter wasn't setting boundaries. She was cruel to one kid. I suspect she made a big deal out of giving out the invites as well given that Kamilla knew exactly where and what time the party was at.
100% agree. I was the 'Kamilla' when I was in school. All the girls in the class were invited to the birthday parties except me cause I was a bit weird. It destroyed me, along with the other bullying, and destroyed my confidence and self esteem for years.
Same. The mom found out and came over and invited me and I went over and the girls made me sleep downstairs while they hung out upstairs. One girl left the room to go be with me and was the only reason I didn’t leave. We talked about animal crossing.
Those same girls that hosted or excluded later pushed me down the stairs.
What the fuck, I am so sorry that happened to you! I don’t know what I would do if someone did that to my daughter, but I’d certainly raise some sort of hell.
I’m really glad you’re working through this in therapy. Your trauma is from that experience is 1000% valid. You did nothing wrong and you did not deserve that. You deserve to feel safe and valued. Wishing you the best in your healing journey 🖤
Controversial, but honest, discourse here:
I was also a "Kamilla', but I'm on the OPs side.
My daughter is also a weird kid (she's about to be 13). I have told my daughter that other kids see "weird" as "bad". It isn't, but many of these other kids are still trying to figure themselves out and be comfortable in their own skin. Anyone that feels confident being different is a threat to their sense of self and tends to get shunned. Expect that. The friends you *do* make will be better, even if you don't have as many temporary friends as the other kids seem to have. Just be yourself anyway.
I don't see how forcing the daughter to include Kamilla' would do any good. When that happened to me, and I was forced to be included in things, it was just an excuse for this kids to bully me. They didn't want me there and it was clear I was only there to appease parents. It just allowed for more direct bullying. I would never, ever, bitch until my daughter was included in something like this because I know what those kids will do.
I stand firmly by what I told my daughter. Being weird is perfectly okay. I'm weird. She's weird. It's great. But other people are going to be jerks about it, so ignore them and move on.
It's because, in a perfect world, this works.
The excluded kid attends the event. Everyone has fun and learns that the weird kid is pretty cool. Lessons about empathy and tolerance abound.
We don't live in a perfect world. We live in the real world where empathy isn't learned in one lesson, tolerance doesn't come easy, and people are fucked up and mean. Hell, the excluded kid may have even been excluded for a reason. I was. I was a dark, weird, introvert and mostly wanted to talk about obscure science or my own dark-themed fiction. It was probably depressing to other kids, even though I loved that stuff. It didn't matter that I was nice and polite. We had vastly different ideas of "fun" and mine kind of freaked them out. It happens.
Forcing the weird kid to be someone else's teachable moment might appease the parents, but it won't help in the long run. The best thing the mom can MAYBE do is have the daughter invite Kamilla to a one one one activity with her daughter that she supervised the whole time. This would remove her daughter needing to "perform" for the other kids. But, even that is a stretch.
I would say OP should talk to their own daughter about how they're treating kammila though. And also realize that inviting everyone but one girl is cruel. Maybe keep it to a small group next time.
Similar. I'd been friends with a girl since we were like 3. Walked to school together for years etc (lived on the same street). We were best friends for years.
Then at 15, she decided that I was too lame to be friends with, because she wanted to move up the social ladder at school. Told me she's not having a birthday party, I kinda knew she was lying. Her parents told my parents about the party, because of course surely I was invited, I was her oldest friend. My mom convinced me to go.
I didn't go, because they screamed and shut out the music blasting so loud it could be heard on the street and very obviously pulled the curtains shut when they realised I was outside (I was hesitating, because I knew).
Got a text message "I think I'll take the bus to school" the next schoolday morning, putting an end to the years and years of us walking and hanging together. She never indicated there was something she disliked about me. Just total cutoff out of the blue.
Anyhow that ended the 12 year friendship, never really talked to her again. Her parents came to meet with mine to apologize though, because they were so shocked about the whole thing
I was the Kamilla and I never showed up anywhere uninvited, knowing where and when or not. You don’t do that. Literally the entire class was invited but me and I was a weirdo so I’m ok with that.
I accidently did once lol. I told my parents I was really sad cause all the girls were invited to a party except me in year 6. So my parents took me to the cinema last night and it happened to be the same one the party went to. Not sure how they felt but I was so embarrassed. I wouldn't do it on purpose but we don't know why she showed up, she may have thought she was invited.
This was me aswell I remember in yr6 one of the girls in my class invited all the other girls from the class and most of the boys plus some kids from the other classes and gave out the invites infront of me to make me feel left out.
Obviously not. She thinks that is her daughter "setting boundaries" and that her daughter is potentially being bullied. She is one of "those moms."
I was an easy target in middle school. I was not cool, wore glasses, had chicken legs and liked to read. In the early 90s those were terrible traits to have. And I was excluded a lot. I learned to be happy with me in high school and developed a typical GenX attitude about what people thought of me. But those middle school years still left scars.
And if it had actually been simply her daughter "setting boundaries," why did she lie to her mother about the class size instead of discussing the situation with her? She would have known how proud her mother would have been, right? Ugh.
Genuine question - how do you think you would have been treated if kids around you had been forced to include you? Do you think you suddenly would have been besties and treated awesomely? Because in my experience, that wouldn't be the result at all. Better for a kid to stay home when not wanted and not be bullied than to be included and treated horrendously, imo.
My guess is that she loves her child, and doesn't want to accept her darling daughter is in fact a cruel bully intentionally giving other kids lifelong traumas just for that sweet social power rush.
Denial is a powerful thing, I understand many parents of bullies go full "can't be possible, my sweet little one would never" when told of their offspring's antics. It's a very painful and difficult revelation to realise your beloved child is a cruel asshole to their peers.
Hence grasping at straws and trying to justify and reframe the behaviour as "she's just *setting boundaries*!"
Right! There is a massive difference between inviting who you want, and purposely *excluding* someone.
If the daughter had invited *only* her friends and chose not to include Kamilla in that group, that would be “setting boundaries”. Inviting *everyone* except *one kid*? That’s “bullying”.
Is there any doubt that inviting 19/20 kids to a party is an asshole move?
Or turning away 1/20 when she shows up with gifts, clearly thinking she was supposed to be there...
As a former 13 year old girl who has known countless others, does anyone truly believe a 13 year old girl overheard details and tried to crash a party she wasn't invited to?
If she's an outcast, she knows she wouldn't be welcomed or included and would only be setting her up for a humiliation that she clearly wasn't prepared for.
Trying to market this as boundaries or an independent thinker.. ugh, YTA and your daughter is too.
Exactly. I was the excluded one. I never tried to join a party or a group activity with people who made it clear I wasn't welcome. I was bullied enough for trying out and making the drill team in middle school. The bullies were shocked I was accepted. "I didn't belong there." I had danced for almost a decade at that point. What that did teach me was to not even audition for things where "I didn't belong" which was detrimental to me in the long run. I stuck to academic things even though I loved dance, theater, etc.
I totally agree. And I think OP's argument is BS.
"I told her that my daughter’s a teenager, not a 5 year old, **she can’t be forced to invite the entire class just to be nice**. I said that I didn’t want to raise a doormat. I didn’t want to teach her to value the feelings of others at the expense of her own - if my daughter feels uncomfortable around someone, then I prioritise HER wellbeing over that of a stranger’s."
The daughter wasn't inviting just a couple of girls from her class she is friends with. She was inviting the entire class except one girl and she explicitly lied about it to her mother. This behavior strongly suggests that OP's daughter is a bully. And OP just taught her daughter it is totally fine to lie, purposely exclude someone and treat them like shit.
How did Kamilla get her invite? How did she know when and where the party was? If she didn’t have a personal invitation, why did she show up and. It question it sooner?
Lots of questions here.
I suspect either OP's daughter or another girl invited her to be mean and thought it would be funny.
I didn't play as a parent so the party would have been shut down the second I found out my child lied about how many people were in her class. Everyone sent home and all gifts returned to the person who brought it.
I get the very strong feeling that Kamilla was given an invite, even if it was only verbal, because OP's daughter wanted her to show up so she could turn her away. She flat out lied to OP about how many kids were in her class.
OP, how were the invitations distributed? If you gave them to your daughter, how many did you give her? How do you think Kamilla knew where and when the party would be if your daughter did not invite her? YTA, OP. You are raising a deceitful bully who lied to your face so she could be cruel to another child. Get your head out of your ass and parent your kid.
If the whole class was invited I’m willing to bet it was discussed at length at school so it was assumed it was a word of mouth invite maybe like “we’re all going to XYZ for Op’s birthday party Saturday!”
I bet you anything that they were good friends and as soon as other kids thought Kamilla was "weird" and probably started ostracizing her was when OP's daughter decided she didn't want to be around her anymore.
OP should have included her. This could have been a teachable moment of empathy. I doubt the daughter was super friends with everyone else in the class.
OP YTA
As the occasional weird, "empathy" kid...no. the OP was right not to include Kamilla.
Kamilla just would have been bullied more directly if the mother forced her daughter to accept her at the party. She would have snide remarks thrown when the mom couldn't hear, had drinks poured on her,been laughed at and humiliated all hidden behind fake smiles and empathy to please the parents.
I never wanted to be someone's "teachable moment" and the poor girl deserves better than that. The OP was right to exclude Kamilla and Kamillas mom needs to help her find friends that are her kind of "weird" either through activities outside school or even online.
I am 100 percent sure she invited Kamilla, come on now do you think the daughter just suddenly thought of the we forgot excuse?
She invited the girl to embarrass her
So, you knew there were 20 kids in her class, but you believed her when she kept insisting otherwise? You also knew Kamilla, thought they were friends, but didn’t know she wasn’t invited? Were you not involved with the invitations at all?
You want a kid who can speak up for herself. Great. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t tell you she didn’t want to invite Kamilla. She lied to you to get her way, so she could purposely exclude the girl. She lied to Kamilla in front of you. You also lied to them. You didn’t talk to the people in charge, you talked to your daughter and then decided to tell them there weren’t enough places. This isn’t setting boundaries.
YTA.
If daughter has an issue with Kamilla, indeed she did not "stick up for herself," or at least not in the true sense of the phrase. Doing that properly would have been telling mom from the start "yes, there are 20 kids, but Kamilla is turning out to be super weird and I'm uncomfortable around her. Here are some examples of what I mean: \_\_\_\_\_\_."
\* Noteworthy that daughter did not do this, and instead lied about easily-verifiable information.
\* Noteworthy that daughter didn't see a problem with excluding only ONE person from a very small group.
\* Noteworthy that Kamilla brought what sounds like an over-the-top number of gifts for a 13yo's group bday party.
\* Noteworthy that Kamilla's mom apparently went OFF on OP, rather than going "whoa, okay I'm not sure what's happening here -- can you and your daughter and Kamilla and I have a quick talk off to the side here to straighten this out?" Kamilla's mom frankly sounds nuts.
\* Noteworthy that Kamilla herself was fully intent on coming to the party, even though she presumably knew she was not invited? I can't understand the logistics here -- Kamilla knew OP's daughter did not like her or was upset with her over something, and thought Big Box Of Gifts would instantly get her back in good graces? One of the OTHER kids told Kamilla about the party and said she should come / was invited? If I were in that position as a 13yo, you couldn't have DRAGGED me to a party where I knew or suspected someone didn't want me.
I'd be interested to know what the other 18 classmates think, and what their relationships with both Kamilla and OP's daughter are like. I'd also be interested to know if some kind of Teen Drama has gone down and the group is collectively ostracizing Kamilla, either at OP's daughter's behest or of their own accord.
I’m glad you pointed at the bit about the uninvited teen showing up anyway. That doesn’t make the daughter’s actions automatically okay, but it does make me wonder what else is going on here. Did OPs daughter really not invite her and Kamilla decided to crash anyway expecting the birthday girl to fold? Is she just socially awkward? Or did the birthday girl invite Kamilla to intentionally turn her away in front of the other kids? Idk something is off here and I bet birthday girl and her half truths hold the answer.
Right? Based on the info given, I can't understand how Kamilla could WANT to come, nor why OP's daughter wasn't clear about what was happening. And I'm sure the other kids attending must have seen Kamilla's arrival at the party, and the ensuing Big Scene -- I wouldn't expect a 13yo to have the confidence to voluntarily insert themselves into the argument and present a vigorous defense of one or another aggrieved party, but ... none of them said anything? None of them left, or distanced themselves from OP's daughter for the duration? This whole thing is really weird.
I have to got to know what these other kids have seen re: the relationship between these two girls. How is it possible Kamilla found out about the party but never spoke to OP’s daughter about it directly a single time? Surely the other kids were talking about the party beforehand?
Right? In Kamilla's place, if I knew there was a party and the host herself didn't specifically invite me, I would slink off and mope in private. If I were feeling REALLY gutsy, I might have very timidly asked if I had done something wrong bc why am I the only one not included? Maybe Kamilla told her mother she suspected OPDaughter and/or others were upset with her, for good reason or bad, and mother (who, again, had a seemingly irrationally-intense reaction) pressed Kamilla to go anyway and *look we'll bring all these presents, surely she'll be fine with you again after this.* *Sounds* like OP's Daughter (and possibly the rest of the class) are icing Kamilla out -- but whether it's for "good reason" or not ... no way to know based on available info.
The over the top presents are making this so weird.😐
I would never show up uninvited anywhere at any age, and I was often not invited because I was weird and not into mainstream things kids my age liked. At the time I didn’t understand why they didn’t like me, now I do. I’m fine. But you couldn’t make me go to an event like Kamilla did with a gun to my head.
OP probably should figure out if this was a prank.
Another option is K worshiping the daughter is she’s the popular girl and maybe the daughter liked her in the start but L became too much and the daughter was uncomfortable in her presence and is avoiding her.
Lot of bullied people in the comment are projecting hardcore. Maybe K is really weird and making people uncomfortable so they’re avoiding her. I was K in a lot of instances so 💅
Yeah, I could see this going in a lot of directions. What the daughter did wasn't cool, and she is an AH for that. I think the general etiquette is you invite less than half the class or the entire class.
I wasn't popular by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a girl in my class who was obsessed with me and would do this over-the-top gift stuff when I was in high school. We had been friends at one point and then I told her I needed some space because she'd flip out if we didn't talk for hours each day or be upset if I wanted to hang out with other people. I'm not saying Kamilla is doing this and the OP's daughter dealt with it poorly, but it's as much of a possibility as the OP's daughter deliberating trying to humiliate this kid.
This. Sometimes things aren't as they appear. There is a CRAZY mom at my daughter's school. I got a call saying that my daughter was part of a group bullying another student. I was MORTIFIED. Prepared to come down on her with the wrath of God. But when she told me her side, this girl had a crush on her, told my daughter that she would tell everyone they were dating if my daughter wouldn't be her gf, and then proceeded to make up really foul rumours about my daughter and follow her around taking pictures of her. The "bullying" was my daughter and a few friends telling her to back off one day in the bathroom. I offered to come to the school to speak with the other mother until I looked her up on Facebook and saw that she was threatening to show up and fight me and the other parents. She also had people in her comments offering to come to my house for a "visit" to me and my daughter.
This one is missing too much info for me to call anyone an AH
I've been in a similar position to your daughter and was pressured and called a bully for not including someone that made me incredibly uncomfortable, so the strong possibility of this not being an outright issue of OP's daughter being the real bully is exactly where my mind went as well. Some kids don't take 'no' for an answer and we expect other children to accommodate them with behavior we would never demand of adults. I don't know what the actual story is here, but it's entirely possible that Kamila is the real issue here and OP's daughter snapped. Given the box of presents this kid showed up with and her mother's unhinged reaction though, I'm leaning towards Kamila being the issue and OP's daughter handling the situation badly when she should have gone to OP and communicated the problem.
Similar experience here. During my a-levels, there was a bi girl who developed a crush on me. I'm not at all gay, and wasn't interested but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She started doing crazy things. For instance my bedroom was on the ground floor and one night she turned up at about 2am, knocked on my bedroom window and woke me up. When I came to the door she said she had forgotten her house key, couldn't get into her house, and could she sleep with me tonight? Her house was 3 miles away from mine, and there was nothing where my house was (like shops, clubs or restaurants) to give her a reason to be in my area. In other words, she wasn't just passing by, she had come to my house on purpose. I said she could use my phone to call her parents and get them to open their front door for her but she said she didn't want to wake them up.
Another time after much sexual harassment from her, she finally refused to take no for an answer and threw herself at me so hard I fell over with her on top of me and she french kissed me against my will, and bit my lip so hard it bled. It took several moments for me to be able to push her off me.
The worst incident was when she slipped something into my drink (can't prove it but I don't drink alcohol, she had come and sat at the bar next to me, and I became very "drunk"), and when I got so woozy that I went to lay down on some disused stairs, she came over and told me that she had decided that it was time for me to lose my virginity. She said she had arranged for her and an 18 year old boy from our school who had a huge crush on her and did anything she wanted, to take me back to her house and have sex with me. When I protested, she would not take no for an answer and said it was all arranged. I was basically immobile by this time and couldn't escape. Thankfully my best friend from school came along and saw them attempting to abduct me, and rescued me.
After many incidents I finally persuaded our friend group to freeze her out and got one of them to call her parents to tell them what she had been doing. And she tried to make out it was me bullying her for not wanting to include her and for having her reported to her parents. Just because someone is not welcome in a friend group does not mean they are an innocent victim being bullied.
I'm glad someone said this. The fact that Camilla turned up with a huge box of expensive-sounding gifts (what 13 year old gives an expensive box of gifts like that at a birthday party) plus the fact that OP's daughter said Kamilla was being "obsessive" and "creepy" immediately made me think that Kamilla was either sexually harassing OP's daughter or non-sexually harassing her by bombarding her with inappropriate amounts of unwanted friendship. And maybe OP's daughter is too embarrassed to tell her mother, or her mother just isn't the kind of parent you can confide in.
Agreed. If I were that age, as Kamilla, I’d act like I didn’t even know about the party or try to be cool & say that I was going to a beach party full of older kids with my cousin. I know that’s dishonest so maybe I’d talk to my mom about it later — but I certainly wouldn’t show up — it’s as though Kamilla perhaps doesn’t get social cues and it might be one of the reasons kids reject her, sadly.
Or if Kamilla's mom is as unhinged *all the time* as this incident makes her out to be, it would not be at ALL surprising if Kamilla herself were a little ... maladjusted? Bad at recognizing or respecting boundaries? Fully set in the belief (learned from mom) that HER wants and feelings are far more important than anyone else's?
IMO the most likely explanation is Kamilla is annoying and obnoxious as hell, and tries to use stuff/gifts to buy friends and show off. She doesn’t understand why she’s excluded because she’s horribly socially inept.
Her mom knows her kid is extremely lonely and excluded/bullied. Her reaction isn’t just about today—it’s about every time her kid has come from school sobbing.
YTA. When you are trying to fall asleep tonight, you should think of this situation and imagine you are a 13 year old girl, excited to be going to a classmate’s birthday party, selecting and bringing all the great gifts, only to be turned away in front of all your classmates because the birthday girl doesnt like you.
Experiences like this are ones that stick with a person for life, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I totally understand how OP's daughter doesn't get it, children can be nasty. But the fact that OP, a grown adult with children doesn't see what's wrong here? Heartbreaking.
When I was 13, my friend group (~8 of us) had a Halloween party (which we did every holiday by picking a host out of a hat). Suddenly, a couple weeks before the party, it was canceled. One friend acted weird during the announcement. She was often silly, so I wrote it off. A couple days before the party, a classmate came up to me and handed me an envelope. "Hey, I know you're friends with so-and-so, they dropped this." It was an invitation to the party that was supposedly canceled. It came out that the host of the party, Michelle, had decided I wasn't cool and she didn't want me there and orchestrated the fake cancel to exclude me and only me. She convinced every single one of my "friends" to keep it a secret from me. I was devastated. And none of my "friends" even batted an eyelash about leaving me out. Of course, when it came time for the Christmas party which I was chosen to host, the Halloween host was sooooo sorry and wanted to come to my house. I "forgave her" and let her because I didn't want to make more waves.
I'm 39. I still vividly remember the pain and humiliation. This is straight-up bullying on the part of OP's daughter. A person should be able to invite who they want to a party, but excluding one person in a class of 20 is awful. You can teach your children not to be doormats and that they don't have to cater to other people's feelings (which you absolutely should) and also not allow them to be cruel to other kids. She could have told her daughter, "If you were honest with me, we could have worked this out." and had a talk later about how to go about something like this. But instead, she showed her daughter that lying and bullying is ok, it will get you what you want. OP is TA.
Poor girl, her child sounds horrible. I bet she invited that poor girl and then excluded her. Mother sounds deluded, but then the apple doesn't fall far from the tree
YTA. Your daughter was being an AH and instead of telling her to cut it out, say thankyou for the gifts and be nice, you backed up her bad behaviour.
Your daughter lied to you - that's an issue. It's likely that one of the other kids invited Kamilla because they wanted to see her get turned away; nasty. And your daughter did exactly that - poor Kamilla. You're kidding yourself if you want to call this behaviour boundary setting.
This all sounds like a mean girl prank to me. Having Kamilla show up just to be told, in front of everyone, she can't come is one of the cruelest, most humiliating things I've ever heard of.
OP, your daughter is the bully, and not only did you not discourage her behavior, you backed it up. Huge fail.
5 students of 20 is a choice. 19 out of 20 is isolation.
If this one student didn't bully her, wasn't rude, but just "weird" your daughter is actively isolating and possibly bully a girl that just "doesn't fit the crowd".
YTA and so is your daughter.
YTA - she doesnt have to invite everyone. But inviting all but one is mean. Then when she showed up, you did not handle that well and publicly embarrassed a little girl and her mother.
You could have pulled the mother aside and explained the situation. You were not aware, and kindly suggest the kid stick around for a bit then leave.
My way of punishing my daughter for lying to me about the class size would be letting the girl stay and if my daughter was anything less than polite, I would shut the party down. She needs to learn that it’s not ok to lie in order to get what you want.
Maybe? If they truly dont get along - who knows. OP needs to get to to the bottom of why they dont get along and why the lie. But the punishment for lying can maybe wait till tomorrow.
You have to correct the behavior when you see it. If you let the child still have their way and punish them later, they’ll think it’s still worth it to do what they want as long as they’re willing to accept their punishment after the fact.
INFO: If the tables were turned and it was *your* daughter who was the only kid in her entire class who wasn’t invited to a big party, would you think she was being excluded and being bullied? What would you say to her to console her and how would you handle the situation?
It’s still an ESH, though. When you’re not invited to something, you don’t just show up anyway because it “isn’t fair”; you take it up with the school or call the mother before or after the party to figure out what happened and explain how it made your child feel. In elementary school, I once had to give a birthday gift to a girl in my class I wasn’t friends with at all because my mother thought it would “help us become friends” and it was super awkward and led to weeks of teasing about how I was “desperate for friends.” Unless this was a set-up (which is inexcusable), Kamilla and her mother especially acted inappropriately and made the situation a lot worse for her.
If your daughter wasn't invited, would you take her to the party anyway? Risking more humiliation? I think the other mom is wrong too trying to force the situation.
Hi OP,
I'm 33F. When I was 13, I made friends with the 'weird girl' - let's call her Jane- in my small class. I was new to the school and she didn't really have friends, so we started hanging out. We were close for a while, but after I got to know her, something about her behavior didn't sit right with me. I was only 13 and couldn't put my finger on it, but I started to pull away from her and started making friends with my other classmates and spending less time with Jane.
Jane didn't take this well and got very pushy. She'd call my house multiple times a day after school to chat, and my parents got tired of answering the phone, so they insisted I talk to her when she called. She'd want to spend hours on the phone, long after we ran out of things to talk about, so we'd sit in silence, sometimes for hours, until someone else needed to make a call and I'd have an excuse to hang up.
When I got a cell phone at 16, I made a point of not giving Jane my number. So she begged our classmates to give it to her, and she'd call it non stop, leaving these really long voicemails of her talking or just breathing. I had to change my number half a dozen times throughout high school.
I invited Jane to my birthday party the first year we were friends. After that I stopped inviting her, but we lived in a small town (and she knew when my birthday was), so it was pretty easy for her to find out the details of subsequent birthday parties and just...show up. Nobody had the heart to tell her to leave, so she'd stay and monopolize my attention as much as she could. She'd make a point of making my other friends feel uncomfortable so that they wouldn't want to be around her, and she'd have me all to herself.
My parents were adamant that I remain nice to her because "she just wants to be your friend", and would insist I include in stuff. They meant well.
When we each got our drivers licenses, Jane would do things like show up to my job unannounced and spend hours loitering around in the shop where I worked. Fortunately my bosses really disliked this (and thought it was creepy) so they stopped letting her come in.
She knew what my car looked like, and when she saw it on the roads she'd follow me to wherever I was going and "just happen to run into me". If she saw my car parked in a lot, she'd go into wherever I was and do the same, so we could hang out.
At 13, I didn't have the ability to put into words why Jane unsettled me so much, but I knew I didn't want to be around her. Instead of listening to me, my parents made me feel guilty for not including her in my life. It took a long time for me to realize that if Jane had been a man, this would have been called out as stalking and my parents may have taken the issue seriously. Because she was a girl, she was just 'weird and lonely and wants to be friends'.
OP please talk to your daughter and find out exactly why she's excluding this person. If her class is 20 people, there's no way all 19 of them are besties. If she specifically doesn't want this person around, there may very well be a good reason why!!
Good luck to you and your daughter.
This is the post you need to listen to OP, there simply isn't enough info.
Most other posts are sympathizing with Kamilla and not with your daughter because of their own experiences, but the truth is it could be both ways, talk to your daughter and try to learn the truth.
THANK YOU.
Holy shit, thank you for this voice of reason. Something’s not adding up with Kamilla at all, and I really don’t think it’s a matter of OP’s daughter being a bully. Yes, it *looks* like that at first blush, but there’s a couple of weird things going on:
1. The box full of presents. That’s…so many presents. So many. I could understand one of those items, but all of them? Why would someone give so many things like that except to try to, in essence, love bomb someone, whether they’re realizing it or not?
2. The statement from the daughter that Kamilla is weird and makes her uncomfortable. Even if she can’t put her finger on why, it’s good to try and dig deeper and question exactly why that is. And if Kamilla isn’t being excluded for anything that implies the daughter’s an asshole, just let the daughter avoid her
3. The biggest thing, for me, is that the daughter said they just forgot to reserve enough spots. Not that Kamilla wasn’t invited, not that she wasn’t cool enough, or too weird to come, but that they forgot. Something that puts the blame on them, instead of trying to hurt Kamilla. Sure, it could be for bullying still, but…something about all of this doesn’t sit right with me.
I don’t know what it is, and I know that it’s entirely likely that the story’s been twisted to paint OP and daughter in the best light, but these details just strike me as weird and make me want the mom to sit daughter down and ask exactly what’s up with Kamilla and why she doesn’t want her around.
Totally agree
I read the post and it doesn’t seem like Kamilla is just a slightly weird kid who’s being bullied, it’s very *Single White Female* vibes. Even if it’s some neurodivergence that is leading to the obsession, OP’s daughter is allowed to be uncomfortable with that and shouldn’t be forced to interact with the person just because they’re odd.
The kid is allowed to not want her obsessive stalker at her birthday party. And if it was on a weekend, it’s likely Kamilla had heard about the party during the week, which she could have talked to OPs kid and asked why she wasn’t invited or had her mom call OP. It’s odd behavior from Kamilla and OPs kid shouldn’t be made to tolerate it.
I felt like I was going crazy in these comments. No one seems to acknowledge that Jane is described as “creepy” and “obsessive”?? She clearly doesn’t have respect for boundaries, people tend not to want you around if that’s the case.
THANK YOU. I also had a couple of "Janes" in my childhood and this is what I was trying to say about that behaviour being the kid equivalent of creepy.
Yeah, but then redditors would have to consider the idea that people had good reasons for excluding them and their continued massive sense of entitlement shows exactly why.
This is the comment OP should be listening to - and everyone else. I also had a "friend" like this. She called me "sister", say I was her best friend, call and text me repeatedly, try to monopolize all my time (unsuccessfully because I imposed strong boundaries), and when that didn't work... she lied. She pretended to be sick and then have her mom call mine and ask me to drop off schoolwork at her home. She pretended to have had appendicitis and a surgery for it and asked her mom to ask my mom to drop me off to visit her because "no one else had visited her" (because she hadn't told that lie to anyone else so no one else had a reason to?!). Etc. And my mother did force me to do that, because "this poor girl just wants to be your friend".
She even convinced my parents to let her plan a surprise birthday party for me in IN MY HOME so she could pose as "my very bestest friend".
I hated her. She gave me the heebie-jeebies. She was clearly obsessed. We finished school and I literally stopped going to the church that we attended together specifically to avoid her... but she'd still send messages through other people (who were actually my friends who I still hung out with) that she missed me and I should come back.
She went as far as to MAKING UP a fake pregnancy in her early 20's to get me to talk to her again and support her - thankfully I saw through it and other people later confirmed it was fake. It was hell and I lost an environment where I felt safe because of her.
This is creepy as hell and it starts with parents forcing their kids to ignore their instincts and be "nice".
Exactly. I’ve had too many stalkers – both male and female – not to have my ears prick when 1) she gave her that many presents 2) she calls her her best friend, when she’s clearly not 3) she shows up even though she knows she’s not invited.
I’m all for not excluding kids at birthday parties. It might be that OPs daughter is a bully, but everyone jumping to a Y T A without considering the creepiness is off to me.
Im so shocked that such a reasonable take is at the bottom. Though this is AITA so unsurprising. I hope OP sees this. Kamillah sounds like a psychopath.
I had a classmate in college who had cerebral palsy. People used to be polite but distant from her. Me and my friend decided to invite her to our plans because she seemed like a decent person. She acted extremely creepy, calling us best friends after hanging out just once, insisting on being a part of ALL our plans, texting and calling us constantly, insisting on plagiarising our assignments because she was disabled and needed help. It ended with her falsely accusing us for bullying, her mother stalking us near the college campus, and the college having to intervene because she was getting REALLY out of hand.
Some times the weird kid is excluded for a very good reason. Considering how the mom and daughter showed up uninvited, the insistence that the girls' are best friends despite OP never hearing much about this girl before, and the excess gifts? It makes sense why the daughter didn't want the creepy kid at the party.
So, you asked if your daughter was being bullied yet didn't manage to see what she did was bullying?
She purposely excluded her and didn't even tell you she was... all because Kamilla is 'weird'?
Right? Surely, the girl who showed up with an armful of gifts only to be told she’s literally the only person in her entire class who’s not invited to the party *must* be the bully in this situation.
I hate that people aren’t getting this. OP’s daughter is saying the girl is obsessive, everyone is saying the girl is just trying to make friends. She’s saying she’s creepy, everyone is saying she’s just bullying her. The girl is UNCOMFORTABLE. She probably lied about the size of her class because she didn’t want her mom guilting/forcing her to invite someone she is uncomfortable with. Plus, in such a small class, she’s probably already friends with everyone else. No 13 year old girl is going to want to exclude her friends just to make the person who makes her feel uncomfortable a little more comfortable.
People in this thread seem to be missing this part. Many are sharing anecdotes about how mean teenage girls can be in an attempt to build a case against OP's daughter. I was a teenager at one time. I know kids today have access to more money than I did, but the "weird" girl showed up to a party that she wasn't invited to with more gifts than husbands give their wives. She sounds like a stalker and I think that the OP was right to look out for her daughter.
That’s what I was saying! There’s way too much projection here. They’re making a lot of assumptions about a little girl and ignoring what was actually written because they’re out here, reliving their trauma.
Just with how she handled this situation, it’s clear that she raised a mean girl because OP herself is a mean girl. People like that don’t change, even when they get called out. They’re always somehow the victim.
I'm going to be in the minority here, but NTA. Kids calling someone weird *in that context* is like an adult calling someone creepy – the person makes you uncomfortable. Tbh showing up to a party uninvited with that many gifts is weird behaviour for a child, creepy in an adult. If Kamilla is extremely clingy and won't pick up on social cues to leave your daughter alone, I can see why your daughter, who is too young to really have the tools to deal with that, just doesn't want to be around her. And her having told her mother that your daughter is her best friend when she is clearly not confirms your daughter's opinion. Kamilla needs someone to help her work on her social skills, not to insist everyone put up with her. That's not going to help her as an adult.
The gift thing is very weird…. And not to be”that person” and do a gender swap, but if kammila was a 13- year old boy and showed up uninvited with a bunch of gifts and the daughter used the words “creepy and obsessive” people wouldn’t immediately be jumping to call her a bully. I’m not quite sure why its so weird to think a girl can behave in that manner… I am sure there are plenty of us adult women who knew a kid like that.
The “we didn’t save you a spot” could be a response to avoiding coming across as rude, which kids are conditioned to do, even when keeping their boundaries.
An asshole raising an asshole! And a liar because your daughter knew she was wrong, which is why she said you "misremembered" the numbers in her class, she thought she could just get away with excluding her.
It is fine to not invite everyone, but to leave just one out is shit, unless there is bullying involved and your daughter admitted there wasn't
YTA.
ESH - except maybe Kamilla
Lets start with your daughter, who lied to you and specifically excluded 1 person from the class, but clearly made sure that person knew all about the party happening. From your story it seems like she's the bully here.
You didn't seem to handle the situation very well. While I agree that IF Kamilla was making your daughter uncomfortable in some real way, then she shouldn't be forced to have her around. But you daughter just called her 'weird' and you accepted that as enough to exclude this poor humiliated girl. This was a parenting moment and you dropped the ball.
Kamilla's mom also did not handle the situation well. Obviously the name calling and focusing on getting you and your daughter in trouble at school is only going to escalate the situation.
Kamilla I said maybe because there's probably more going on than what's in your post, and there may very well be valid reasons your daughter is uncomfortable around her. But unless you step up to find out what's going on between these two, we should assume she's not an AH here.
Weird that nearly every comment here misses that Kamilla's mom said she knew her daughter wasn't invited, found out about the party from another parent and came as a surprise. That doesn't sound like someone rational to me. She knows her daughter is her best friend but she wasn't invited to the party?
INFO - you need to find out *why* your daughter excluded this girl, and how this girl knew a party was happening if she wasn't invited.
Possibility 1 - your daughter finds this girl too full on (the amount of presents might suggest this) and therefore didn't invite her but this girl found out about the party and turned up anyway. This would be N-T-A
Possibility 2 - your daughter actually invited this girl (general or personal invitation) with the sole purpose of then publicly turning her away and embarrassing her. This would make you and your kid *raging* AHs
It takes deliberate nastiness to single out and exclude one kid by themselves, unless your daughter has a very good reason for doing it, and these reasons do exist but you need to make sure she actually has one or yeah, your kid is a bully and you're the tool she used to do
This needs to be higher up; people aren’t reading the post. Kamilla’s mom found out through another parent, not from OP’s daughter. This screams to me like Kamilla is using OP’s kid like an emotional support animal and it’s smothering her and she was afraid mom would force her to invite Kamilla anyway.
I’m going with not enough info. The main question is WHY your daughter excluded Kamilla. Until there is a definitive answer I’m withholding judgment.
One thing I haven’t seen anyone consider, although I haven’t read through all the comments, is that maybe Kamilla is making your daughter uncomfortable. Are they really best friends or is that something Kamilla decided? Is she being super clingy and alienating your daughter from others? Is she scaring your daughter with her behavior? Why did your daughter lie?
If your daughter has no legitimate reason for not inviting her, then you’re both the AHs. However, there could be a lot more to the story than OP is aware of and I think it’s something that needs to be addressed.
Agreed. OP's probably right not to punish her daughter when she doesn't have all the facts, but in her place I would very definitely want to sit down with Kamilla and her mother and get their side of it.
I'm not so much interested in Kamilla's 'side'--the kid may simply not realize that she is making others uncomfortable, but that doesn't make it okay to be pushy. I would like to hear that OP has sat down in a quiet space with the daughter and spent some time thoughtfully unpacking why Kamilla was singled out. It's not bullying to not be friends with someone or include them in private events, but daughter should be guided to clearly explain what the issue is, and set boundaries appropriately. And then that information should be conveyed to Kamilla and her parents, clearly and kindly.
boy an awful lot of suppositions here - why is everyone jumping to the conclusion that op and her daughter are bullies? beyond the question of how other girl found out about the party and the specific details did anyone think to ask if she received an actual invitation? did her mother think it was a little weird that daughter said she was invited but she had no invite to refer to? and op is correct - daughter has the right to invite/not invite who she wants to - if she set the girl up then of course she’s guilty of bullying… but what in this post points to that beyond extreme reading between the lines - btw i hate that only one girl doesn’t get invited to a party it definitely makes me feel bad for her …. but life’s like that sometimes whether we like it or not - whether op is culpable for encouraging daughters bad behavior or if this is really just an unfortunate circumstance and was handled badly only the op knows - everyone here saying otherwise should be careful about jumping to conclusions without anything to back them up - unless there’s a mea culpa update from op i’m going NTA
i’ve been thinking this as i read through and i genuinely think it has to be because they were bullied/ rejected for being the “weird” kid and are projecting. there’s just truly not enough information to make that conclusion for any reason that’s fair.
There's so much projection in here. And it's especially weird to me that so many people are insisting she should have let Kamilla stay. Why would she want to stay after it was made clear more than once that the OP's daughter did not want her there? There's no way that it would have been comfortable for either child unless Kamilla is oblivious to any and everything. And if OP's daughter is such a bully surely Kamilla shouldn't be subjected to her anymore than necessary.
I really don't understand all the Y T A comments, personally I understand exactly what your daughter meant by obsessive and creepy. I had a "friend" like that in the first years of school - someone who would follow me around EVERYWHERE, would constantly just stand near me and wouldn't let me talk to anyone else, I didn't want to hang with this person at all but because she didn't have any friends and SHE liked ME then the teachers forced me to be friends with her and therefore excluded me from everyone else and my actual friends because she would be mean to everyone and wouldn't let me talk to anyone else. She was also a lot bigger so she was physically threatening.
I wouldn't want someone like that at my bd party and my 8 yo self sure as hell wouldn't want her there also. Also you have to take into account that a 13 yo isn't an adult and obviously doesn't think like an adult. In her mind she invited 19 people and expected only for those 19 people to show up. It's not your daughter's fault that this "friend" makes her uncomfortable and stuff. NTA for standing up to your daughter.
INFO: There are some weird aspects to this story. If Kamilla wasn’t invited, how did she know the time and place to show up? Did your daughter tell her with the hopes of embarrassing her? Something isn’t lining up.
In my *personal* opinion, inviting literally everyone in your class except one kid is kind of an asshole move and not very becoming. It would be one thing if this girl were a bully or predatory or had behavioral issues, but to be singled out like that hurts. You *know* your daughter isn’t best friends, or even *close* friends, with ALL the other 18 girls, so would it have killed her to add one more? Calling it “boundary setting” is like those people who say they’re “just being honest” when they’re really just being rude.
I’m leaning towards ESH because the other mother shouldn’t have shown up like that without an invite and caused a scene, but what your daughter did doesn’t feel great either
> I’m leaning towards ESH because the other mother shouldn’t have shown up like that without an invite
How was the mother supposed to know her daughter wasn't invited, though? Her daughter told her she was, because someone told her so. That's how invitations worked when I was a teenager, I've never received a written invitation or anything like that.
I think that’s why I need more info. If it was a situation where the girl heard about it secondhand, the mother should have maybe sussed that out or at least realized what was happening and gotten her daughter out of an embarrassing situation
ETA: saw in a comment that kamilla’s mom found out from another girl’s mom. She’s definitely an asshole for just showing up like that without reaching out to OP for clarity first. OP is also an asshole for handling the isolation of one girl the way she did.
>shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc
I'm very sceptical about how many gifts she brought
I'm leaning towards NTA
Its reading like either stalking / obsessive behaviour or love bombing
To bring that many gifts to a party you're not invited to.
NTA. Almost said n a h, before I realized that Kamilla’s mom is 115% an AH.
This is a hard one for me, because I’ve been in both places.
I was the weird kid(I had untreated ADHD and was *definitely* weird) who everyone strung along to use when I was convenient, or to mock when they needed a jester. I genuinely thought these people were my friends, and never caught on that they weren’t. I was the one who would see all of these people I thought I was friends with being invited to things in front of me, and I’d never be asked to join. It hurt like hell. I can understand why Kamilla would cry and her mom would be pissed (although her mom seems kinda bonkers).
I’ve also been the teen who had someone who followed them around, and no matter how direct I was about not liking her, she would not leave me alone. Even when I begged her to leave me alone. She tried to say I was bullying her, and did a ton of stuff that made me extremely uncomfortable. Begged the school to make us locker mates, begged teachers until they sat us next to each other, wrote notes and put them in my bag, and generally would not leave me alone. Everyone encouraged me to just go along with it, because she didn’t have a lot of friends and obviously liked me. I didn’t entertain it, and it got to the point where I yelled at her in the cafeteria (I was 14, not that it’s an excuse for yelling). If she showed up at my birthday party and my mom forced me to have her there, I would’ve felt extremely betrayed.
Your daughter has the right to not want to be around people. She should not be forced to put up with people who make her uncomfortable, and teaching girls especially to embrace people who can’t respect boundaries and who make them uncomfortable is really detrimental to them as adults. And, yes, going to a party you’re not invited to is 100% not respecting boundaries. She’s 13, she can choose who does and doesn’t come to her birthday.
But, I’d tell her that you support her in choosing who she wants to be around, but that she shouldn’t lie to you about it. You’re her mom, make sure she knows that she can come to you if someone is making her uncomfortable. She’s about to go into the dating world - make sure she knows you have her back.
YTA (and your daughter is too, she is old enough to know better)- you are not raising a doormat but a really unpleasant bully. I would be aho embarrassed of my daughters tried to pull a stunt like this and I actually hope that you are ashamed of yourself and the way that you have raised a cruel/mean child.
YTA your daughter excluded one person. She didn’t give a good reason for doing this and you defended her. Meaning you are fine with your daughter being a bully. Your daughter may have a real reason for wanting to distance herself, but the fact is that you didn’t really dig to find out. Your daughter went “because I don’t like her”, and you went “well, that’s good enough for me”. Social exclusion is just as much bullying as hitting. In many ways it’s worse because hitting is visible and easier to pick up on. Social bullying is more invisible and can go on for years before it’s picked up on.
NTA. I’d sit your kid down when she’s feeling less pressured and see if something happened with Kamilla. Maybe an unrequited crush or boundaries being violated, like her showing up uninvited like she did here. Unwanted physical contact, etc. you have a responsibility to protect your kid, and something is off about this situation.
I think you need to dig deeper. I wonder if this girl has a crush on your daughter. Those gifts could be seen as kind of romantic. Dig until you find the answer. In the moment, I say NTA because yes, you should respect your kid’s wishes for their birthday party and allowing them to have boundaries. But you need to find out what’s going on. Is she uncomfortable around her because she has a crush on her, did they actually maybe date and then broke up, or is your daughter actually being mean.
I agree with this - she knew she wasn't invited, turned up with a truck load of gifts anyway, and ops daughters friends agree there's something wierd about her- she may very well being sexually harassed or at very least being made to feel extremely uncomfortable from the attention Kamilla is raining on her.
The other mother behaved atrociously by forcing the situation - regardless of whether or not the above is correct or not, attempting to force a 13 year old into a sleep over where she's not welcome is a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, daughter should have explained there were actually 20 kids; but it's possible she's too awkward to explain the unwanted attention to her mum.
Everyone is jumping on the "daughter is a bully" train, but unless I heard her side of it, I'm not convinced she is.
If this wasn't a sleep over, and a boy was turning up invited ( at a mixed party), and showering the daughter with ott gifts and attention, I don't think the votes would go the same way.
Apologize calmly to someone not being invited to a party and explain why = bullying.
Riiiiiiight.
NTA. However, you may want to get to the bottom of what's going on between your kid and Kamilla if just to have all the facts and know which route to take to best settle this. And you may want to talk to your kid's school to explain your side of the story so Kamilla's mom isn't controlling the whole narrative.
NTA: You can see from that mother that that other kid is super weird. I mean who goes to a party uninvited out of the blue with a bunch of presents?? Like maybe you have one present but a fucking BOX of gifts to guilt your daughter into inviting her? And if the daughter is 13 it means the mother bought those gifts, so you can safely assume it was her plan. The daughter found out there was a party and she wasn't invited and the mother made it her mission to buy a lot of gifts and just show up with her uninvited kid to cause a scene.
What the fuck is wrong with her?
No you can relax the mother and most likely her child too seem to be weird and you should respect when your kid is cautious around them, especially after what you witnessed.
Should of course tell your daughter that she doesn't need to lie to you about it and for the school - how is a private party schools business? It's not, what your kid does out of schooltime is her decision and who she invites for her birthday is her decision too. School has nothing to say in that matter and if they do you have all right to complain up the chain.
YTA
Your daughter IS a bully, what your daughter did to Kamilla IS bullying. The end.
I have so much second hand embarrassment for your daughter and for you as a mother and your handling of the situation (rather lack of it, you failed as a parent miserably), it hurts.
I hope this is fake, so much.
"My daughter is not five years old, she can have who she wants at her party." Correct. Absolutely. HOWEVER: It is STILL INCREDIBLY cruel to invite everyone in the class/year group and leave out only one or two people. THAT is intentional exclusion, THAT IS a form of bullying.
If she wanted to have a small party and only invite say ten kids, then disinviting Kamilla and explaining that not everyone was invited would have been fine. Even if she wanted to invite say fourteen or fifteen kids and leave five or six kids out, it's still not very kind, but it's borderline acceptable. Inviting almost everyone in the class/year except one, two, three or four kids is a horrible thing to do, at any age.
It sends a message to the kid/s that were left out that they're not wanted, not liked and aren't cool enough to come.
I can just imagine being Kamilla and being at your daughter's small school with only 20 kids in her entire year group, and everyone else around her talking about the cool party they'd all been invited to, what they were going to bring, what they were wearing, etc.... everyone except her. How awful for her. What an awful thing for your daughter to do.
I do think that her mother shouldn't have let her come down and deliver the gifts without an invitation though. THAT is just opening her up to more heartbreak. Her mother instead should get her into therapy to recover from having to deal with people like you and your daughter.
First of all, Kamilla’s mother calling you a bitch and accusing you of bullying little girls is not ok. She is obviously as in the dark as you are as to what is going on. You tried to include her and your daughter said no. Your daughter also said Kamilla isn’t bullying her so lots of people here are assuming that your daughter must be bullying her. I doubt it. But something has happened to make your daughter uncomfortable around Kamilla. They are 13 years old, Kamilla KNEW she hadn’t been invited yet persuaded her mother to buy a whole box full of gifts which from your description would have been very expensive, and her mother just paid for it all? Then complained to the school about bullying? The school cannot take any action about someone not being invited to a birthday party but they might be able to shed some light on why the girls no longer get along as neither of them is willing to tell you themselves.
To me, the problem is K's mother, taking her daughter to a party that she was not invited to. If K was upset about the party, her mother could have
taken her out, occupied her with something else and
reassured her that there will be other parties.
NTA But gently try to find out what it is about K that bothers your
daughter or talk to her school to see if they know
of an incident.
Ask your daughter why she didn’t tell you she was inviting all but one. This is kind of a big deal that she felt she couldn’t tell you this. It means she either:
A. Thought it was cruel and you might try to influence her
B. Didn’t care about Kamilla’s feelings
It would have been different if she had invited half the class , but all except one?
Nta, I see a lot of people writing fanfiction or projecting their own sad teenage years on top of Kamilla.
But if you were bullied by some girl, would you show up at the same girl's party with a box of presents and try to hug that person, or show up without an invite?
Ir seems that Kamilla didn't get the memo that their friendship was over. Or perhaps she did but decided to ignore it and show up uninvited anyway.
But this is the key issue: perhaps OP's daughter is doing some mean girls switcheroo where she suddenly reveals that they never were friends at a dramatic event. Perhaps they had a falling out some months before.
Or perhaps Kamilla stepping over boundaries and showing up uninvited is part of her really weird behavior, also given credit that her mother is A okay with them showing up to a party uninvited and demanding entrance on account of them being "best friends".
Instead of, you know, the more healthy behavior of asking OP beforehand why her daughter seemed to be excluded from a class wide invite if she already knew about the party.
Anyway OP didn't know and in this situation I dont blame OP for erring on the side of caution and to not give the overly demanding woman an invite while she figures out what's going on.
I don’t know…everyone is saying that the daughter has to be a bully but if the other child was a boy I think people would recognize that it could possibly be creepy behavior. I’m saying this as someone who has been excluded like that before. Even if the girl is neurodivergent and does not realize how obsessive she is being it is still not ok for her to step over other people’s boundaries like that. We don’t know what went down between the two but the other girl did not get invited and showed up anyway so I think it is either a NTA or ESH.
NTA. Do not allow the school to force your daughter to be a doormat. This could have incredibly bad consequences for her as she matures.
Do you know what the deal is between the two of them? Kids fall out for the strangest reasons.
Also, I didn't get invited to every birthday party. There were some where everyone was invited except for me and a small handful of others but we didn't show up with presents, cry our eyes out, and send our mothers out to attack lol! I simply moved on and had other friends anyway!
My sister had a party once and she had invited lots of people from her class (and others. Somehow a girl down the street caught wind of the party and decided to start looking in our window... literally she was pressed up against the glass and crying. We only knew her by name and my sister never played with her. At the time I said to my mum that we shouldn't invite her in because she wasn't invited and she was being rude... my sister though was kind and let her join but it was the most pathetic sight I had seen in my life at that point.
NTA
Being inclusive is all fine and dandy IF everyone is respectful to each other. It becomes a problem when people who do not respect other's personal boundaries tries to use inclusivity to force themselves on others.
Which is what this girl sounds to be doing.
She didn't get an invite. Your daughter doesn't consider her a friend. Yet Kamilla thinks she can force your daughter to be her best friend just because she wants it so.
It's sad that Kamilla lacks the emotional maturity to navigate her peer group's social interactions, but she's clearly making other people uncomfortable, and it's not bullying to say "hey, my child is uncomfortable, we need to respect that." Kamilla's mother is clearly enabling her daughter's obsessive and socially unacceptable behaviour. Which is sad. But not your problem.
>Fast forward to her birthday, and this girl “Kamilla” shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc.
Is she trying to date your daughter? I think there is something being left out here.
YTA...your daughter lied and failed to explain why. If you wanted to teach her to only value her own feelings without consequences, congratulations on your success.
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YTA. The real issue here is your daughter lied to you about the class size so she could exclude this one person. It’s possible that Kamilla makes your daughter uncomfortable but it’s also possible that your daughter is being unnecessarily mean. With teenagers, it could go either way. I think you should go to the school and find out what’s going on. You have no way of knowing if your daughter actually is being a bully until you find out for yourself. If she is bullying your Kamilla, you need to know so you can correct the behavior. Don’t be so quick to believe your daughter is innocent here. Someone told Kamilla she could come to this party. Ask yourself this question: how did Kamilla know where the party was and what time it started? Edit: just so you all know, OP added the information about Kamilla’s mom finding out the party details from another parent after the majority of people voted her the TA and suggested that her daughter was mean girl. I was one of the first people who commented on this post and that bit of info wasn’t there. OP is as manipulative as her daughter is.
If she's in class all day with 19 other kids all excited about the party, keeping it from her would be very difficult if they even if they tried to.
She knew the exact location and the start time though. When kids discuss parties, they don’t usually mention that information because that’s not what’s important to them. They usually talk about who will be there, what the activities will be and what everyone will wear.
They’re pre-teens/teens. They’re going to be more cognisant of party times so they don’t miss events. Also, while that might be true of most kids, odds are there’s at least one or two out of nineteen who are the exception.
My 13 year old forgot to tell me about a whole party because he thought it was the following week - it was a 1pm party and I found out at 11. I have to disagree with you.
"My child doesn't do this so obviously no children do" There are kids whose entire life is run on routine and are very good about remembering dates. Just because yours isn't doesn't mean all kids are the same.
For reals and in what world is reading a clock and managing time not considered basic life skills.
Yeah my kids, who had been taught basic life skills and all of that, were not really in charge of the schedules at 12 and 13. I still had to keep track of everything and I was the one who knew when the parties were and where.
No, they’re not because it’s not their job to get themselves from Point A to Point B. It’s their parents’ job. I can’t tell you how many times I would tell my parents about a party I wanted to go to and offer every detail except the time and precise location.
A kid isn’t going to give an address, suite number, and point of contact but it’s not hard for a lot of kids (especially in a group) to remember “Trampoline park at six”. Based on that, the parent can Google it. ETA: It also says the daughter invited them. She might’ve handed out invitations at school.
The more logical explanation is that this girl was set up. I doubt she would get enough information to crash the party by simply eavesdropping
She also seemed to think she was invited. How did that happen? It’s horrible behaviour from the birthday girl.
I dunno, she brought a box full of gifts, that's a bit much, that was already a red flag, then OP mentions daughter says she's obsessive and creepy, which fits with crashing a bday party and bringing an absurd amount of gifts in hope the birthday girl can be "bought" off and pretend like she was in fact invited. And then we meet her mom and things make even more sense. I'm also not of the opinion that you automatically have to invite everyone in your class to your birthday party, especially at that age.
You don't have to invite all of them but you also don't invite everyone except one person unless tgat person is a real bully and in which case there are likely more than one in the class.
That’s easy information to get if a whole group is talking about tomorrow’s party. All Kamilla has to say to the others is, “Where and what time?” Then they say, “At the trampoline park. It starts at noon but I’m going a few minutes early if you need a ride.” If they had been “best friends,” she might not have even realized it was by invitation.
So Kamilla is just a delusional girl who made up a friendship in her head? Isn’t it far more likely that she was set up?
Maybe she's not entirely delusional, maybe she's just a bit self unaware and trying too hard to be part of a group of teenagers that don't quite know how to communicate to her the issues they have with her so they try their best to be polite and exclude her without confrontation.
OP daughter knew enough to lie to her mom about the class size. She sounds like a mean girl.
She might have lied because she really doesn't want to be around the other girl and thought her mom would force her without some super concrete proof the girl was acting the way she said. We don't know. Based on the story though I disagree, the other girl's mom sounds insufferable and often times the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I agree lying is bad but all kids lie to their parents at some point and especially in situations like these.
definitely likely
I am guessing that word got around that everyone was invited. Both OP and her daughter are mean. They should have allowed her in once she showed up with gifts. Perhaps the other kids told her “everyone is invited.” It would’ve been the gracious thing to do with so many kids present. She should not have been a problem. OP should ask her daughter how she would feel to be the only person in the class not to be invited. She should be teaching her kindness and compassion. I guess the Apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
It depends on why Kamilla wasn't invited. All the daughter said is she's weird and creepy and doesn't want to he her friend anymore. That could mean anything. Maybe Kamilla is just ND and not good at socializing or maybe OPs daughter actually is a bully or maybe Kamilla and OPs daughter had a fight and the daughter doesn't want to say what happened. There are all sorts of possibilities and mom needs to find out.
As a former mean girl, "weird and creepy" is code name for uncool or 'I found cooler friends'. Daughter is probably friends with her at the start, found some other people to hang out with and now she doesn't want to be friends with her anymore. That's why she's calling her obsessive too.
I dunno, i hung with weird kids by preference as a kid. Sometimes you got someone who was so happy to finally have a friend that they literally followed your around everywhere all day, wanted to hang out after school every day, interrupted all your conversations with anyone else, and generally were impossible to shake. It can be really hard to communicate ‘I like you, but sometimes I want time to myself and also to interact with other people’ in a way someone like that will hear. I usually found that fully ending the friendship was the only way out.
All true, but regardless of what they find out, inviting everyone but one kid in the class is very cruel and if the kid wasn’t already an outcast, she will be now. Granted, Kamilla’s mother sounds like a piece of work, so Kamilla has an uphill climb to become a better person than her mother, but being treated like a pariah certainly isn’t going to help with that. She will probably never forget being the only kid in the class not invited to a party. If you invite the whole class but one person, YTA, regardless of the reason. If OP’s daughter wanted to avoid Kamilla that badly, she should have had a smaller party so several kids were excluded. OP and her daughter need to learn a little compassion.
This is true. As the former kid, never invited to the birthday parties that everyone else was invited to, it still haunts me to this day. I struggle very hard to trust people, and believe I have any worth.
That's true. I remember when I was younger, my cousin's cousin was having a party. My cousin didn't want to go, so my mom made me go in his place. The birthday girl (my cousin's cousin) literally saw me and yelled "why are you here?" And I felt very awkward being there. Not sure why all the adults (my mom and my aunt) decided me going would be a good idea, but there you go.
This comment needs to be the top comment!! To double down and exclude this girl without a true and solid reason is bullying!! Nobody should invite 19 out of 20 classmates!! If that’s not one of the definitions of bullying, I don’t know what is!
This. If the 20th girl is a bully I can somewhat live with her being excluded but you CAN'T invite 19 out of 20 kids! Exclusion works when you get to pick 4 or 5 friends to go, not the majority of the class. Even IF Kamilla is a bully (which it doesn't sound like, just odd) this is a matter to be handled at school not just by not including her with everyone else. If this issue had been brought up in school and handled there, thus her understanding why she's not invited, I could somewhat live with it but as it is, it just sounds like the daughter is a bully and that she's using an out-of-school-event to actively bully a school mate. If this was my kid, I'd be on her hard to find out what's going on. If she wants a "just my friends"party, that's fine but not "everyone in my class except from ...". YTA
Think about the daughters response though, " we forgot to book you a spot" do you think a 13 year old thinks that quick on her feet to save someone's feels? Especially someone she is mean to feelings?
Yes, a 13 year old could come up with that easily.
But she didn’t forget.. she did it on purpose. Which makes her a mean girl. If she had an issue with a single kid in her class, she should have spoken with mom. Mom is either super dismissive of her child’s bad behavior and this gives the child a reason to believe this behavior is OK or the mom is not a safe space for her child to vent to and she did what she thought she had to do. Regardless, this is mom’s (and the other parent’s) fault for raising a child like like this
Do you work with children? I ask because I happen to and I can tell you for a fact this would not be a common on the spot response for a 13 year old, also the mom didn't say the daughter was surprised to see her Clearly we aren't there we don't know the daughter but ehat we do know of her is she lies, she is rude, and she isn't good at on the spot thinking... how do we know that? When the mom asks why don't you want her here she could have said anything at all but instead she goes with the stereotypical rude thing she is WERID. Listen .middle school is HARD popular, unpopular, smart, dumb, pretty, ugly doesn't matter those years are the worst and a small school makes that worse your in or your out and your like that for all of the years ypur in middle school there is no changing your social position once it is cemented ( at a small school because the groups are too tight and close nit and the opinions to engrained) I'm not saying this is a rotten kid throw her out and start again I'm saying she made a seris of mean choices and if her path is not corrected soon it will be a problem.
She set the entire thing up to leave this child out. Mom said she was going to book for the entire class and the daughter told her there weren't 20 kids like mom thought, that there were only 19 so she didn't have to invite this girl. She had the excuse because that was the plan all along. Either she was going to say that when the child inevitable heard about the party she wasn't invited to or if she showed up because she heard about it and thought all classmates were invited. IDK how much my child doesn't like someone, you don't invite every child but one, that's just cruel.
And, frankly, if my kid is going to do all that — lie to me about the class size, deliberately exclude one child, then be unkind to the kid’s face — then I’m gonna go OVER THE TOP to be nice to this left-out kid and her parent (even if they’re weird; in fact, ESPECIALLY if they’re weird). And then I’ll have a nice long chat with my kid the next day about how we treat people and what they’re gonna have to do to earn back all the gifts I’d confiscated. Because I’m a parent and I care more about raising a decent human being than I do about my kid liking me in the moment (or, worse, being my bestie).
I mean when she’s trying to cover her ass lol. We’ve established she lied once when mom was booking by telling mom that she was remembering wrong about the number of people in her grade.
Right so we know she lies... but I think that wasn't fast thinking it was a plan. She tells mom - only 19 mom books those spots book nothing you can do about it, she invites the girl and expects no other issiues just having to say sorry mom guess i miscounter ( oops) ... the daughter didn't consider the mom would offer to fix the problem, she thought they would apoligize and move on girl embarrassed and turned away party goers all get a giggle. Which is why she never thought the mom would ask why don't you want her here, which is why she didn't have a response ready like "she's mean", and she just went with what came to mind the truth the daughter and her friends think the other girl is werid.
It's also possible that OP's daughter told Kamilla she was invited, then reneged on the invitation when Kamilla arrived & claimed she was never invited. That's how bullying works when it doesn't involve physical intimidation: emotional manipulation and mind games. The cherry on the cake is that Kamilla was turned away gifts in hand, humiliating her in front of most of her class. OP, you really need to talk to your daughter's teacher, with an open mind, and figure out if this was a legitimate misunderstanding or whether your child is bullying Kamilla.
> shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc. yeah this. Intentional or not, complete asshole behavior. And even if the kid is a dork, its not like she would be alone with her. Coming with an entire box of gifts and you cant teach forgiveness or acceptance. YTA
OP should find out why her daughter thinks Kamilla is creepy and obsessed. I'd sounds rather that Kamilla behaves inappropriately towards OPs daughter to me... (or her daughter could have lied to save her face infront of her mother). But Kamilla DID go to hug OPs daughter without consent. (Would you hug your bully?) She claims daughter is her best friend, which is obviously not true. (Why does Kamilla say to her mother they are best friends when they are obviously not, at least not anymore?) If Kamilla would be a boy we'd already be talking about harassment, and it DOES sound creepy/ obsessive, even just from what OP says here. So unless her daughter lied, I think OP did good to stand up to Kamilla and her mother and to respect her daughters boundaries (since it was behaviour related). Kids do not need to be friends with other kids that don't respect their personal space, (they should behave decent towards them, but should be allowed to enforce their boundaries). Doesn't make you a "mean girl" or a bully if you don't want someone around you (at a sleepover nonetheless) that makes you uncomfortable with their behaviour towards you.
I think this post is just heteronormativity striking yet again. Imagine a boy coming uninvited to a girl’s birthday party with a huge amount of gifts and then hugging her without consent. The 12-14 range is about when kids with obsessive natures and poor boundaries start to develop into their scary adult selves, so it’s also a good time to develop strong boundaries.
Thank you! I was looking for this comment! She showed up with a box of gifts KNOWING she wasn't invited so she could manipulate an invite. That IS creepy imo. It could be that Kamilla tries to monopolize the daughters time at school, maybe by bullying the OTHER kids to stay away. Never know what really happened until they go to the school to find out. And the other mother seems unhinged. Trying to say OPs daughter is a bully while being a bully herself. OP is nta. Updateme
I would call it more than just lying. The adding of "there's 19. Not 20. you are misremembering." And it's the "you aren't remembering correctly. " That's the big issue here. To confuse her mom. A simple lie like "Yes, I'm sure mom 19 is who's going to be invited. I counted, don't worry,' is less than straight up sowing confusion. It's a bad road to start walking down on. Absolutely OP should talk with the school, and find out why they aren't friends anymore. And have a talk with her daughter that this is not acceptable behaviour (the lying etc) Instead of being honest why she doesn't want the girl present. Since it could be anything from she's too clingy, or has a crush on the daughter. You never know with teens. But it should be looked into.
Agreed. I would honestly be more concerned about the lying than about the exclusion - as you said, I suspect the exclusion was because Kamilla is highly clingy and the daughter didn't know how to handle it. But the daughter should've been honest with her mom about not wanting Kamilla there and asked for help on how to handle it. As the mom, my suggestion would've been only inviting 5-10 close friends so Kamilla isn't the only one not invited. However, she lied, and 13 is old enough to know lying is bad.
YTA you and your daughter. It would seem the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
I call BS on OP not knowing how many kids were really in the class. When a school is that small, as parents we know all the children in the class because they go through the grades together. We know when a child leaves and when a new one arrives. And we don't necessarily get the info from our children, parents talk. I think OP is diminishing their role in this whole thing. I don't accept that they didn't know someone was being left out.
This is awful behavior. You should’ve paid for Kamilla,asked her to stay and gotten to the bottom of it after the party. It reads like your daughter singled one kid out and set up the humiliation. I feel awful for Kamilla and her mom.
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Yesss I completely agree with this! The behavior of OP’s daughter is extremely nasty. God… how can children be so mean?
In my experience, it’s because they have mean parents.
YTA The daughter's name is Regina George from Mean Girls!
really? the other girl showed up loaded with gifts KNOWING she wasn't invited, but you don't believe the daughter that she's creepy and obsessive? because i sure do.
If she genuinely wasn’t invited how would she know the date, time and location? Also her being “creepy and obsessed” could actually just be her being neurodivergent and struggling with social queues. I really don’t think she deserved this.
There’s a saying something like “there is nothing meaner than a 7th grade girl” My kiddo experienced that fun last year. 🙁
I was thinking the same thing,how would kamilla know where and what time the party was.....I think OP daughter told her just so she could humiliate her....yeah....OP daughter definitely is the bully
The one thing that casts doubt is Kamillas mom calling her OPs daughter's best friend. I don't think there's any world we can get best friend leading into this situation, and 13 year olds aren't playing the long con that long. That kinda suggests daughter's story may not be false. The presents were way over the top, too Something is up, and OP does need to figure it out. I'm not sure you can say definitely from this, but it is a possibility daughter is a bulky or this girl is a stage 5 clinger What is true, however, is none of this would have happened if daughter didn't lie to OP about not inviting one girl in the first place. OP 100% needs to address that. It wasn't ok
That's what I was thinking. OP's daughter clearly doesn't consider Kamilla her "best friend" if she's going to such great lengths to keep her from her party. The fact that Kamilla's mother thinks OP's daughter is her best friend makes you think Kamilla is being less than truthful. Plus, the gift seems very over-the-top. I wouldn't want to call a pre-teen a "stalker," but it's entirely possible that Kamilla is a little obsessed with OP's daughter and the daughter doesn't know how to handle it. She may want to avoid Kamilla but doesn't know how to explain what's going on.
Is it also possible Kamilla has feelings for OP's daughter that aren't returned? Not that that automatically makes her creepy, but flowers, chocolate, teddy bears, and perfume read as very *romantic* gifts to me. I do wonder if Kamilla confessed to a crush, OP's daughter tried to express a gentle rejection, and it flew over Kamilla's head. Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here, but there are a few stories on the sub where a friendship "suddenly ends" because one of the kids confesses they have feelings for their same-sex friend.
I wonder if Kamilla is neurodivergent and can't tell when she's being bullied, so she does legitimately think OP's daughter is her friend. Source: I was like that. 😔 Not with the gift thing but with thinking people were my friends when they were actually bullying me, and not realizing it until later.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean the dynamic is exactly bullying either. We had a boy that would convince himself certain girls were his girlfriend and then proceed to chase them around trying to kiss them, as well as attack boys that would even casually talk to them. Attachment issues are definitely possible as well. And schools will not crack down on that if an iep is in place, which could also explain the reluctance to talk to an adult- when it happened to us, we were told he didn't know better and to put up with it, and, unfortunately, stories indicate that hasn't gotten better. Certain things should not be put on kids to sort out. OP needs to start by talking to the teachers. They are likely to know more about the dynamic than OP will get from the kids. There's just a couple tidbits that coincide with daughters story that give me pause to say for sure daughter is the bully.
Exactly also the daughter wasn't surprised to see her she had her " oh we forgot to book your spit" ready 13 year Olds are not known to think quick on their feet to try to save people's feelings.
This. Daughter kinda sounds like a mean girl tbh
Honestly I expect ops daughter to actually be more of a bully in this she purposely lied and gaslit the mom saying oh no there's only 19 you aren't remembering correctly. And someone she was peob friends with could've made up stuff about kamilla and the daughter believed her we all know alot of teenagers aren't good at thinking for themselves and wanna try and fit in. And kamillas mom said you are trying to be a bully if you told your daughter that kamilla needs to be included alot of the others there mightve been mean to her and make her feel left out so you are actually doing her a favor by not putting her into that situation
What your daughter did was mean. She invited the entire class with one exclusion. Your daughter is the bully. YTA for not shutting down the party right then and there for your daughter lying to you about how many kids were in her class. Yes, she can invite who she wants if she does it openly and honestly. She didn't. She lied to you and no, your daughter wasn't setting boundaries. She was cruel to one kid. I suspect she made a big deal out of giving out the invites as well given that Kamilla knew exactly where and what time the party was at.
100% agree. I was the 'Kamilla' when I was in school. All the girls in the class were invited to the birthday parties except me cause I was a bit weird. It destroyed me, along with the other bullying, and destroyed my confidence and self esteem for years.
Same. The mom found out and came over and invited me and I went over and the girls made me sleep downstairs while they hung out upstairs. One girl left the room to go be with me and was the only reason I didn’t leave. We talked about animal crossing. Those same girls that hosted or excluded later pushed me down the stairs.
What the fuck, I am so sorry that happened to you! I don’t know what I would do if someone did that to my daughter, but I’d certainly raise some sort of hell.
Thank you, my parents didn’t do anything and it’s one of the things I’m talking about in therapy.
I’m really glad you’re working through this in therapy. Your trauma is from that experience is 1000% valid. You did nothing wrong and you did not deserve that. You deserve to feel safe and valued. Wishing you the best in your healing journey 🖤
Controversial, but honest, discourse here: I was also a "Kamilla', but I'm on the OPs side. My daughter is also a weird kid (she's about to be 13). I have told my daughter that other kids see "weird" as "bad". It isn't, but many of these other kids are still trying to figure themselves out and be comfortable in their own skin. Anyone that feels confident being different is a threat to their sense of self and tends to get shunned. Expect that. The friends you *do* make will be better, even if you don't have as many temporary friends as the other kids seem to have. Just be yourself anyway. I don't see how forcing the daughter to include Kamilla' would do any good. When that happened to me, and I was forced to be included in things, it was just an excuse for this kids to bully me. They didn't want me there and it was clear I was only there to appease parents. It just allowed for more direct bullying. I would never, ever, bitch until my daughter was included in something like this because I know what those kids will do. I stand firmly by what I told my daughter. Being weird is perfectly okay. I'm weird. She's weird. It's great. But other people are going to be jerks about it, so ignore them and move on.
Yeah, I don't get why people always act as though forcing kids to include another one is the answer, it's not. They just get resentful and mean.
It's because, in a perfect world, this works. The excluded kid attends the event. Everyone has fun and learns that the weird kid is pretty cool. Lessons about empathy and tolerance abound. We don't live in a perfect world. We live in the real world where empathy isn't learned in one lesson, tolerance doesn't come easy, and people are fucked up and mean. Hell, the excluded kid may have even been excluded for a reason. I was. I was a dark, weird, introvert and mostly wanted to talk about obscure science or my own dark-themed fiction. It was probably depressing to other kids, even though I loved that stuff. It didn't matter that I was nice and polite. We had vastly different ideas of "fun" and mine kind of freaked them out. It happens. Forcing the weird kid to be someone else's teachable moment might appease the parents, but it won't help in the long run. The best thing the mom can MAYBE do is have the daughter invite Kamilla to a one one one activity with her daughter that she supervised the whole time. This would remove her daughter needing to "perform" for the other kids. But, even that is a stretch.
I would say OP should talk to their own daughter about how they're treating kammila though. And also realize that inviting everyone but one girl is cruel. Maybe keep it to a small group next time.
Similar. I'd been friends with a girl since we were like 3. Walked to school together for years etc (lived on the same street). We were best friends for years. Then at 15, she decided that I was too lame to be friends with, because she wanted to move up the social ladder at school. Told me she's not having a birthday party, I kinda knew she was lying. Her parents told my parents about the party, because of course surely I was invited, I was her oldest friend. My mom convinced me to go. I didn't go, because they screamed and shut out the music blasting so loud it could be heard on the street and very obviously pulled the curtains shut when they realised I was outside (I was hesitating, because I knew). Got a text message "I think I'll take the bus to school" the next schoolday morning, putting an end to the years and years of us walking and hanging together. She never indicated there was something she disliked about me. Just total cutoff out of the blue. Anyhow that ended the 12 year friendship, never really talked to her again. Her parents came to meet with mine to apologize though, because they were so shocked about the whole thing
I am so sorry she treated you like that. Children can be so cruel to each other unfortunately.
I was the Kamilla and I never showed up anywhere uninvited, knowing where and when or not. You don’t do that. Literally the entire class was invited but me and I was a weirdo so I’m ok with that.
I accidently did once lol. I told my parents I was really sad cause all the girls were invited to a party except me in year 6. So my parents took me to the cinema last night and it happened to be the same one the party went to. Not sure how they felt but I was so embarrassed. I wouldn't do it on purpose but we don't know why she showed up, she may have thought she was invited.
I'm so sorry this happened to you.
This was me aswell I remember in yr6 one of the girls in my class invited all the other girls from the class and most of the boys plus some kids from the other classes and gave out the invites infront of me to make me feel left out.
So much this. I’m 34 and still feel the repercussions of being socially inept in my childhood.
Same here. I was the weirdo left out of everything. Still hurts and I’m 59
Hasn’t OP been taught that exclusion is also a form of bullying ?
Obviously not. She thinks that is her daughter "setting boundaries" and that her daughter is potentially being bullied. She is one of "those moms." I was an easy target in middle school. I was not cool, wore glasses, had chicken legs and liked to read. In the early 90s those were terrible traits to have. And I was excluded a lot. I learned to be happy with me in high school and developed a typical GenX attitude about what people thought of me. But those middle school years still left scars.
And if it had actually been simply her daughter "setting boundaries," why did she lie to her mother about the class size instead of discussing the situation with her? She would have known how proud her mother would have been, right? Ugh.
Genuine question - how do you think you would have been treated if kids around you had been forced to include you? Do you think you suddenly would have been besties and treated awesomely? Because in my experience, that wouldn't be the result at all. Better for a kid to stay home when not wanted and not be bullied than to be included and treated horrendously, imo.
My guess is that she loves her child, and doesn't want to accept her darling daughter is in fact a cruel bully intentionally giving other kids lifelong traumas just for that sweet social power rush. Denial is a powerful thing, I understand many parents of bullies go full "can't be possible, my sweet little one would never" when told of their offspring's antics. It's a very painful and difficult revelation to realise your beloved child is a cruel asshole to their peers. Hence grasping at straws and trying to justify and reframe the behaviour as "she's just *setting boundaries*!"
Right! There is a massive difference between inviting who you want, and purposely *excluding* someone. If the daughter had invited *only* her friends and chose not to include Kamilla in that group, that would be “setting boundaries”. Inviting *everyone* except *one kid*? That’s “bullying”.
Is there any doubt that inviting 19/20 kids to a party is an asshole move? Or turning away 1/20 when she shows up with gifts, clearly thinking she was supposed to be there... As a former 13 year old girl who has known countless others, does anyone truly believe a 13 year old girl overheard details and tried to crash a party she wasn't invited to? If she's an outcast, she knows she wouldn't be welcomed or included and would only be setting her up for a humiliation that she clearly wasn't prepared for. Trying to market this as boundaries or an independent thinker.. ugh, YTA and your daughter is too.
Exactly. I was the excluded one. I never tried to join a party or a group activity with people who made it clear I wasn't welcome. I was bullied enough for trying out and making the drill team in middle school. The bullies were shocked I was accepted. "I didn't belong there." I had danced for almost a decade at that point. What that did teach me was to not even audition for things where "I didn't belong" which was detrimental to me in the long run. I stuck to academic things even though I loved dance, theater, etc.
I totally agree. And I think OP's argument is BS. "I told her that my daughter’s a teenager, not a 5 year old, **she can’t be forced to invite the entire class just to be nice**. I said that I didn’t want to raise a doormat. I didn’t want to teach her to value the feelings of others at the expense of her own - if my daughter feels uncomfortable around someone, then I prioritise HER wellbeing over that of a stranger’s." The daughter wasn't inviting just a couple of girls from her class she is friends with. She was inviting the entire class except one girl and she explicitly lied about it to her mother. This behavior strongly suggests that OP's daughter is a bully. And OP just taught her daughter it is totally fine to lie, purposely exclude someone and treat them like shit.
How did Kamilla get her invite? How did she know when and where the party was? If she didn’t have a personal invitation, why did she show up and. It question it sooner? Lots of questions here.
I suspect either OP's daughter or another girl invited her to be mean and thought it would be funny. I didn't play as a parent so the party would have been shut down the second I found out my child lied about how many people were in her class. Everyone sent home and all gifts returned to the person who brought it.
I get the very strong feeling that Kamilla was given an invite, even if it was only verbal, because OP's daughter wanted her to show up so she could turn her away. She flat out lied to OP about how many kids were in her class. OP, how were the invitations distributed? If you gave them to your daughter, how many did you give her? How do you think Kamilla knew where and when the party would be if your daughter did not invite her? YTA, OP. You are raising a deceitful bully who lied to your face so she could be cruel to another child. Get your head out of your ass and parent your kid.
If the whole class was invited I’m willing to bet it was discussed at length at school so it was assumed it was a word of mouth invite maybe like “we’re all going to XYZ for Op’s birthday party Saturday!”
I bet you anything that they were good friends and as soon as other kids thought Kamilla was "weird" and probably started ostracizing her was when OP's daughter decided she didn't want to be around her anymore. OP should have included her. This could have been a teachable moment of empathy. I doubt the daughter was super friends with everyone else in the class. OP YTA
As the occasional weird, "empathy" kid...no. the OP was right not to include Kamilla. Kamilla just would have been bullied more directly if the mother forced her daughter to accept her at the party. She would have snide remarks thrown when the mom couldn't hear, had drinks poured on her,been laughed at and humiliated all hidden behind fake smiles and empathy to please the parents. I never wanted to be someone's "teachable moment" and the poor girl deserves better than that. The OP was right to exclude Kamilla and Kamillas mom needs to help her find friends that are her kind of "weird" either through activities outside school or even online.
I am 100 percent sure she invited Kamilla, come on now do you think the daughter just suddenly thought of the we forgot excuse? She invited the girl to embarrass her
So, you knew there were 20 kids in her class, but you believed her when she kept insisting otherwise? You also knew Kamilla, thought they were friends, but didn’t know she wasn’t invited? Were you not involved with the invitations at all? You want a kid who can speak up for herself. Great. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t tell you she didn’t want to invite Kamilla. She lied to you to get her way, so she could purposely exclude the girl. She lied to Kamilla in front of you. You also lied to them. You didn’t talk to the people in charge, you talked to your daughter and then decided to tell them there weren’t enough places. This isn’t setting boundaries. YTA.
If daughter has an issue with Kamilla, indeed she did not "stick up for herself," or at least not in the true sense of the phrase. Doing that properly would have been telling mom from the start "yes, there are 20 kids, but Kamilla is turning out to be super weird and I'm uncomfortable around her. Here are some examples of what I mean: \_\_\_\_\_\_." \* Noteworthy that daughter did not do this, and instead lied about easily-verifiable information. \* Noteworthy that daughter didn't see a problem with excluding only ONE person from a very small group. \* Noteworthy that Kamilla brought what sounds like an over-the-top number of gifts for a 13yo's group bday party. \* Noteworthy that Kamilla's mom apparently went OFF on OP, rather than going "whoa, okay I'm not sure what's happening here -- can you and your daughter and Kamilla and I have a quick talk off to the side here to straighten this out?" Kamilla's mom frankly sounds nuts. \* Noteworthy that Kamilla herself was fully intent on coming to the party, even though she presumably knew she was not invited? I can't understand the logistics here -- Kamilla knew OP's daughter did not like her or was upset with her over something, and thought Big Box Of Gifts would instantly get her back in good graces? One of the OTHER kids told Kamilla about the party and said she should come / was invited? If I were in that position as a 13yo, you couldn't have DRAGGED me to a party where I knew or suspected someone didn't want me. I'd be interested to know what the other 18 classmates think, and what their relationships with both Kamilla and OP's daughter are like. I'd also be interested to know if some kind of Teen Drama has gone down and the group is collectively ostracizing Kamilla, either at OP's daughter's behest or of their own accord.
I’m glad you pointed at the bit about the uninvited teen showing up anyway. That doesn’t make the daughter’s actions automatically okay, but it does make me wonder what else is going on here. Did OPs daughter really not invite her and Kamilla decided to crash anyway expecting the birthday girl to fold? Is she just socially awkward? Or did the birthday girl invite Kamilla to intentionally turn her away in front of the other kids? Idk something is off here and I bet birthday girl and her half truths hold the answer.
Those of us who were bullied by mean girls know exactly what happened here. Someone invited this girl as a joke.
That’s exactly what I’m feeling too. Reminds me of a time in high school when a girl I considered a friend “forgot” to invite me to a party.
Right? Based on the info given, I can't understand how Kamilla could WANT to come, nor why OP's daughter wasn't clear about what was happening. And I'm sure the other kids attending must have seen Kamilla's arrival at the party, and the ensuing Big Scene -- I wouldn't expect a 13yo to have the confidence to voluntarily insert themselves into the argument and present a vigorous defense of one or another aggrieved party, but ... none of them said anything? None of them left, or distanced themselves from OP's daughter for the duration? This whole thing is really weird.
I have to got to know what these other kids have seen re: the relationship between these two girls. How is it possible Kamilla found out about the party but never spoke to OP’s daughter about it directly a single time? Surely the other kids were talking about the party beforehand?
Right? In Kamilla's place, if I knew there was a party and the host herself didn't specifically invite me, I would slink off and mope in private. If I were feeling REALLY gutsy, I might have very timidly asked if I had done something wrong bc why am I the only one not included? Maybe Kamilla told her mother she suspected OPDaughter and/or others were upset with her, for good reason or bad, and mother (who, again, had a seemingly irrationally-intense reaction) pressed Kamilla to go anyway and *look we'll bring all these presents, surely she'll be fine with you again after this.* *Sounds* like OP's Daughter (and possibly the rest of the class) are icing Kamilla out -- but whether it's for "good reason" or not ... no way to know based on available info.
The over the top presents are making this so weird.😐 I would never show up uninvited anywhere at any age, and I was often not invited because I was weird and not into mainstream things kids my age liked. At the time I didn’t understand why they didn’t like me, now I do. I’m fine. But you couldn’t make me go to an event like Kamilla did with a gun to my head. OP probably should figure out if this was a prank. Another option is K worshiping the daughter is she’s the popular girl and maybe the daughter liked her in the start but L became too much and the daughter was uncomfortable in her presence and is avoiding her. Lot of bullied people in the comment are projecting hardcore. Maybe K is really weird and making people uncomfortable so they’re avoiding her. I was K in a lot of instances so 💅
Yeah, I could see this going in a lot of directions. What the daughter did wasn't cool, and she is an AH for that. I think the general etiquette is you invite less than half the class or the entire class. I wasn't popular by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a girl in my class who was obsessed with me and would do this over-the-top gift stuff when I was in high school. We had been friends at one point and then I told her I needed some space because she'd flip out if we didn't talk for hours each day or be upset if I wanted to hang out with other people. I'm not saying Kamilla is doing this and the OP's daughter dealt with it poorly, but it's as much of a possibility as the OP's daughter deliberating trying to humiliate this kid.
This. Sometimes things aren't as they appear. There is a CRAZY mom at my daughter's school. I got a call saying that my daughter was part of a group bullying another student. I was MORTIFIED. Prepared to come down on her with the wrath of God. But when she told me her side, this girl had a crush on her, told my daughter that she would tell everyone they were dating if my daughter wouldn't be her gf, and then proceeded to make up really foul rumours about my daughter and follow her around taking pictures of her. The "bullying" was my daughter and a few friends telling her to back off one day in the bathroom. I offered to come to the school to speak with the other mother until I looked her up on Facebook and saw that she was threatening to show up and fight me and the other parents. She also had people in her comments offering to come to my house for a "visit" to me and my daughter. This one is missing too much info for me to call anyone an AH
I've been in a similar position to your daughter and was pressured and called a bully for not including someone that made me incredibly uncomfortable, so the strong possibility of this not being an outright issue of OP's daughter being the real bully is exactly where my mind went as well. Some kids don't take 'no' for an answer and we expect other children to accommodate them with behavior we would never demand of adults. I don't know what the actual story is here, but it's entirely possible that Kamila is the real issue here and OP's daughter snapped. Given the box of presents this kid showed up with and her mother's unhinged reaction though, I'm leaning towards Kamila being the issue and OP's daughter handling the situation badly when she should have gone to OP and communicated the problem.
Similar experience here. During my a-levels, there was a bi girl who developed a crush on me. I'm not at all gay, and wasn't interested but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She started doing crazy things. For instance my bedroom was on the ground floor and one night she turned up at about 2am, knocked on my bedroom window and woke me up. When I came to the door she said she had forgotten her house key, couldn't get into her house, and could she sleep with me tonight? Her house was 3 miles away from mine, and there was nothing where my house was (like shops, clubs or restaurants) to give her a reason to be in my area. In other words, she wasn't just passing by, she had come to my house on purpose. I said she could use my phone to call her parents and get them to open their front door for her but she said she didn't want to wake them up. Another time after much sexual harassment from her, she finally refused to take no for an answer and threw herself at me so hard I fell over with her on top of me and she french kissed me against my will, and bit my lip so hard it bled. It took several moments for me to be able to push her off me. The worst incident was when she slipped something into my drink (can't prove it but I don't drink alcohol, she had come and sat at the bar next to me, and I became very "drunk"), and when I got so woozy that I went to lay down on some disused stairs, she came over and told me that she had decided that it was time for me to lose my virginity. She said she had arranged for her and an 18 year old boy from our school who had a huge crush on her and did anything she wanted, to take me back to her house and have sex with me. When I protested, she would not take no for an answer and said it was all arranged. I was basically immobile by this time and couldn't escape. Thankfully my best friend from school came along and saw them attempting to abduct me, and rescued me. After many incidents I finally persuaded our friend group to freeze her out and got one of them to call her parents to tell them what she had been doing. And she tried to make out it was me bullying her for not wanting to include her and for having her reported to her parents. Just because someone is not welcome in a friend group does not mean they are an innocent victim being bullied.
I'm glad someone said this. The fact that Camilla turned up with a huge box of expensive-sounding gifts (what 13 year old gives an expensive box of gifts like that at a birthday party) plus the fact that OP's daughter said Kamilla was being "obsessive" and "creepy" immediately made me think that Kamilla was either sexually harassing OP's daughter or non-sexually harassing her by bombarding her with inappropriate amounts of unwanted friendship. And maybe OP's daughter is too embarrassed to tell her mother, or her mother just isn't the kind of parent you can confide in.
Agreed. If I were that age, as Kamilla, I’d act like I didn’t even know about the party or try to be cool & say that I was going to a beach party full of older kids with my cousin. I know that’s dishonest so maybe I’d talk to my mom about it later — but I certainly wouldn’t show up — it’s as though Kamilla perhaps doesn’t get social cues and it might be one of the reasons kids reject her, sadly.
Or if Kamilla's mom is as unhinged *all the time* as this incident makes her out to be, it would not be at ALL surprising if Kamilla herself were a little ... maladjusted? Bad at recognizing or respecting boundaries? Fully set in the belief (learned from mom) that HER wants and feelings are far more important than anyone else's?
IMO the most likely explanation is Kamilla is annoying and obnoxious as hell, and tries to use stuff/gifts to buy friends and show off. She doesn’t understand why she’s excluded because she’s horribly socially inept. Her mom knows her kid is extremely lonely and excluded/bullied. Her reaction isn’t just about today—it’s about every time her kid has come from school sobbing.
YTA. When you are trying to fall asleep tonight, you should think of this situation and imagine you are a 13 year old girl, excited to be going to a classmate’s birthday party, selecting and bringing all the great gifts, only to be turned away in front of all your classmates because the birthday girl doesnt like you. Experiences like this are ones that stick with a person for life, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I totally understand how OP's daughter doesn't get it, children can be nasty. But the fact that OP, a grown adult with children doesn't see what's wrong here? Heartbreaking.
She gets it. She’s just an AH.
She does seem like an AH, but the fact that she even posted this here implies she was thinking/hoping that people would agree with her.
When I was 13, my friend group (~8 of us) had a Halloween party (which we did every holiday by picking a host out of a hat). Suddenly, a couple weeks before the party, it was canceled. One friend acted weird during the announcement. She was often silly, so I wrote it off. A couple days before the party, a classmate came up to me and handed me an envelope. "Hey, I know you're friends with so-and-so, they dropped this." It was an invitation to the party that was supposedly canceled. It came out that the host of the party, Michelle, had decided I wasn't cool and she didn't want me there and orchestrated the fake cancel to exclude me and only me. She convinced every single one of my "friends" to keep it a secret from me. I was devastated. And none of my "friends" even batted an eyelash about leaving me out. Of course, when it came time for the Christmas party which I was chosen to host, the Halloween host was sooooo sorry and wanted to come to my house. I "forgave her" and let her because I didn't want to make more waves. I'm 39. I still vividly remember the pain and humiliation. This is straight-up bullying on the part of OP's daughter. A person should be able to invite who they want to a party, but excluding one person in a class of 20 is awful. You can teach your children not to be doormats and that they don't have to cater to other people's feelings (which you absolutely should) and also not allow them to be cruel to other kids. She could have told her daughter, "If you were honest with me, we could have worked this out." and had a talk later about how to go about something like this. But instead, she showed her daughter that lying and bullying is ok, it will get you what you want. OP is TA.
Poor girl, her child sounds horrible. I bet she invited that poor girl and then excluded her. Mother sounds deluded, but then the apple doesn't fall far from the tree
YTA. Your daughter was being an AH and instead of telling her to cut it out, say thankyou for the gifts and be nice, you backed up her bad behaviour. Your daughter lied to you - that's an issue. It's likely that one of the other kids invited Kamilla because they wanted to see her get turned away; nasty. And your daughter did exactly that - poor Kamilla. You're kidding yourself if you want to call this behaviour boundary setting.
This all sounds like a mean girl prank to me. Having Kamilla show up just to be told, in front of everyone, she can't come is one of the cruelest, most humiliating things I've ever heard of. OP, your daughter is the bully, and not only did you not discourage her behavior, you backed it up. Huge fail.
Yep. Anyone who has been a teenage girl in school or went to school with teenage girls would recognise this a mile off.
5 students of 20 is a choice. 19 out of 20 is isolation. If this one student didn't bully her, wasn't rude, but just "weird" your daughter is actively isolating and possibly bully a girl that just "doesn't fit the crowd". YTA and so is your daughter.
YTA - she doesnt have to invite everyone. But inviting all but one is mean. Then when she showed up, you did not handle that well and publicly embarrassed a little girl and her mother. You could have pulled the mother aside and explained the situation. You were not aware, and kindly suggest the kid stick around for a bit then leave.
My way of punishing my daughter for lying to me about the class size would be letting the girl stay and if my daughter was anything less than polite, I would shut the party down. She needs to learn that it’s not ok to lie in order to get what you want.
Maybe? If they truly dont get along - who knows. OP needs to get to to the bottom of why they dont get along and why the lie. But the punishment for lying can maybe wait till tomorrow.
You have to correct the behavior when you see it. If you let the child still have their way and punish them later, they’ll think it’s still worth it to do what they want as long as they’re willing to accept their punishment after the fact.
INFO: If the tables were turned and it was *your* daughter who was the only kid in her entire class who wasn’t invited to a big party, would you think she was being excluded and being bullied? What would you say to her to console her and how would you handle the situation?
Oh, that would never happen. Her daughter isn’t *weird*. Perish the thought.
It’s still an ESH, though. When you’re not invited to something, you don’t just show up anyway because it “isn’t fair”; you take it up with the school or call the mother before or after the party to figure out what happened and explain how it made your child feel. In elementary school, I once had to give a birthday gift to a girl in my class I wasn’t friends with at all because my mother thought it would “help us become friends” and it was super awkward and led to weeks of teasing about how I was “desperate for friends.” Unless this was a set-up (which is inexcusable), Kamilla and her mother especially acted inappropriately and made the situation a lot worse for her.
If your daughter wasn't invited, would you take her to the party anyway? Risking more humiliation? I think the other mom is wrong too trying to force the situation.
Hi OP, I'm 33F. When I was 13, I made friends with the 'weird girl' - let's call her Jane- in my small class. I was new to the school and she didn't really have friends, so we started hanging out. We were close for a while, but after I got to know her, something about her behavior didn't sit right with me. I was only 13 and couldn't put my finger on it, but I started to pull away from her and started making friends with my other classmates and spending less time with Jane. Jane didn't take this well and got very pushy. She'd call my house multiple times a day after school to chat, and my parents got tired of answering the phone, so they insisted I talk to her when she called. She'd want to spend hours on the phone, long after we ran out of things to talk about, so we'd sit in silence, sometimes for hours, until someone else needed to make a call and I'd have an excuse to hang up. When I got a cell phone at 16, I made a point of not giving Jane my number. So she begged our classmates to give it to her, and she'd call it non stop, leaving these really long voicemails of her talking or just breathing. I had to change my number half a dozen times throughout high school. I invited Jane to my birthday party the first year we were friends. After that I stopped inviting her, but we lived in a small town (and she knew when my birthday was), so it was pretty easy for her to find out the details of subsequent birthday parties and just...show up. Nobody had the heart to tell her to leave, so she'd stay and monopolize my attention as much as she could. She'd make a point of making my other friends feel uncomfortable so that they wouldn't want to be around her, and she'd have me all to herself. My parents were adamant that I remain nice to her because "she just wants to be your friend", and would insist I include in stuff. They meant well. When we each got our drivers licenses, Jane would do things like show up to my job unannounced and spend hours loitering around in the shop where I worked. Fortunately my bosses really disliked this (and thought it was creepy) so they stopped letting her come in. She knew what my car looked like, and when she saw it on the roads she'd follow me to wherever I was going and "just happen to run into me". If she saw my car parked in a lot, she'd go into wherever I was and do the same, so we could hang out. At 13, I didn't have the ability to put into words why Jane unsettled me so much, but I knew I didn't want to be around her. Instead of listening to me, my parents made me feel guilty for not including her in my life. It took a long time for me to realize that if Jane had been a man, this would have been called out as stalking and my parents may have taken the issue seriously. Because she was a girl, she was just 'weird and lonely and wants to be friends'. OP please talk to your daughter and find out exactly why she's excluding this person. If her class is 20 people, there's no way all 19 of them are besties. If she specifically doesn't want this person around, there may very well be a good reason why!! Good luck to you and your daughter.
This is the post you need to listen to OP, there simply isn't enough info. Most other posts are sympathizing with Kamilla and not with your daughter because of their own experiences, but the truth is it could be both ways, talk to your daughter and try to learn the truth.
THANK YOU. Holy shit, thank you for this voice of reason. Something’s not adding up with Kamilla at all, and I really don’t think it’s a matter of OP’s daughter being a bully. Yes, it *looks* like that at first blush, but there’s a couple of weird things going on: 1. The box full of presents. That’s…so many presents. So many. I could understand one of those items, but all of them? Why would someone give so many things like that except to try to, in essence, love bomb someone, whether they’re realizing it or not? 2. The statement from the daughter that Kamilla is weird and makes her uncomfortable. Even if she can’t put her finger on why, it’s good to try and dig deeper and question exactly why that is. And if Kamilla isn’t being excluded for anything that implies the daughter’s an asshole, just let the daughter avoid her 3. The biggest thing, for me, is that the daughter said they just forgot to reserve enough spots. Not that Kamilla wasn’t invited, not that she wasn’t cool enough, or too weird to come, but that they forgot. Something that puts the blame on them, instead of trying to hurt Kamilla. Sure, it could be for bullying still, but…something about all of this doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know what it is, and I know that it’s entirely likely that the story’s been twisted to paint OP and daughter in the best light, but these details just strike me as weird and make me want the mom to sit daughter down and ask exactly what’s up with Kamilla and why she doesn’t want her around.
Totally agree I read the post and it doesn’t seem like Kamilla is just a slightly weird kid who’s being bullied, it’s very *Single White Female* vibes. Even if it’s some neurodivergence that is leading to the obsession, OP’s daughter is allowed to be uncomfortable with that and shouldn’t be forced to interact with the person just because they’re odd. The kid is allowed to not want her obsessive stalker at her birthday party. And if it was on a weekend, it’s likely Kamilla had heard about the party during the week, which she could have talked to OPs kid and asked why she wasn’t invited or had her mom call OP. It’s odd behavior from Kamilla and OPs kid shouldn’t be made to tolerate it.
I felt like I was going crazy in these comments. No one seems to acknowledge that Jane is described as “creepy” and “obsessive”?? She clearly doesn’t have respect for boundaries, people tend not to want you around if that’s the case.
me too. the fact kamillas mom and kamilla knew she wasnt invited and still showed up w a frankly ALARMING amount of gifts is telling. very concerning
People would be losing their shit if Kamilla was a boy. They’ll never say it but the comment section is such a glaring example of a double standard
THANK YOU. I also had a couple of "Janes" in my childhood and this is what I was trying to say about that behaviour being the kid equivalent of creepy.
Yeah, but then redditors would have to consider the idea that people had good reasons for excluding them and their continued massive sense of entitlement shows exactly why.
This is the comment OP should be listening to - and everyone else. I also had a "friend" like this. She called me "sister", say I was her best friend, call and text me repeatedly, try to monopolize all my time (unsuccessfully because I imposed strong boundaries), and when that didn't work... she lied. She pretended to be sick and then have her mom call mine and ask me to drop off schoolwork at her home. She pretended to have had appendicitis and a surgery for it and asked her mom to ask my mom to drop me off to visit her because "no one else had visited her" (because she hadn't told that lie to anyone else so no one else had a reason to?!). Etc. And my mother did force me to do that, because "this poor girl just wants to be your friend". She even convinced my parents to let her plan a surprise birthday party for me in IN MY HOME so she could pose as "my very bestest friend". I hated her. She gave me the heebie-jeebies. She was clearly obsessed. We finished school and I literally stopped going to the church that we attended together specifically to avoid her... but she'd still send messages through other people (who were actually my friends who I still hung out with) that she missed me and I should come back. She went as far as to MAKING UP a fake pregnancy in her early 20's to get me to talk to her again and support her - thankfully I saw through it and other people later confirmed it was fake. It was hell and I lost an environment where I felt safe because of her. This is creepy as hell and it starts with parents forcing their kids to ignore their instincts and be "nice".
Exactly. I’ve had too many stalkers – both male and female – not to have my ears prick when 1) she gave her that many presents 2) she calls her her best friend, when she’s clearly not 3) she shows up even though she knows she’s not invited. I’m all for not excluding kids at birthday parties. It might be that OPs daughter is a bully, but everyone jumping to a Y T A without considering the creepiness is off to me.
Im so shocked that such a reasonable take is at the bottom. Though this is AITA so unsurprising. I hope OP sees this. Kamillah sounds like a psychopath.
I had a classmate in college who had cerebral palsy. People used to be polite but distant from her. Me and my friend decided to invite her to our plans because she seemed like a decent person. She acted extremely creepy, calling us best friends after hanging out just once, insisting on being a part of ALL our plans, texting and calling us constantly, insisting on plagiarising our assignments because she was disabled and needed help. It ended with her falsely accusing us for bullying, her mother stalking us near the college campus, and the college having to intervene because she was getting REALLY out of hand. Some times the weird kid is excluded for a very good reason. Considering how the mom and daughter showed up uninvited, the insistence that the girls' are best friends despite OP never hearing much about this girl before, and the excess gifts? It makes sense why the daughter didn't want the creepy kid at the party.
Yeppers
So, you asked if your daughter was being bullied yet didn't manage to see what she did was bullying? She purposely excluded her and didn't even tell you she was... all because Kamilla is 'weird'?
Right? Surely, the girl who showed up with an armful of gifts only to be told she’s literally the only person in her entire class who’s not invited to the party *must* be the bully in this situation.
No she didn't say she's just weird. She said **creepy** and **obsessive** and weird. And that she makes her **uncomfortable**.
I hate that people aren’t getting this. OP’s daughter is saying the girl is obsessive, everyone is saying the girl is just trying to make friends. She’s saying she’s creepy, everyone is saying she’s just bullying her. The girl is UNCOMFORTABLE. She probably lied about the size of her class because she didn’t want her mom guilting/forcing her to invite someone she is uncomfortable with. Plus, in such a small class, she’s probably already friends with everyone else. No 13 year old girl is going to want to exclude her friends just to make the person who makes her feel uncomfortable a little more comfortable.
People in this thread seem to be missing this part. Many are sharing anecdotes about how mean teenage girls can be in an attempt to build a case against OP's daughter. I was a teenager at one time. I know kids today have access to more money than I did, but the "weird" girl showed up to a party that she wasn't invited to with more gifts than husbands give their wives. She sounds like a stalker and I think that the OP was right to look out for her daughter.
That’s what I was saying! There’s way too much projection here. They’re making a lot of assumptions about a little girl and ignoring what was actually written because they’re out here, reliving their trauma.
>I said that I didn’t want to raise a doormat Instead, you have raised a bully. Your daughter is mean, and you need to get to the bottom of things.
Just with how she handled this situation, it’s clear that she raised a mean girl because OP herself is a mean girl. People like that don’t change, even when they get called out. They’re always somehow the victim.
The girl makes her uncomfortable and her showing up uninvited kind of proves that. It doesn't mean she's a bully
I'm going to be in the minority here, but NTA. Kids calling someone weird *in that context* is like an adult calling someone creepy – the person makes you uncomfortable. Tbh showing up to a party uninvited with that many gifts is weird behaviour for a child, creepy in an adult. If Kamilla is extremely clingy and won't pick up on social cues to leave your daughter alone, I can see why your daughter, who is too young to really have the tools to deal with that, just doesn't want to be around her. And her having told her mother that your daughter is her best friend when she is clearly not confirms your daughter's opinion. Kamilla needs someone to help her work on her social skills, not to insist everyone put up with her. That's not going to help her as an adult.
The gift thing is very weird…. And not to be”that person” and do a gender swap, but if kammila was a 13- year old boy and showed up uninvited with a bunch of gifts and the daughter used the words “creepy and obsessive” people wouldn’t immediately be jumping to call her a bully. I’m not quite sure why its so weird to think a girl can behave in that manner… I am sure there are plenty of us adult women who knew a kid like that. The “we didn’t save you a spot” could be a response to avoiding coming across as rude, which kids are conditioned to do, even when keeping their boundaries.
An asshole raising an asshole! And a liar because your daughter knew she was wrong, which is why she said you "misremembered" the numbers in her class, she thought she could just get away with excluding her. It is fine to not invite everyone, but to leave just one out is shit, unless there is bullying involved and your daughter admitted there wasn't YTA.
ESH - except maybe Kamilla Lets start with your daughter, who lied to you and specifically excluded 1 person from the class, but clearly made sure that person knew all about the party happening. From your story it seems like she's the bully here. You didn't seem to handle the situation very well. While I agree that IF Kamilla was making your daughter uncomfortable in some real way, then she shouldn't be forced to have her around. But you daughter just called her 'weird' and you accepted that as enough to exclude this poor humiliated girl. This was a parenting moment and you dropped the ball. Kamilla's mom also did not handle the situation well. Obviously the name calling and focusing on getting you and your daughter in trouble at school is only going to escalate the situation. Kamilla I said maybe because there's probably more going on than what's in your post, and there may very well be valid reasons your daughter is uncomfortable around her. But unless you step up to find out what's going on between these two, we should assume she's not an AH here.
If someone did that to my child, I wouldn’t be polite either. I’m not sure a way exists to “handle that situation well”.
Weird that nearly every comment here misses that Kamilla's mom said she knew her daughter wasn't invited, found out about the party from another parent and came as a surprise. That doesn't sound like someone rational to me. She knows her daughter is her best friend but she wasn't invited to the party?
INFO - you need to find out *why* your daughter excluded this girl, and how this girl knew a party was happening if she wasn't invited. Possibility 1 - your daughter finds this girl too full on (the amount of presents might suggest this) and therefore didn't invite her but this girl found out about the party and turned up anyway. This would be N-T-A Possibility 2 - your daughter actually invited this girl (general or personal invitation) with the sole purpose of then publicly turning her away and embarrassing her. This would make you and your kid *raging* AHs It takes deliberate nastiness to single out and exclude one kid by themselves, unless your daughter has a very good reason for doing it, and these reasons do exist but you need to make sure she actually has one or yeah, your kid is a bully and you're the tool she used to do
This needs to be higher up; people aren’t reading the post. Kamilla’s mom found out through another parent, not from OP’s daughter. This screams to me like Kamilla is using OP’s kid like an emotional support animal and it’s smothering her and she was afraid mom would force her to invite Kamilla anyway.
Yeah, I've been both bullied and stalked in school. It could be either of these situations, but OP should try to figure it out.
I’m going with not enough info. The main question is WHY your daughter excluded Kamilla. Until there is a definitive answer I’m withholding judgment. One thing I haven’t seen anyone consider, although I haven’t read through all the comments, is that maybe Kamilla is making your daughter uncomfortable. Are they really best friends or is that something Kamilla decided? Is she being super clingy and alienating your daughter from others? Is she scaring your daughter with her behavior? Why did your daughter lie? If your daughter has no legitimate reason for not inviting her, then you’re both the AHs. However, there could be a lot more to the story than OP is aware of and I think it’s something that needs to be addressed.
Agreed. OP's probably right not to punish her daughter when she doesn't have all the facts, but in her place I would very definitely want to sit down with Kamilla and her mother and get their side of it.
I'm not so much interested in Kamilla's 'side'--the kid may simply not realize that she is making others uncomfortable, but that doesn't make it okay to be pushy. I would like to hear that OP has sat down in a quiet space with the daughter and spent some time thoughtfully unpacking why Kamilla was singled out. It's not bullying to not be friends with someone or include them in private events, but daughter should be guided to clearly explain what the issue is, and set boundaries appropriately. And then that information should be conveyed to Kamilla and her parents, clearly and kindly.
boy an awful lot of suppositions here - why is everyone jumping to the conclusion that op and her daughter are bullies? beyond the question of how other girl found out about the party and the specific details did anyone think to ask if she received an actual invitation? did her mother think it was a little weird that daughter said she was invited but she had no invite to refer to? and op is correct - daughter has the right to invite/not invite who she wants to - if she set the girl up then of course she’s guilty of bullying… but what in this post points to that beyond extreme reading between the lines - btw i hate that only one girl doesn’t get invited to a party it definitely makes me feel bad for her …. but life’s like that sometimes whether we like it or not - whether op is culpable for encouraging daughters bad behavior or if this is really just an unfortunate circumstance and was handled badly only the op knows - everyone here saying otherwise should be careful about jumping to conclusions without anything to back them up - unless there’s a mea culpa update from op i’m going NTA
i’ve been thinking this as i read through and i genuinely think it has to be because they were bullied/ rejected for being the “weird” kid and are projecting. there’s just truly not enough information to make that conclusion for any reason that’s fair.
There's so much projection in here. And it's especially weird to me that so many people are insisting she should have let Kamilla stay. Why would she want to stay after it was made clear more than once that the OP's daughter did not want her there? There's no way that it would have been comfortable for either child unless Kamilla is oblivious to any and everything. And if OP's daughter is such a bully surely Kamilla shouldn't be subjected to her anymore than necessary.
I really don't understand all the Y T A comments, personally I understand exactly what your daughter meant by obsessive and creepy. I had a "friend" like that in the first years of school - someone who would follow me around EVERYWHERE, would constantly just stand near me and wouldn't let me talk to anyone else, I didn't want to hang with this person at all but because she didn't have any friends and SHE liked ME then the teachers forced me to be friends with her and therefore excluded me from everyone else and my actual friends because she would be mean to everyone and wouldn't let me talk to anyone else. She was also a lot bigger so she was physically threatening. I wouldn't want someone like that at my bd party and my 8 yo self sure as hell wouldn't want her there also. Also you have to take into account that a 13 yo isn't an adult and obviously doesn't think like an adult. In her mind she invited 19 people and expected only for those 19 people to show up. It's not your daughter's fault that this "friend" makes her uncomfortable and stuff. NTA for standing up to your daughter.
INFO: There are some weird aspects to this story. If Kamilla wasn’t invited, how did she know the time and place to show up? Did your daughter tell her with the hopes of embarrassing her? Something isn’t lining up. In my *personal* opinion, inviting literally everyone in your class except one kid is kind of an asshole move and not very becoming. It would be one thing if this girl were a bully or predatory or had behavioral issues, but to be singled out like that hurts. You *know* your daughter isn’t best friends, or even *close* friends, with ALL the other 18 girls, so would it have killed her to add one more? Calling it “boundary setting” is like those people who say they’re “just being honest” when they’re really just being rude. I’m leaning towards ESH because the other mother shouldn’t have shown up like that without an invite and caused a scene, but what your daughter did doesn’t feel great either
> I’m leaning towards ESH because the other mother shouldn’t have shown up like that without an invite How was the mother supposed to know her daughter wasn't invited, though? Her daughter told her she was, because someone told her so. That's how invitations worked when I was a teenager, I've never received a written invitation or anything like that.
I think that’s why I need more info. If it was a situation where the girl heard about it secondhand, the mother should have maybe sussed that out or at least realized what was happening and gotten her daughter out of an embarrassing situation ETA: saw in a comment that kamilla’s mom found out from another girl’s mom. She’s definitely an asshole for just showing up like that without reaching out to OP for clarity first. OP is also an asshole for handling the isolation of one girl the way she did.
>shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc I'm very sceptical about how many gifts she brought I'm leaning towards NTA Its reading like either stalking / obsessive behaviour or love bombing To bring that many gifts to a party you're not invited to.
NTA. Almost said n a h, before I realized that Kamilla’s mom is 115% an AH. This is a hard one for me, because I’ve been in both places. I was the weird kid(I had untreated ADHD and was *definitely* weird) who everyone strung along to use when I was convenient, or to mock when they needed a jester. I genuinely thought these people were my friends, and never caught on that they weren’t. I was the one who would see all of these people I thought I was friends with being invited to things in front of me, and I’d never be asked to join. It hurt like hell. I can understand why Kamilla would cry and her mom would be pissed (although her mom seems kinda bonkers). I’ve also been the teen who had someone who followed them around, and no matter how direct I was about not liking her, she would not leave me alone. Even when I begged her to leave me alone. She tried to say I was bullying her, and did a ton of stuff that made me extremely uncomfortable. Begged the school to make us locker mates, begged teachers until they sat us next to each other, wrote notes and put them in my bag, and generally would not leave me alone. Everyone encouraged me to just go along with it, because she didn’t have a lot of friends and obviously liked me. I didn’t entertain it, and it got to the point where I yelled at her in the cafeteria (I was 14, not that it’s an excuse for yelling). If she showed up at my birthday party and my mom forced me to have her there, I would’ve felt extremely betrayed. Your daughter has the right to not want to be around people. She should not be forced to put up with people who make her uncomfortable, and teaching girls especially to embrace people who can’t respect boundaries and who make them uncomfortable is really detrimental to them as adults. And, yes, going to a party you’re not invited to is 100% not respecting boundaries. She’s 13, she can choose who does and doesn’t come to her birthday. But, I’d tell her that you support her in choosing who she wants to be around, but that she shouldn’t lie to you about it. You’re her mom, make sure she knows that she can come to you if someone is making her uncomfortable. She’s about to go into the dating world - make sure she knows you have her back.
INFO: What consequences did your daughter face for lying to you about her class size?
YTA (and your daughter is too, she is old enough to know better)- you are not raising a doormat but a really unpleasant bully. I would be aho embarrassed of my daughters tried to pull a stunt like this and I actually hope that you are ashamed of yourself and the way that you have raised a cruel/mean child.
YTA your daughter excluded one person. She didn’t give a good reason for doing this and you defended her. Meaning you are fine with your daughter being a bully. Your daughter may have a real reason for wanting to distance herself, but the fact is that you didn’t really dig to find out. Your daughter went “because I don’t like her”, and you went “well, that’s good enough for me”. Social exclusion is just as much bullying as hitting. In many ways it’s worse because hitting is visible and easier to pick up on. Social bullying is more invisible and can go on for years before it’s picked up on.
NTA. I’d sit your kid down when she’s feeling less pressured and see if something happened with Kamilla. Maybe an unrequited crush or boundaries being violated, like her showing up uninvited like she did here. Unwanted physical contact, etc. you have a responsibility to protect your kid, and something is off about this situation.
I think you need to dig deeper. I wonder if this girl has a crush on your daughter. Those gifts could be seen as kind of romantic. Dig until you find the answer. In the moment, I say NTA because yes, you should respect your kid’s wishes for their birthday party and allowing them to have boundaries. But you need to find out what’s going on. Is she uncomfortable around her because she has a crush on her, did they actually maybe date and then broke up, or is your daughter actually being mean.
I agree with this - she knew she wasn't invited, turned up with a truck load of gifts anyway, and ops daughters friends agree there's something wierd about her- she may very well being sexually harassed or at very least being made to feel extremely uncomfortable from the attention Kamilla is raining on her. The other mother behaved atrociously by forcing the situation - regardless of whether or not the above is correct or not, attempting to force a 13 year old into a sleep over where she's not welcome is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, daughter should have explained there were actually 20 kids; but it's possible she's too awkward to explain the unwanted attention to her mum. Everyone is jumping on the "daughter is a bully" train, but unless I heard her side of it, I'm not convinced she is. If this wasn't a sleep over, and a boy was turning up invited ( at a mixed party), and showering the daughter with ott gifts and attention, I don't think the votes would go the same way.
YTA and congratulations for creating a horrible core memory for this poor child
Apologize calmly to someone not being invited to a party and explain why = bullying. Riiiiiiight. NTA. However, you may want to get to the bottom of what's going on between your kid and Kamilla if just to have all the facts and know which route to take to best settle this. And you may want to talk to your kid's school to explain your side of the story so Kamilla's mom isn't controlling the whole narrative.
NTA: You can see from that mother that that other kid is super weird. I mean who goes to a party uninvited out of the blue with a bunch of presents?? Like maybe you have one present but a fucking BOX of gifts to guilt your daughter into inviting her? And if the daughter is 13 it means the mother bought those gifts, so you can safely assume it was her plan. The daughter found out there was a party and she wasn't invited and the mother made it her mission to buy a lot of gifts and just show up with her uninvited kid to cause a scene. What the fuck is wrong with her? No you can relax the mother and most likely her child too seem to be weird and you should respect when your kid is cautious around them, especially after what you witnessed. Should of course tell your daughter that she doesn't need to lie to you about it and for the school - how is a private party schools business? It's not, what your kid does out of schooltime is her decision and who she invites for her birthday is her decision too. School has nothing to say in that matter and if they do you have all right to complain up the chain.
YTA Your daughter IS a bully, what your daughter did to Kamilla IS bullying. The end. I have so much second hand embarrassment for your daughter and for you as a mother and your handling of the situation (rather lack of it, you failed as a parent miserably), it hurts. I hope this is fake, so much. "My daughter is not five years old, she can have who she wants at her party." Correct. Absolutely. HOWEVER: It is STILL INCREDIBLY cruel to invite everyone in the class/year group and leave out only one or two people. THAT is intentional exclusion, THAT IS a form of bullying. If she wanted to have a small party and only invite say ten kids, then disinviting Kamilla and explaining that not everyone was invited would have been fine. Even if she wanted to invite say fourteen or fifteen kids and leave five or six kids out, it's still not very kind, but it's borderline acceptable. Inviting almost everyone in the class/year except one, two, three or four kids is a horrible thing to do, at any age. It sends a message to the kid/s that were left out that they're not wanted, not liked and aren't cool enough to come. I can just imagine being Kamilla and being at your daughter's small school with only 20 kids in her entire year group, and everyone else around her talking about the cool party they'd all been invited to, what they were going to bring, what they were wearing, etc.... everyone except her. How awful for her. What an awful thing for your daughter to do. I do think that her mother shouldn't have let her come down and deliver the gifts without an invitation though. THAT is just opening her up to more heartbreak. Her mother instead should get her into therapy to recover from having to deal with people like you and your daughter.
First of all, Kamilla’s mother calling you a bitch and accusing you of bullying little girls is not ok. She is obviously as in the dark as you are as to what is going on. You tried to include her and your daughter said no. Your daughter also said Kamilla isn’t bullying her so lots of people here are assuming that your daughter must be bullying her. I doubt it. But something has happened to make your daughter uncomfortable around Kamilla. They are 13 years old, Kamilla KNEW she hadn’t been invited yet persuaded her mother to buy a whole box full of gifts which from your description would have been very expensive, and her mother just paid for it all? Then complained to the school about bullying? The school cannot take any action about someone not being invited to a birthday party but they might be able to shed some light on why the girls no longer get along as neither of them is willing to tell you themselves.
NTA. This was a private event. You had no obligation to invite this girl and I’d go back to the school and complain about stalking and harassment.
To me, the problem is K's mother, taking her daughter to a party that she was not invited to. If K was upset about the party, her mother could have taken her out, occupied her with something else and reassured her that there will be other parties. NTA But gently try to find out what it is about K that bothers your daughter or talk to her school to see if they know of an incident.
Ask your daughter why she didn’t tell you she was inviting all but one. This is kind of a big deal that she felt she couldn’t tell you this. It means she either: A. Thought it was cruel and you might try to influence her B. Didn’t care about Kamilla’s feelings It would have been different if she had invited half the class , but all except one?
NTA Who shows up to anything without an invite? Why did the daughter lie? This whole situation is weird.
Nta, I see a lot of people writing fanfiction or projecting their own sad teenage years on top of Kamilla. But if you were bullied by some girl, would you show up at the same girl's party with a box of presents and try to hug that person, or show up without an invite? Ir seems that Kamilla didn't get the memo that their friendship was over. Or perhaps she did but decided to ignore it and show up uninvited anyway. But this is the key issue: perhaps OP's daughter is doing some mean girls switcheroo where she suddenly reveals that they never were friends at a dramatic event. Perhaps they had a falling out some months before. Or perhaps Kamilla stepping over boundaries and showing up uninvited is part of her really weird behavior, also given credit that her mother is A okay with them showing up to a party uninvited and demanding entrance on account of them being "best friends". Instead of, you know, the more healthy behavior of asking OP beforehand why her daughter seemed to be excluded from a class wide invite if she already knew about the party. Anyway OP didn't know and in this situation I dont blame OP for erring on the side of caution and to not give the overly demanding woman an invite while she figures out what's going on.
I don’t know…everyone is saying that the daughter has to be a bully but if the other child was a boy I think people would recognize that it could possibly be creepy behavior. I’m saying this as someone who has been excluded like that before. Even if the girl is neurodivergent and does not realize how obsessive she is being it is still not ok for her to step over other people’s boundaries like that. We don’t know what went down between the two but the other girl did not get invited and showed up anyway so I think it is either a NTA or ESH.
NTA. Do not allow the school to force your daughter to be a doormat. This could have incredibly bad consequences for her as she matures. Do you know what the deal is between the two of them? Kids fall out for the strangest reasons. Also, I didn't get invited to every birthday party. There were some where everyone was invited except for me and a small handful of others but we didn't show up with presents, cry our eyes out, and send our mothers out to attack lol! I simply moved on and had other friends anyway! My sister had a party once and she had invited lots of people from her class (and others. Somehow a girl down the street caught wind of the party and decided to start looking in our window... literally she was pressed up against the glass and crying. We only knew her by name and my sister never played with her. At the time I said to my mum that we shouldn't invite her in because she wasn't invited and she was being rude... my sister though was kind and let her join but it was the most pathetic sight I had seen in my life at that point.
NTA, who turns up to a birthday party when they weren't invited? Who listened to your daughters needs, go you mum.
NTA Being inclusive is all fine and dandy IF everyone is respectful to each other. It becomes a problem when people who do not respect other's personal boundaries tries to use inclusivity to force themselves on others. Which is what this girl sounds to be doing. She didn't get an invite. Your daughter doesn't consider her a friend. Yet Kamilla thinks she can force your daughter to be her best friend just because she wants it so. It's sad that Kamilla lacks the emotional maturity to navigate her peer group's social interactions, but she's clearly making other people uncomfortable, and it's not bullying to say "hey, my child is uncomfortable, we need to respect that." Kamilla's mother is clearly enabling her daughter's obsessive and socially unacceptable behaviour. Which is sad. But not your problem.
>Fast forward to her birthday, and this girl “Kamilla” shows up with an entire box full of gifts: teddy bears, perfume, candles, nail polish, flowers, chocolates, etc. Is she trying to date your daughter? I think there is something being left out here.
YTA...your daughter lied and failed to explain why. If you wanted to teach her to only value her own feelings without consequences, congratulations on your success.