Photophobia

OK, my kids are cute and all, but the truth is I have never really felt the need to spend 50 bucks on a sheet of mug shots…

This week, my kindergartner’s elementary school sent home a full set of unordered portraits, including a sheet of brightly colored, laminated punch-outs (key chain, bookmarks, doorknob hanger etc).  Our instructions were to send back the ones we didn’t want. Hmmm…tricky!  Isn’t it soooo much harder to send back a set of lovely photos of one’s precious child than simply not to order photos at all?   In fact, I wasn’t planning on ordering individual pictures this spring. For one thing, these latest pics were taken just days after my kid got a haircut about which I had mixed feelings. Plus, I had already bought photos from the shoot they did in the fall, which had to be pre-ordered (I got one of the smallest packages available--I find all this stuff to be horribly overpriced). Silly first time public school parent that I am, I thought there was just one photo shoot per year…but no.  It turns out the fall shoot is for the yearbook, and they do another round (including group pics) in the spring.

Anyway, the school sent a complete package of photos home in my son’s backpack.  He of course wanted to look at them, and immediately latched on to the punch-outs.  When I told him we weren’t planning to order anything, he burst into tears. In my opinion, it’s bad enough to send home traditional portraits which haven’t been ordered (playing on parental guilt), but it’s even  worse to include novelty items that sell to kids (playing on parents’ desire to keep their kids from crying).  Frankly, this school picture thing seems like total racket. I mean, how much do these outfits rake in? How much profit is there in one of those packages? I contacted my child’s principal to let her know I thought sending unordered photos home with students was a bad idea, and she seemed to understand my point of view. What would seem to make the most sense would be to send home a single small proof and then let parents decide whether or not to order.  I’d also like to see more small packages and plenty of à la carte ordering: some of us in this very rich county are on a budget….

Speaking of budgets, we currently have only one child in school, and we’re planning to max out at two. But what about you people with four kids or more?  That’s like hundreds of dollars in school pictures!  How on earth do you do it? And of course (as we are finding out in our first year of organized athletics) it doesn’t stop at school.  There are pictures for baseball (we skipped the photo session to go to a wine festival—bad mommy!), pictures for soccer (had pics taken but didn’t order), pictures for my three-year-old daughter’s dance class (also skipped—fortunately she didn’t notice) and so on.

The truth is, I’m just not as into the whole picture thing as some other parents. In my opinion, those posed studio portraits so often look goofy and artificial. We take plenty of photos of our kids with our little Canon and get a fair amount of decent stuff. We’ve had a professional photographer take some nice photos of our kids (in nature, I should add, not in front of some fake tree), and we’ll likely do it again one of these days. But I must admit, I do feel a little guilty about not ordering photos.  Maybe that’s why it bothers me so much.  On some level, I feel like I’m remiss in not ordering. Shouldn’t I be buying tons of pictures of my kids and finding creative ways to display them? (As you may have guessed I’m not a scrapbooker.)  Would it make me a better (read normal) mother?

I will, however, continue to pay those borderline extortionist rates for the annual whole class picture. After all, I’ll need to file away something to embarrass him with on Facebook (or whatever they have 15 years from now) when he’s in college…