They Were All Invited To the Party Except Me!!

Kelly walked into the nurse’s office after lunch on Monday complaining of a stomach ache. The nurse called her mother to pick Kelly up. Once in the car, her mother asked,

"Kelly, when you left for school this morning you felt fine. Did you eat something bad at lunch?"

"No, just take me home."

"Was it bad hamburger meat?"

"Mom, just take me home."

"Milk? Sometimes milk can get sour."

"Mom! Leave me alone! My stomach hurts- just take me home! "

After they got home, the real story trickled out. At the lunch table, Kelly noticed a group of girls, including her three closest friends, huddled around a cell phone looking at photos. When she got closer, she saw they were looking at photos from a birthday party they went to over the weekend – they were all dressed up and hugging. Kelly had been excluded.

It’s no wonder she felt sick. And Kelly’s mother did too. She wanted to pick up the phone and call the other mothers to get them to "fix it". Either that or plan the biggest party of the year, and invite the Jonas Brothers!! Then Kelly’s mom took a deep breath, called her own best friend for a good rant, and took a step back. She realized that fixing the situation, in the long run, would not be empowering to Kelly. She needed to be the adult, and that meant helping her daughter understand what was happening, and help her move through it.

Being occasionally excluded from a party or an event is a rite of passage in middle school life that virtually all kids, even the so-called "popular ones", go through. At this age, kids are just beginning to value themselves as social beings in a very different way than they did in elementary school. They are all struggling to figure out how to do this, and they make a lot of mistakes along the way - primarily because kids this age think entirely about themselves most of the time. It's not that Kelly's friends were actively trying to leave her out or hurt her. They were simply celebrating the fact of their own inclusion, not taking into account how this would make Kelly feel. As Kelly's mother thought about that, it took the edge off and helped her know how to support her daughter.

"You know Kelly, when I was in middle school, I was left out of a big Halloween party, and I remember feeling horrible. I remember that my best friend went to that party and I didn't, and that was the worst part of all."

"So what happened, did you stop being friends?"

"No. I was mad for a while, because I thought that she did this on purpose. I thought she didn't care about me and that's why she went to the party."

"Well, I know that my friends don't care about me. And I hate them."

"Yep, I hated my friend too."

"But looking back, I can see now, that it wasn't about me at all. Kids at this age are just thinking about themselves, in that very moment, and they do the thing that makes them feel good, without thinking very much about how it makes others feel."

"Well, I don't do that. I'm ALWAYS thinking about my friends and I would never do that to them."

"Really? Is that really true? I want you to think about this. If you were the one invited to that party, would you have told your friends? What would you have done at the lunch table?"

Kelly's mom was able to get past her own emotions to help her daughter begin to move forward from a painful situation. By validating her daughter’s feelings, and not attempting to fix things, she was able to open the door to a meaningful conversation. When Kelly realizes that her mother does understand, she's open to her advice. Mom is then in a position to challenge Kelly to see her experience in a different way. Kelly can begin to let go of the idea that her friends deliberately set out to hurt her, and this mental shift away from a victim mindset to a broader understanding of the situation is the cornerstone of resilient thinking. With a shift in perspective, Kelly can then begin to move beyond her feelings and work on how she really wants to connect in the social group.