Should we be quitters?

I normally see things out to the end. I do not like leaving things undone, no matter how tired, annoyed, or uncomfortable I am. I value perseverance, and follow through is something I hope to teach my children.
Many times the 'right' thing to do is hard, and I wish my children to see the end goal, work hard, and feel that wonderful sense of accomplishment when they've stuck it out. 

Sometimes though, it's not really that easy. This week, we had one such incident, and at first I wasn't sure how I would handle it. We had signed our oldest daughter up for her very first summer camp. It sounded so neat, it was a theatre type camp, where they worked on a production for the week and on Friday, they put on a show for the parents. She had gone to see a few plays this past year and had been talking about wanting to be in play for months. I thought, 'Surely she will love this!'. 

So the day before, after a day at the beach with her dad and her cousins, as I put her to bed, I reminded her about the camp and she was very hesitant, and said that she did not want to go. I chalked it up to the fact that we homeschool, and aside from dance class and Sunday school, she is always in the care of family. We've never had to talk up going to school or daycare to her, so this was a brand new. 

The morning of, I tried to reassure her, and she was not buying it. She still did not want to go. I wrote my phone number on her name tag and instructed her teacher to call me if she needed me. I received a call a few hours later from the directer saying she had peeked in and everyone seemed to be fine, they were all playing a game, and no one had reported any issues. I knew it! I knew she would love it! Yay!

Um, yeah. Not so. When I picked her up and asked her how it went she almost started to cry. She hated it and did not want to go back. She said her teacher was too serious, and I finally got out of her that she had accidentally touched something and the teacher had told her in front of everyone not to. She was embarrassed, afraid she was in trouble and lonely. She cried most of the evening if we brought it up. I tried telling her that her teacher probably was stressed and nervous too, and was most likely just trying to keep the papers safe and did not intend to scare her. She was adamant that she was not going back. 
(Complicating matters was that my mom had helped us pay for it, and I kind of felt like it was a lot of money to just quit on the first day. So what to do?)

I finally came up with a brilliant solution. I bribed her. Lol. Yes, I did. I told her if she tried again, I'd take her out on a special date on Friday. I kept thinking if she could just try one more time, she would like it. I figured it was the whole paper touching incident that kind of turned her off, and I knew once we got past that, she would have fun. I also promised that I would stay at the church, and would check in with her every so often and that she only had to stay until lunch. I told her I'd talk to her teacher and clear any misunderstandings up. She finally agreed and so, Tuesday morning, we went again. She was fine each time I checked, and asked me to stay a little longer to finish a craft! I sent texts to my hubs and my friends, who I had called the day before asking their advice. I thought she wold surely love it now that the first day was gone and the second had been better.

So imagine my surprise when I asked her "So, do you want to finish the week now?" and she said, "No! I did the second try, can we go on our date?" Ugh. She has only gone to fulfill the date bribe. Yikes. What now? 

I got her to go again Wednesday, again, with me staying at the church and checking in on her. 

Thursday, we quit. Her cousins had come into town the night before and they all decided to go to Disney on Thursday. How could I refuse? And on Friday, we went to the beach with them. She totally missed the show. 

I really struggled with the decision. I mean, what was I teaching her? That if you don't like something you can just quit? That hard work isn't worth it? Shouldn't I teach her the value of money? We paid a lot for the camp, it wasn't something we could just throw away. Plus there was the whole thing with my mom paying part of it...I kind of felt like I was obligated to make it work. Like she would feel that I didn't value her helping us if I just quit. 

No, I think I taught her a much more valuable lesson that week. I showed her that I believed her. That I would stand up for her, be on her side, and never put her into a situation where she felt unsafe or uncomfortable without knowing I was nearby. I gave her a little bit of a push for independence, but respected her limitations. More importantly, I showed her that family is more important than fulfilling an obligation. Our cousins only come down once a year, and had we gone to camp we would have missed on two wonderful days spent with them. 
And I learned something myself. I learned that it's ok to be that crazy mom who writes her cell phone number on her kids name tag. The one who not only walks her kid to the room on the first day, but on every day. And the only crazy who will spend four hours at the church playground, library, and lobby with a 3 year old and an infant, so that her 6 year old will feel ok to go to camp. I'm sure I was the talk amongst the teachers...I was slightly embarrassed to be staying the whole time at first, but then I realized-It's not their job to make my child feel safe, ok, and comfortable. It's mine. And if that means I stay the whole time, so be it. 

And I think we both learned that sometimes, it's ok to say "You know, I thought I'd like this thing, and I don't. I simply don't want to continue." and not feel guilty because of the time or money or whatever that was put into it. It's ok to quit sometimes.