It’s Canberra. No sane school-kid wants to go to Canberra.
More to the point, ensure she’s in an environment where she can thrive.
I’m another in the ‘please don’t make her go’ camp.
There’s some great advice here, see if you can talk to her and get some specifics about what is happening. She may need some therapy, she may not.
When I was her age my Mum got me a badge that said, “The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.” I just was not a people person, and I did have a tough time at school, but as I grew up it got better.
As an adult I still prefer my own company, but I’ve ended up being a teacher, surrounded by small people all day long. While I don’t have tons of friends, I have a few, and consider them family. They are all people I can call for help at 2 in the morning and find them by my side within half and hour- quality not quantity 
I think she needs to stay home. I think she needs to know that you listen to her, trust her to know what is best in this situation and know that you support her.
I do agree you should deal with your problems, but as other people have said, you need to choose to do that. It is also something you need to do with your support network close to you. It doesn’t sound like this 3 day trip will give her both those possibilities.
Since no one else is brave enough* I’ll be the vioce of reason - don’t make her go. Three days of constant stress is way, way too much for a 12 year old.
*
Why would anyone else’s perspective matter in this case? I’m sure in every school where kids are bullied you can find other kids who think the school is great…because they’re not being picked on.
Don’t make her go. It’s not worth getting to do the “right” thing as a parent when it’ll make your kid misable for three days, which she’d rightly blame you for even if she doesn’t put that feeling into words.
But conversely, a kid with severe social anxiety is going to feel like an outcast at any school or social group. You can’t really tell what the situation is like at a school from a sample size of one. Even a kid who isn’t personally being bullied should be able to tell if bullying is going on and/or what (if any) response the other students and administration have. Parents who are involved in the school should have some inkling of the same.
I was certainly a non-conforming shy kid and as I mentioned so is my daughter, so I have a lot of sympathy. However, you can’t just sit back and let your kid completely disengage from society. Allowing them to avoid situations where they’re going to be picked on or hassled for their non-conformity is a very good thing to do, but from the perspective of someone with severe anxiety virtually all social situations look like that. As a parent you have to make an effort to really evaluate whether something is going to be good for your kid and recognize that they aren’t necessarily the best judge at this point in their life.
Could easily be talking about my 14 year old and she’s actually quite proud of being “weird”. The thing is at some point she (and perhaps your daughter?) needs to find a balance between being non conformist and random and living in the world the rest of us live in. She needs to seek out those with whom she has weird and random things in common and learn to recognize that they are likely to be few and far between at an age where most kids just want to fit in with everyone else.
I would say she shouldn’t miss out on the educational opportunity or it becomes easier to justify in not participating in other events down the road. Maybe have a quiet word with the chaperoning teacher to make sure an adult has her back during the trip.
‘Normal’ is nothing to be proud of.
So you think she should subject her daughter to an enviornment where she may very well be constantly bulllied with no hope of escape for THREE DAYS because, after all, it may just be ALL IN HER HEAD?!
Even if she is having problems adjusting to a normal enviornment and has severe social anxiety - do you think three days of toruture will return her better than when she left?
If your child is introverted, and I mean -sincerely- introverted, sending her will not change much.
My mother and I would go 'round and 'round because she always wanted me to “get involved” and I never wanted to.
For me, the bullying began in kindergarden and never let up. Yes, it did crescendo in middle school, a time I became so depressed, I stopped bathing, left suicide notes in the lunch room, and took sick days to avoid the knocked books, mockery and general sense of doom. So take heart: it can always be worse, trust me.
Anyhow, mother guilted me into many of the normal “kid” activities to no avail. In my experience, the kids weren’t the only problem but often the adults, as well. There was the volleyball coach who bawled like a baby on the final day because we never won a single match (yeah, probably because of me). The embezzling Girl Scout leader. A circus of bizarre youth group leaders in church, including one who, when finding words to describe all the children, looked at me contemptuously and said, “And you? You’re just abnormal.”
You have to be careful with outings. Adults often are insensitive to offbeat kids, especially the more extroverted leaders. I can’t remember a single coerced social experience I tried that enriched me, acclimated me, or did anything but make me realize that I would never belong. Without the safety net of an understanding adult, a child feels vulnerable and trapped.
I even took all the classes they recommend for shy people. Speech (which was hell on me) and drama (which I did well at, but didn’t make me less introverted).
You might just have an introvert on your hands. If she has one friend, well…maybe she could hang out with this friend over the three days on their own activity as others have suggested?
I just have to stress the importance of not trying to change her. She’ll either grow out of the “weird” stage or she won’t. You cannot make an introvert into an extrovert. You can force social situation after social situation on your daughter, but unless this is a temporary preteen stage, you’re stuck with a loner. Don’t feel bad! A lot of us grow up into functional, if not eccentric adults…
…who still feel like weird kids. 
One other factor - 12. Just before teens.
Show her that you respect her own judgement about herself some and that if she approaches you with a choice that is broadly within reason and is presented with reason you will treat her in an adult manner. Deal with her on this in that plane, as an individual who is the expert on herself. Engage her in suggesting alternative educational activities for that week end.
The result is that a child who is, perhaps, at some risk in the next several years - some who are socially isolated are - will have a stronger sense of a trusting and mutually respectful relationship with her parents. A bit more confident knowing that her parents had confidence in her to be a key part of decisions that impact her.
The alternative is setting up a resentful teen who does not feel that even her parents respect her or have her back.
If it were just a matter of her being introverted, I’d say make her go. Introversion shouln’t give you a pass from doing enrichment activities, no more than extroversion should give you a pass from silent reading at the library.
The reason why I don’t think this is just about introversion is because it seems implied that she has never freaked out like this before.
I remember wailing when my mother sent me to girl scout camp for two weeks. I was 100% certain I wasn’t going to enjoy it since I hated the girl scouts in general and I just wanted to stay home and read. Turns out I had a blast. Afterwards I was crying NOT to leave.
There were other things growing up that I thought I wanted to do and ended up misjudging how much fun they’d be and ended up disappointed.
But while I can see your husband’s side about this being character-building and I do think childhood shouldn’t always be about accommodating one’s personality quirks–because people with quirks have to learn how to go with the flow just like everyone else–I’m not sure I would choose this as a good battle to die in. If it was a one-night adventure, yes. If it was a family outing, yes. But you can work your way up to a three-day field trip later–like next year when her friend can come along. Maybe you can make attendance to next year’s trip be a requirement to ditch this one.
Allright, you want her to have social experiences and to not “ditch school” for three days.
Your husband wants her not to “run from her problems.”
She cried when she found out she “could” go.
Here’s an alternative. You tell her that she can get out of the field trip if she picks an alternative social activity that’s agreeable to the family unit.
She can volunteer at a homeless shelter or a church food pantry or a library. She can pick up trash by the side of the road with a group (everyone hates doing this - therefore it has to build character) she can help at a vet clinic by socializing with their animals (may have to call beforehand and set this up) she can do something SOCIAL with her sailing club (perhaps introducing them to a video game they might like?).
She’s 12. Let her pick something that she would rather do and let her do it.
Having three days where she isn’t being educated isn’t going to hurt her.
Having parents who don’t listen to her, and force her into experiences she knows very well are going to be painful, difficult, and traumatic WILL hurt her.
She’s almost a teenager - give her reasons to trust and depend on you as you get into those really difficult ages.
I was constantly bullied in school by other girls and it was just at school. I had other activities with other-school children and got along fine and had friends. It was obvious that it was the school atmosphere that caused most things because a few times, girls who were my friends and switched to my school at some point, would refuse to acknowledge my existence once at my school. They wouldn’t even say “hi” in the hall. One was a girl who I spent the whole summer with at summer camp another was a girl who transferred during a track season and we ran together every day until she got whatever notice was sent out about who to ignore. There was a teacher at my school who was a alumnus and she picked on me and hated me and spilled coffee all over an art project she graded.
So, yes, sometimes the problem is a certain school or group of children. If she is crying about spending three days with people in her school, and she doesn’t cry about everything, then don’t make her go. I tolerated going to school and wouldn’t complain because I had a couple of friends, took too full of a schedule to worry about the other girls, and I knew I had to go no matter what. If I had been made to go on a three day trip with these people I don’t know what I would have done, really I might have killed myself (I’m not making that statement lightly or saying it for effect). Going to school all day during the week was barely tolerable. I dreaded it, lost sleep, and was miserable, but kept that inside because I knew no grown up would have cared or they would have thought I was exaggerating.
My mother (my parents always backed each other up on stuff like that, and my Mum always made school type decisions) would have sent me on the trip, and then brought up the fact that they’d paid a lot of money for me to have such a ‘treat’ as justification for why I couldn’t do something I wanted to do later. Don’t do that.
Incidently, I was also (what a surprise) the weird kid at school, and I tended to find it easier to get on with either kids a few years younger, for whom the ‘being older’ trumped the ‘being weird’; or kids a few years older than me, who were sometimes more accepting of a smart, weird, younger kid than they would be of a smart, weird peer.
Just a thought, and it might not be the same for your daughter, but maybe there’s a mixed age group she’d want to join?
I don’t see “weird” as a bad thing. I was a shy kid who tried to fit in and didn’t do very well. I was happiest when I could be left alone on the outskirts of the crowd, observing. I did just enough “normal” stuff to not be noticed, and otherwise went my own way. Young girls are VICIOUS to someone they look down on, or don’t like, so I seem to have tiptoed the line between acceptable and weird.
So another voice here for don’t make her go. See if you can use that $330 for another educational purpose, be it therapy or a trip she wants to take.
FWIW, I was bullied pretty badly in middle school. I’ve been there.
If she has a problem with everyone at school, and they all have a problem with her, that is something that needs to addressed in a concrete way. She needs a social support system, and that can’t be one single other person. She needs to be able to articulate what is going one- is she being bullied? Is it social anxiety? Is she bored with school? If she feels threatened, is it physical or emotional? From there, maybe you can work through some solutions for making school livable, be it finding other social outlets, finding allies, developing emotional resilience, etc. But you can’t just say “I don’t like it” and expect to have a free pass to do whatever you want.
I do like the idea of her coming up with an equivalent educational experience that puts her in contact with people her age. Sometimes kids turn on you for no good reason, but getting into a different social set where you haven’t been targeted can be very refreshing. If she is getting depressed, she will probably feel a strong pull to isolate herself, but actually doing that will just feed the cycle. Humans are most emotionally resilient when they are connected and engaged, so it is better to start her defaulting to “let’s do something else” rather than “let’s stay home and do nothing.” If she’s not into any one given experience, that’s fine. But she should become able to push her comfort zone with something else.
And don’t worry too much. Middle school is tough on pretty much everyone. She may just need to tough this out until high school, where she’ll find a wider variety of people and may find her place.
You know, I know almost everyone has said that you shouldn’t make her go but here’s the thing that I keep thinking. Maybe she’ll have an awful time, but maybe she won’t. HOWEVER, if she thinks she feels left out at school now, how is she going to feel when everyone else has had this ‘bonding’ experience and she didn’t take part in it? The funny things that happened, the inside jokes, etc. Somehow I think that she’ll feel worse after the fact.
Not if she is destined to be the butt of all those “bonding” inside jokes and tricks and teasing it won’t.
Sorry - I missed quite a few adventures in my high school career, and I didn’t like my classmates before, and I didn’t like them afterwards. I also WENT on several class adventures, and I actually ended up liking my classmates LESS afterwards, because I was the brunt of a lot of “jokes” and “pranks” that some of my schoolmates laughed about and tried to re-create throughout the rest of high school.
I’m with the majority here - there’s very little potential to gain something positive in making her go, and a lot potentially to lose.
That age was spectaculary bad for me, so I have a lot of empathy for your daughter. I spent all of 7th grade pretending to be sick so I didn’t have to go to my new school where all my old friends had made new friends and dumped me. The fact that she’s at all willing to share with you what is going on is really good- I never wanted to talk to my parents about my feelings of ostracization and lonliness. And I grew into myself and made new friends in 8th grade, had a decent high school experience and I’m a pretty “normal” person, now, for what it’s worth.
I went on a school trip around that time and it was mortifying and awful- and something I lived through and I can’t really remember what was so bad about it. I remember vaguely that I felt alone and jealous of all the popular kids getting along with each other. And my hair looked freaking terrible without a blowdryer. And as far as inside jokes and funny things, none of them included me so I wouldn’t have missed much.
Gah, I don’t have any advice. But it’s a walk down bad memory lane for sure.