Knowing when to quit

I helped to sponsor a beautiful children’s book launch this morning (Riley and the Dancing Lion, by Canberra author, Tania McCartney - who I'd only met once at a seminar I gave recently, and who may be sorry she asked - read on).

As there were going to be clowns, goodie bags, colouring in and all kinds of fun at the launch, I thought I’d take along not only my daughters but my nearly three-year-old niece, for the experience.
All went very well until we hoved into sight of the bookshop, festooned as it was with helium balloons.

Alas, and unbeknown to me, at the local community carols event last night (where she was supporting my daughter in the school band after attending the English Ballet’s production of Angelina Ballerina with my other daughter), two-year-old Abbey had developed a phobia of balloons when a boy popped one while she was on the jumping castle.

As soon as she saw the first balloon (of about thirty) at the book launch, she burst into tears and wailed, ‘I don’t want to be here! I want to go home! I want my Mummy!!!’

‘Abigail,’ I reasoned (like the out-of-practise, early-childhood mum of a pre-teen and a nine-year-old that I am), ‘Auntie just has to do some work here, then we’ll go home, ok?’ (Auntie was supposed to stand with another local author and present our signed copy of our respective books to the lucky-door-prize winners as they were announced.)

‘Nooooooooooooo!!!!! I want to leave! I don’t want to be here!! I want Mummy!’

I stared at her in horror.

‘Here. Have a lolly!’ I suggested, (mother-of-the-child, you have to understand I was professionally-desperate by this stage.)

‘Nooooooooooooo!!!!! I don’t want a lolly! I don’t want to be in this place!!!’ Scream, screech, wail...

At this point a potential client approached me to enquire about work-life balance coaching.

What?

Oh - that! My core business...

‘This is my niece,’ I apologised. ‘My business card is over there, on that table...’

When a four-year-old boy jumped on an empty popper-juice container right beside us, moments later, it was obvious from Abbey’s understandably hysterical response that my Plan B of seating her on the bench with her cousins while I rushed inside and did the honours was not going to work. I sent my eleven-year-old in to convey the message to the host of the celebration that, regretfully, we had to leave.

Now.

No questions asked.

So, my advice is: know when to quit.

The Christmas season can be a minefield of social events and, whether it’s your balloon-phobic niece, your kids or yourself who is crying at the party for whatever reason - anticipate when ‘enough is enough’, and leave about 15 minutes before that moment arrives.

Repeat this any time you’re at risk of hoping things will improve at a social event, when they really won’t...