Rift in childhood friendship erupts when 'dumb' friend isn't invited to birthday party. AITA?
"AITA for telling another mother our children aren’t close anymore due to intelligence levels"
No-Professor4199
My daughter let’s call her Sophie used to be best friend with Kat. They used to be best friends in elementary school but ever since middle school have started to grow apart.
The school split the kids in advance, and normal for math and science. All other classes are still together. My daughter got placed in the advance and Kat got placed in normal. No big deal; they still see each other in school. They were still close friends until group projects.
There have been multiple group projects and kids get to pick their partners. Kat and Sophie usually work together, and that is when issues start happening. Sophie would get really frustrated that the work Kat did wasn’t correct.
I told her to just turn it in without fixing it and she got a bad grade on that assignment. After that, Sophie went through a period of time fixing stuff.After a while, I told her to stop doing group projects with her. So, they stopped doing projects together and the friendship blew up.
So, they are not friends anymore. It’s Sophie’s birthday and invites were sent out. Kat wasn’t on the invite list my daughter made. I got a call from her mom asking why she wasn’t invited.
I informed her they aren't really friends anymore. She said to invite her anyway since this is just a spat. I told her the people invited were people my daughter wanted at the event.
This went for a while and until it came to why they weren’t friends anymore and I said it was due to both girls intelligence levels, and tried explaining the group project issue. She got pissed, accusing me of calling her kid dumb (I never said that). She called me a jerk.
Edit. I did tell her they weren’t friends anymore. She kept asking why. That’s the reason I brought up the issue of why they aren’t friends anymore. I wasn’t going to lie. Also, she should already know why that friendship blew up. The kids were arguing about it constantly for a while.
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
MarshadowLivesHere
YTA and in such a way that I worry the universe might collapse around you. First, intelligence isn't really a thing the way you're thinking of it. Look up Gardner's intelligences and consider these. Is your daughter truly as advanced across all domains? Evidently not in the social one.
Second, consider what you are teaching your daughter. She's allowed to be rude to and angry at people who score lower than her? Is that something that applies to anyone, because it will be interesting when someone excludes her for not being as advanced as they are, and she internalises it as being her fault because that's what you've taught her.
There was a real opportunity to teach her to respond with compassion and humility, which would have given her such valuable characteristics and lessons about how to relate to other people in school and the workplace.
Instead, she will really struggle if she repeats this. Go look up process approach to learning and ask yourself if you're setting her up to learn or to stop learning as soon as she feels she is better than someone else.
ProfessionalElk88
YTA. You are likely smart enough to know that while you didn't call her dumb, you said everything but. Why did you say that, I wonder. You could have just said the friends fell out over school projects.
Be weary of raising a child to believe she's intellectually superior to other kids. Kids like that often fall flat in their 20s when grades are not important anymore. Kat might be thriving by then with a friend group who recognizes her best qualities.
And consider there are lots of reasons why kids can be difficult group project members. It could even be your daughter was hypercritical and Kat stopped trying. There also are many different types of intelligence. Kat could be smart in ways you don't understand or value, so, maybe stop acting like an expert?
lilmonkiesmama
Yeah definitely YTA. You totally called her kid dumb without calling her kid dumb. All you had to do was say as far as you know they aren't really friends anymore that they started having a downfall over group projects and have just drifted apart.
My son and his friends drifted apart bc he was in honors classes so they didn't have the same classes or lunch anymore, do you think for a second he was like well we aren't close due to intelligence levels....lmao do you not realize how awful that sounds?
Aggravating-Pain9249
There are LOTS of way to explain children growing apart. They are not is the same classes, they have new and different friends, their interests are different, etc. You went for the jugular. YTA.
BaoBunny44
This is the way my mom thinks. She's smart enough not to say it to someone, but she puts an insane amount of weight on education on what someone's job is. She thinks my husband is stupid because he didn't go to college and works a blue-collar job.
Multiple times, she's made comments about how we can't move too far from them because she wants to be close to her grandkids so "they'll be smart." Something my teen sister repeats constantly now.
She's one of the most emotionally unintelligent people that I know, much like you, Op. There was absolutely no reason to mention intelligence, and honestly, you're not that intelligent as you think if this was something you'd say.
jmbbl
"I said it was due to both girls intelligence levels."
Oof. How can you even type that out and still wonder if you're the AH? Learn some tact, for crying out loud. YTA.
The_Real_Scrotus
YTA. You did more or less call her kid dumb. It was totally unnecessary. Leaving it at "They aren't friends any more and Sophie doesn't want to invite Kat" was more than enough info for the other mom.