Sometimes I don't feel like being a team player...

My husband works at a small hospital.  There are lots of doctors and nurses that staff the hospital but sort of the backbone of the hospital is my husband and the four other doctors in his group along with their two nurse practitioners.  Any patient the ER admits, they see, write orders for, and care for until they are discharged.  Any surgical patient is turned over to them after surgery.  They cover the general floor, the ICU, and my husband also does Pediatric coverage.  There is always one of them at the hospital and during the day there is also always one of their nurse practitioners.  Because the hospital is often busy they also take turns being the backup person, meaning that on days off they will usually take two half shifts to come in and help the main doctor keep things moving.  There is a lot of work to share between the five of them. 

I want to layers this over the fact that this week is spring break.  I wasn't really planning on doing anything.  I haven't been feeling amazing, and we've been moving and unpacking but J really wanted to do something to mark the days.  The problem was he was working most of spring break.  He only actually is off Thursday-Sunday of the kid's spring break.  It just didn't seem long enough to do anything.  At first we talked about taking the kids to Disneyland but J didn't want them to miss school and wanted a full seven days if we were going to make a trip like that.  Then we talked about going camping, but he wanted to go to Yellowstone.  We ultimately vetoed that idea because it is still pretty cold up there right now and could easily snow.  Finally we settled on a trip to Portland.  It is only about a 1/2 day drive from us and we figured we could at least enjoy a few nights in a suite and do some of the things they have in town there.  This trip planning though has been largely left on my shoulders since J has been exceptionally busy the last couple weeks and so I booked the hotel and planned out an itinerary alone. 

Then two days ago J calls from work to ask what our plans were.  Turns out whoever was suppose to do backup for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday can't and they were wondering if he could pick up the half shifts.  Well first off Wednesday he's actually the one working...so basically no he can't pick up the shifts and it means he has no back up person on Wednesday and then we have our trip planned, a trip he sort of insisted we take, and the suite is already booked come Thursday-Friday.  I reminded him of that, and he was like, "Oh yeah well I can't do it then"  But someone must have been working him over because today he calls and ask if I think it would be possible for him to go in tomorrow morning and do a half shift if he starts really early because he feels bad about leaving Peter with 22 new patients.  I get that my husband is a good guy, that he is a team players, and that he is trying to do what is best for his patients and for his team.  I also know that these are the people who are there to pick up shifts if he needs them in emergencies.  I get it.  That is why I said yes.  But inside I wanted to say no because truthfully sometimes I just don't feel like being a team player. 

The Path to Accomplishment is Littered With Failure

Have you seen that video floating around Facebook about Famous Failures?  I really struck a chord with me this morning.  I think we often get so obsessed with perfection that failure becomes painful and many of us can't see a way past it to success.  I know this is something I struggle with and I've noticed that my children who are more concerned with how they are perceived struggle with this more than my other children.  My oldest daughter is a perfect example of this.  She is kind, intelligent, and fun but I notice that her patience when it comes to failure is very low.  This came to a head at the beginning of this last school year.  Her teacher called me in because they were taking a computer test on what they were suppose to learn over the year so that the end of the year they'd have a good comparison of their progress.  Her teacher told me, "Gigi is my best reader and she is one of my top math kid if not the top math kid but when she got to problems she didn't know she got so frustrated she started banging on her head with her hand and crying.  We finally stopped her test because we were worried about her."  J and I were definitely concerned. This is something we've recognized in her for a long time, it is the reason she quit soccer, gymnastics, and piano.  Her tolerance of frustration and failure is so low.  We knew we wanted to help her but just didn't know what to do.  We prayed on it and talked it over many times.  Does anyone else pray over their children when they don't know what to do?  Sometimes you just feel like you need a little more guidance.  Then on a whim, spiritual guidance, an accident we signed her up for ballet.  I'd gone with the other girls to sign them up for dance and I wasn't planning on signing Gigi up since she was already taking horse back riding lessons, but while filling out the paper work she asked me why I wasn't signing her up.  I couldn't really give her a good answer although in the back of my mind I was thinking of all the other extras she had quit in frustration.  But still I signed her up for ballet.

I'm going to be honest, I was extremely nervous about it.  The girls dance teacher is not particularly warm and fuzzy.  She is nice enough but she is extremely exacting and has no qualms about calling kids out by name when they need extra work on a step or position.  I would say she is strict and demanding.  The first few weeks I thought Gigi was going to quit.  There were a couple times in class when she just shut down on her teacher and I thought, well here we go again, but her teacher did not give up.  More than once she took my daughter out into the hall and talked to her about how hard work and mistakes are all part of learning.  She called me and asked me and J to encourage her on the home front and talk to her about how while perfection might be the ultimate goal no one is perfect on the first try, fifth try, or twenty try and that failure is just part of the process.  I think the three of us hit on this for two months and miracle of miracles a switch flipped for her.  Her teacher is always telling me now that she is one of the hardest workers, one of the first girls willing to try something new, and very encouraging of her other classmates.  I know she is still very concerned with how she looks and performs.  I can see it in her face during performance.  She is so serious, you can just see her thinking everything over.  Gigi is the opposite of Peach who spends her time in the mirror sneaking funny faces at herself, but even though she is serious, Gigi is all about trying now and I love it.  The greatest thing is that it has actually had positive outcomes at school.  Her teacher tells me that she doesn't allow herself to shut down when she gets stuck anymore and that she is always willing to try.  There are so many things I get wrong in parenting my children and I know that when it is all said and done I will have lots of regrets but this was a parenting win for me and I'm so glad to see her learning to learn from failure.  It is such an important skill to reach our full potential.  The bonus on this is that I also love getting to watch her dance, so it was a double win for mom!