[stomachmonkey]

My daughter is 11, middle school this year. My wife and I have been preparing her for all the joys that come along with it, cliques, peer pressure, general social issues etc.....

For the last 3 years she has been in an International Team competition called Destination Imagination. Each year her team did better than the year before. Her elementary school is only 3 years old and the 1st trophy in their case was won by my daughters team. The team contributed 2 more trophies and last year made it all the way to State finals which is a pretty big deal.

Couple of weeks ago one of the two team leaders, (they are all volunteer parents) mentioned to my wife that she was considering "shaking things up" by rearranging the team and wanted to know if my daughter would consider being on another team. My wife caught of guard replied that "Arden would love to be on any team".

Last night we found out that team leader 1 has limited her team to 4 kids, down from 6, (4 girls, 2 boys) the other team leader is running her own team and wants to do an all boy team.

Apparently my daughter is being replaced on the "girls" team by our next door neighbor who has no experience in the competition and is best friends with the team leaders daughter.

So there is no room there for my daughter who is now on a waiting list hoping that another parent volunteers to lead another team.

My wife is pissed, she feels our daughter was bumped off a team that she has been on for 3 years just so the neighbors kid could join.

My daughter was crushed.

I'm all over the fence.

My feeling is if they don't want her on their team then I don't want her to be on that team.

As much as we don't like what has happened the team leaders have every right to determine the make up of their team.

This is life, things like this happen to us all the time.

Sucks but it is what it is, a lesson in real life.

But I am pissed at how it was handled. I feel like the team leader purposely gave my wife the impression that our daughter might be on a different team which would have been OK. Meaning she would still be participating, just on another team. Not that there was a chance that she would have to sit out completely.

One part of me wants to confront the team leader but really what would it resolve. Force her to put my daughter on the team where she is apparently not welcome?

Just let it go and not fight for my daughter? Tough for me to do but again what is there to gain from it.

Maybe for me what it really comes down to is if there was an issue with my daughter and the team, personality conflict, contribution, whatever then it should have been addressed with us.

This is a team competition, part of it is to build team skills, leadership, co-operation, conflict resolution.

If it's really nothing more than her daughter is better friends with the neighbors kid then I think as a team leader she failed.

So maybe I need to speak with her for no other reason than determining why.

Rant off, feel better, thanks.