To a turning-twelve-year-old girl, a birthday party is a commodity. I finally came to that conclusion after weeks of on-again off-again discussions with my daughter about who to invite to her birthday party. It was her choice, in the end, but I tried heartily to persuade her. She wanted to invite the popular clique from school; the girls who never call her after hours nor does she call them. Their association, it seems, is purely a business transaction conducted on school property. I rallied for the girls I consider her true friends, the nice girls whose moms I know: "Why don't you invite so-and-so, who plays at our house all the time?" I asked, "How about so-and-so who calls you to come over a lot?" Nothing doing.

Spoken and unspoken deals are daily brokered among tween girls. Read between the lines on the party invitation and you might see, "If you come to my party, I gain admittance to the clique," or "I'll show you a good time for a few hours to buy my name out of the gossip pool for as long." In a last-ditch push for the real friends, I asked my daughter to consider how she'd feel if she didn't get invited to their birthday parties. She shrugged. Deals don't have to be made with true friends, who like her already for who she is and not for what she can offer them. Real friends may even look past the fact that she didn't invite them to her party. Perhaps they'll understand why.

Raising a girl is sticky, messy stuff because growing up is sticky, messy stuff. I speak from experience that I think girls have a harder time navigating the social swamp of tweendom and beyond. I remember wondering, when I was in middle school and high school, why the popular kids were popular. What made them so special that everyone would kowtow to them? As a cheerleader, I was associated with the popular crowd but considered myself on the fringe of it as I could never broker a lasting deal to gain full membership. Funny how the past creeps into present day child-rearing...

So the birthday party was Saturday. The "in" crowd came bearing gifts. There was fun and laughter and appropriate behavior. Something unexpected happened, though: I got to know these popular girls and I like them. After the party I admitted to my daughter I was wrong. "They are nice girls," I said, "I understand why you like them." She responded, "I told you." I still have a lot to learn...