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We are blessed to have Erin Rochell of ThingsMomsLike.com as a guest blogger today. This mother of two, wife to one offers reviews, giveaways and a personal blog. She is a California girl transplanted to a southern small town (Bless her heart!), and a habitual volunteer. This two part post offers hard-won advice on volunteering without over-committing or losing your sanity!
“I know that it all looks so attractive. Those moms that ‘have it all together’ in their Lilly Pulitzer shifts chatting with each other at the front of the room before the big Parent Night Open House. You want to be one of those moms. You want to be a part of that group, giggling to each other as you scurry to find your seat on the side of the stage. You long to be part of the group…the clique…the ‘in’ crowd. The important people. The P.T.A. (Parent Teacher Association).
I know that ‘in crowd’ sounds so junior high, but as you may have already found if you’ve been part of this ‘in crowd’, even if you weren’t the most popular, this is sometimes the way it works in the world of the P.T.A. More on that and why I blast Harper Valley P.T.A. every time I need to get pumped for a board meeting later.
We don’t all wear Lilly Pulitzer. I am usually seen wearing some form of denim capri and a tee shirt that I picked up on sale at Target. I do remember clear as day the Lilly Pulitzer moms that I eyed from the 3rd row back during my first Open House. I wondered who you had to know or what you had to do to be part of that groups…sans the shift, because I am too short to pull off a shift and none of those colors really work for me.
I spent my oldest child’s kindergarten year strategically signing up for a shift at the book fair or the fall festival or anything else that I could sign up for because I wanted to be in that group so badly. I felt like it would validate me as a stay at home mom. This was new to me since I quit a job in healthcare where my hours were crazy because I really wanted to be there for my daughter after school and I wanted to go on the field trips and know the other moms and all of that jazz. I also had been jerked around so much with my schedule and employer that I was consistently working ’surprise’ double shifts and making it home just in time to get my daughter to school and go to bed for the four hours until she got home from half-day kindergarten. It just wasn’t working.
The advantages to being room mom and being at all of the school events were that I was able to keep busy in my new role as ‘housewife’ (my husband is probably snickering right now) and I was able to be close to my daughter and observe her from afar without being all up in her grill. She has always been very independent.
When P.T.A. election season came around, I knew that I couldn’t possibly aspire to be the President, so I chose the Fundraising Chair because I am a PR and marketing girl at heart and I heard that you got free wrapping paper from Sally Foster if you went and listened to their sales pitch. Who can’t use wrapping paper?
I was elected and began my term as Fundraising Chair. By elected, I mean that no one else signed up and no one objected. I also got a big box of free wrapping paper before we kicked off my first fundraiser.
And that, my friends, is when I lost my ability to say no. It just went away one day. But I’m working on finding it.
I spent the first couple of years of my daughter’s elementary school career volunteering on the PTA working mostly on fundraising. Hey, there were perks. I got a BUNCH of free wrapping paper for attending the organizer’s breakfast at Sally Foster. I also got those ribbons that pull out to make one fantastic ribbon. Oh, the perks. I was also the Room Mom for her classes. I coordinated shifts at the fall festival and class parties.
I became pregnant with my son when my daughter was in first grade. He was born right around the time she started second grade. Two days after my son was born, after my daughter went back to school, my daughter’s teacher sent home a HUGE stack of papers for me to grade. I was tired, just getting the hang of breastfeeding, just…well…two days postpartum. Do you want to know what I did? I graded the papers. That was the first sign that my ‘no’ had left the building.”
Stay tuned for Part Two of Volunteering Without Losing Your Sanity!
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Great post @ThingsMomsLike. I am not a mom myself, (although I hope to be soon!) but I too have had a problem with saying no at times. In great part because I genuinely love to help, but I end up running myself ragged. Looking forward to part 2 of this post!