To think the PTA didn’t think this through?

[Broccoliboat]

DD’s school did a Mother’s day surprise gift shop where you send payment and your child could choose a Mother’s Day gift to give to you on Mother's day.

Dd proudly came out with her (sealed) gift bag and hid it upstairs when she got home.
One of the children had told their mum it was a plant so she let the rest of the class know in our group chat so we could check if our dc had also chosen a plant.

DD had, so I explained if we don’t water it, it wouldn’t survive till Mother’s Day.

AIBU to think if you’re going to run the shop almost 2 weeks before Mother’s Day, you shouldn’t let 4, 5 and 6 year olds buy things that will die before Mother’s Day?!

I wouldn’t have minded if they’d let us know, but they’d sealed the gift bag!!

The PTA is run by a very cliquey group of mums, so I’m reluctant to feedback to them directly as they’re not really open to new people or ideas. We have been chatting on the class group chat about sending in feedback via the office. I also feel they should sent a parentmail to let the wider school community know about the plants in bags so they can water them/enjoy them before they die.

Yep, daft.

It's fine. Personally with my pta would have done them literally two days before mother's day.

Send message to shcool saying about the plants as othwr dc may make the mistake yours did

Selling plants to five year olds two weeks before mothers day as a surprise is madness!

Mine are at Secondary now but the Mothers/Fathers day shops were on the week leading up to the day, usually the Friday but sometimes the Thursday.

its like something out of Brigid Jones, she joins the PTA and on Mother's Day there's 100 pics of dead plants on the class WhatsApp

Rather than send "feedback" you could get involved with The PTA and make sure its done much better next year.

They are definitely live plants not imitation plants? They are very popular at the moment...

Feed back. Not everyone has two parents at home to help the child.

At least you still have sales. We had to get rid of ours because not everyone has on of the parents being celebrated.

Yes it’s daft but remember these are volunteers giving to their time to raise money for your child’s education. You could offer to run it next time?

It’s not clear from your post whether you’ve actually opened the gift and found a real live plant in it?

We have been chatting on the class group chat about sending in feedback via the office.

Could you explain how this differs from being ‘cliquey’? Also, any ‘feedback’ that came to our PTA via the office would only be responded to with a cheerful invitation for whoever ‘we’ is to volunteer your time and effort to the PTA. The P bit stands for it being as much your responsibility as it is theirs.

Fun hoover here. Schools shouldn't be involving themselves in mother's day gifts. Maybe it's a location thing but there were several children in my children's classes who had dead mothers or who had been removed from the care of their mothers. Rubbing salt in the wound as they watch their luckier classmates skip off to make/buy mother's day gifts is entirely unnecessary.

But apart from that ... Yes plants were a stupid idea.

Auldy · Today 11:55

Fun hoover here. Schools shouldn't be involving themselves in mother's day gifts. Maybe it's a location thing but there were several children in my children's classes who had dead mothers or who had been removed from the care of their mothers. Rubbing salt in the wound as they watch their luckier classmates skip off to make/buy mother's day gifts is entirely unnecessary.
But apart from that ... Yes plants were a stupid idea

Completely agree. Not forgetting those families who can’t afford to participate.

You’re not a fun hoover at all. It’s the world we live in.

Plants 2 weeks before is daft, I'm struggling to understand how anyone can argue against that. I was chair of the PTA for 4 years at DDs primary school, its thankless work but no one holds a gun to your head to volunteer. Irrespective of why you're there or why other people aren't the ideas have to make sense. If they could only run the shop 2 weeks prior...plants weren't the product to choose.

Secondly as a personal rant I HATE THESE EVENTS. We have 'mothers and others' at my youngest DDs primary (I'm not involved in the PTA here). The ones without mothers don't want to be reminded that they have 'others'. I am a single parent of 5 years, so fully understand that not everyone has another parent to buy them gifts on these days, but paying for my own (2 week old) plant isn't much better than getting nothing.

The first fathers day after my husband left, DDs school did 'breakfast in bed kit for dad'. My DD was probably disproportionally upset by this. But not all kids will be waking up with their dads on fathers day. It was clumsy and ill thought out in my opinion to choose a gift that could only be enjoyed with your dad when you wake up. I did feed this back and was told they hadn't even considered that and thanked for bringing it up. They've continued with fathers day sales but do alternatives now (socks, shower bits etc). So if the feedback is given in a positive way, I think its totally OK.

I'm also on the PTA and although I shouldn't find it annoying, I do hate when people complain without actually offering to help out. There might have been a million reasons the sale was held on that day so I'd just focus on a productive suggestion for next year 'it would be great if you had a wee label to say 'water me' on the bag - I can print some for next year for you?' or similar. It's really an unbelievable amount of work for almost no thanks.

However I think it's actually really awful to have anything mothers or fathers day themed - we did away with anything like this as it's too tricky and can be so triggering for some children.

Sounds like the time DD's primary school held a book fair... only they were also selling loads of tat (bouncy balls, fidget toys, slime, sweets/chocolate etc) and expected the kids to choose books over the tat.... needless to say 90% of the kids came home with tat

DD did actually choose a book, but the lady on the stall said it was "too old" for her so she bought a bouncy ball thing that burst before she even got home!!!

Absolutely ridiculous!

@Broccoliboat you should definitely feed back to the PTA or they'll just keep doing stupid things like selling plants 2 weeks before mother's day

I HATED Father’s Day at primary school because of all these things- making cards, buying presents etc- my mum never re partnered so it was just mum- no other male in our lives at all (mum was an only child, dad had sisters)

it made me stick out like a sore thumb and obviously led to other children asking why I wasn’t making cards/buying gifts which just added to the pain.

I don’t think schools should be doing these things personally.

If you have the time, I'd definitely ignore the cliquey culture of the current PTA and get involved, sounds like they could use some help from someone with some common sense!