EnRICHment

On the way to school today, the group of parents I was with started talking about the new enrichment programs the school is offering.  And BOY OH BOY are people excited!  I mean - who wouldn't want to jump at Programming for Girls and Lego Robotics for Kindergarters? Or Art-Using-Science and the ever popular Yoga-to-Destress-your-Elementary-Grade-Schooler?

I mean, I saw that neon yellow flyer among the three hundred sheets of paper you guys brought home that first day, and thought, "Wow. This is cool. We should sign them up." 

So, after filling out the first 299 sheets of paper to return to school tomorrow, I finally got around to looking up the enrichment classes and quickly realized that in order for you two to be enriched, we must first be RICH!

[insert big Sigh].   Why does everything have to cost so much stinking money? 

I get that the teachers should get paid.  And I WANT to pay these enrichment teachers.  But after piano and soccer and swimming and AWANAS uniforms and books... 
And I know the beginning of every school year is like this ... I feel like we just fork over money for everything. 

And even though I'm in sticker shock about the money - it's also the TIME!  Where would we get the time to do all of this?  And we aren't the only ones with multiple kids, so (let me get my calculations straight...) this could be an easy 5-7 days of the week out and about after school and possibly $500 every few months for Enrichment activities. 

I realize that the time or money may not be anything to many people.  But for us, it is. 
We aren't poor, yet we most definitely aren't "rich."   Apparently, affluence is all relative.   (Maybe if you took Physics-for-Five-year-olds enrichment, you'll understand relativity).    It seems that technically, we are affluent - or at least in the "Upper middle class" spectrum in America based on our age and income. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States 
The unfortunate part of this issue is that, because we live in a city where your house costs roughly half of your monthly income, even though we make decent money, living within our means means that things are still a bit.  

I don't want to give the impression of whining.  Or that we don't manage our money well.  It's just that we don't make decisions regarding money lightly.  There is only so much of it to go around.

So as much as I'd like to sign you up for Travel-the-World-through-a-Scavenger-Hunt and have you learn Chinese-for-Children ...   we aren't going to do it. 

And it's hard because it's not that we can't afford it - but that we are choosing not to send you.  And in this area, I feel like I'm a pariah because I say things like that. 

More than not wanting to shell out the money - I want your time.  I want to make your life enriched by the satisfaction you'll have knowing you can be safe and peaceful in your own skin, that you don't have to be DOING and GOING and STIMULATED every waking minute. 

Being at home and having time for homework, family dinners, and PLENTY OF SLEEP is how I'm going to enrich your lives.  Giving you my time to talk and play and simply BE together is going to have to be enough.  

You are more than the classes you take, and more than the things you do.  
I am more than the classes my kids take, and I am more than the things that they do.

For you, I want you to know that being enriched has more to do with the enlightening knowledge that your life is RICH just because you are in it.