exclude specific child pages from TwentyTen menu

I am trying to find a more elegant way to exclude only certain child pages from the TwentyTen menu in WordPress 3.0.4. The ‘Exclude Pages’ plugin removes the page from the menu, but also from the list, which I want to keep. I am just trying to avoid a huge drop-down list on the menu, but show a page list on the parent page.

Someone posted a function to exclude specific pages, but in my case this would require inputting a huge amount of page ids in order to accomplish what I want. I am looking for a way to show a parent page on the menu, but none of its child pages. And not all the parent pages – only some.

Any Ideas?