The other day

The other day I had to expose myself.
Last year, my son had two homeroom parents who asked the families for a lot of monetary contributions for class activities.
There were:
Halloween parties
(each child buy another child a $5 treat!)
Holiday gifts for the teacher
(I kid you not, a gift certificate for the Cheesecake Factory and another for a day at the SPA!!!!)
A whole week of "Secret Valentine"
(buy a book, make a craft, buy some candy, buy a gift for $5)
and last but not least the end of the year Teacher Gift in which our family was completely humiliated by being the "one family didn't contribute" example (oh but they didn't name NAMES so it was okay for them to say that?)
Last year, besides the school supplies and the field trip costs and the clothes. It cost our family more out of our piddly budget to maintain our "secret poor status" than we wanted.
Why do we participate? Why not say "no thanks, our child can't take part in the activity"?
Well- would you want your child to be singled out?

So like I said, the other day I had to expose myself. I had to put it out there before this overindulgent nonesense of "more more more" started again with this years homeroom parents. I really needed them to know that we aren't like everyone else. That it was asking too much for us to contribute beyond our means. That I don't want my kid to be left out but at the same time I really felt strongly that it would benefit every family if we could tone it down and be more creative about how the class activities happened. What ever happened to homemade? What ever happened to giving the teacher a card or a letter to let her know how appreciated she was?
So I exposed our family situation to the homeroom mother and held my breath waiting for the "Poor girl!" response. I kind of got it... but I also kind of got "thank you for reminding us that not every family can do this."
Mission accomplished.