Month: May 2009

Preparing for ConDuit

Today was one of those days where I jump from partially-completed task to partially-completed task all day long. I got lots of things done, but the day lacked any sense of completion. I did finish tasks, but I was instantly drawn to the next task and so I never felt finished. Today’s tasks were split between preparation for shipping and preparation for ConDuit in SLC next weekend. Howard is the artist GOH at ConDuit and it is important for us to really give 100% to make the show worth coming to see. This means taking the time to frame large prints for the art show, plan ahead for panels and presentations, and put together a really good book launch party. Yesterday was the day I fretted over the book launch. Today I spent time emailing with the schedule co-ordinator to make sure that everything is going to fit. It really touched me to realize that she was just as excited to schedule my things as Howard’s. The schedule is not yet set in stone, but it is set in slowly congealing concrete. I don’t expect to see many changes in it going forward from now. I’m sure Howard will post his own schedule when he blogs about ConDuit, but I’m going to post mine here because it will help me wrap my head around the preparation I still need to get done before next Friday.

Friday May 22
5 PM Howard’s Main Address. Practice Makes Perfect. If you missed Howard’s UVU presentation, this is your chance to catch it. I probably will, which is why this appears on my schedule even though Howard will be doing all the work.

6 PM Howard and Sandra Tayler Part 1: structuring Creativity to Get Stuff Done
Howard and Sandra will discuss how they structure their lives to fit all the business tasks, creative tasks, and family tasks into each day and into one house. They will also discuss how things worked differently in the earlier stages of their creative life and how they expect things to change in the years to come. (I need to write up some notes on both this and Part 2, so that we don’t repeat ourselves.)

Saturday May 23
11 AM Sandra Tayler reading/presention. I’ll be giving my presentation on Books for ADD/Autistic Kids and Their Families. I’ll be discussing some specific picture books can be used to describe and explain aspects of ADD and Autism in ways that will help everyone understand each other. I’ll talk a little bit about my book Hold on to Your Horses, but mostly I’ll be discussing other books. After the presentation I’ll do a reading of some of the books I discuss. (I already know the shape of this presentation, but I need to create notes to present from. I also want to create a handout. Oh, and I need to find all of the books I’ll be talking about. They’re here somewhere.)

Noon Howard and Sandra Tayler Part 2:  The Nuts and Bolts of Running a Creative Business
Howard and Sandra will discuss the inner workings of their business and all the tasks necessary to keep it going.  Accounting, Marketing, Networking, Shipping, Printing, and Comic Creation will all be discussed. (Ditto note for part 1)

2 PM How to publish and market your YA/MG book panel with James Dashner, Mette Ivie Harrison, Rebecca Shelley, Julie Wright, Dan Willis, Stacy Whitman, and me. I’ll be representing self-publishing on this panel. Or it is possible that a poll of the audience and panelists will discover that most of the topic has already been covered in other YA panels, in which case we’ll get creative. Either way it should be fun. I’ll be along for the ride on this one. Minimal advance preparation will be necessary on my part.

3-4 PM I scramble to prepare for the book launch party

4-6 PM The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance Book Release Party I will be hostessing and making sure everything runs smoothly. Yesterday’s entry serves as my preparation notes for this event.

And after all of that, I shall take my exhausted self home to be with my kids. I will not be at the convention on Sunday. Hmm. Looks like I have even more stuff to put on my To Do list. Good thing I got some stuff crossed off of that list today.

Planning a Book Release Party

Today my brain has been absorbed by party planning. A week from Saturday we’ll be hosting a book release party for The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance. (4-6 PM ath the Raddisson Hotel 215 W South Temple in the Cottonwood room.) We’ve hosted book release parties before, but they were always at Dragon’s Keep in Provo. This time we decided to attach the party to a Sci Fi convention in Salt Lake. This gives us the chance to potentially catch the interest of foot traffic at the convention. It also nice to let the Salt Lake fans have a Schlock event near them, rather than always forcing them to drive to Provo. If nothing else, doing the book release this way will be an interesting experiment. The switch in venues presents logistical problems for me. I know exactly how to run a party at Dragon’s Keep. Today I’ve been figuring out how things need to run for the upcoming party.

The first thing to plan is the party schedule. Nothing is as boring as a bunch of people standing around in a room making small talk. Granted, Schlock fan small talk is far more interesting than the regular kind, but still. Things need to happen or everyone will get bored. One of the simplest ways to occupy guests at a party is to feed them. We’ve always done this at Dragon’s Keep, we’ll do it for this party as well. With our first book parties, I tried to be fancy about the food. I brought table cloths and serving dishes. We tried to give the food table real class. Subsequent book parties taught us that we got a far more enthusiastic response from boxes of pizza than we did from beautifully displayed little sandwiches and cream puffs. So for this party we’ll be ordering in Pizza. I’m still trying to decide whether to order two large batches or three medium sized ones. Some of that will depend on budgetary calculations. It will also depend upon having a volunteer willing to meet the pizza guy in the lobby. I’ll be too busy running things to leave and wait for food to arrive. The current plan is for pizza to arrive at 4 pm and 5 pm. This leaves a significant gap during which not much happens. We’ll fill those gaps by having prize drawings at 4:30 and 5:30. Or maybe drawings will happen every 15 minutes. Thus is the schedule set.

Set up will require some attention from me. Unfortunately I will not get a chance to really survey the room until the day before the party. I’ve been in the room before at past conventions, but at that point I was not looking at the room with an eye to running an event there. The biggest concern is traffic flow. We need to have a food table, a signing table, and a cashier table. We’ll need to organize these things in a way so that lines will not collide with each other. We want to make it easy for people to get their book signed and go socialize around the food. Fortunately there is a lobby space just outside the room. We’ll probably set up the signing out there and then have the food and prizes inside the room. Pizza will not be the only food. I’ll be making a Sam’s Club run earlier in the day to fill out the table and make sure that there is plenty for people to eat. The set-up hour is when I will haul this food from our room and get it all laid out. I’ll also need to hang the banners and signs so that everyone knows why there is free food. And there will be merchandise to set up as well.

During the actual party I’ll have to shanghai some helpers. Howard will be completely occupied signing books and talking with fans. I could in theory run everything else myself, but that is a recipe for me collapsing in a frazzled heap. Running the party will probably take three people: Someone to be a cashier, someone to do the drawings for door prizes, someone to monitor the food table and guide the pizza delivery persons. Fortunately at an open-house style event such as this, I don’t have to run around introducing everyone to each other. My hostess duties are limited to making sure that things happen on schedule and making sure that everyone feels welcomed.

So now that is all sorted in my brain. Unfortunately my brain is going to continue to pick at the plan and revise it many times in the next week. But I’ve a plot to foil my fretting brain. I will distract it with the arrival of 5000 shiny books and 2000 shiny slipcases. Or is this fretting over the party actually distracting me from fretting over the arrival of books?

Parenting a child who is different from me

The grass had grown long over the past two weeks. The need for mowing was urgent, so I declared that Kiki and Link must do it today. Kiki mowed the back without complaint. She is practiced at mowing because it was her job all last summer. Link is in charge of the much smaller front lawn. Mowing is newer to him. He was ready and willing to get the work done, except for one major problem. There were multiple wasps buzzing around in the grass. Link is bee and wasp phobic. He isn’t allergic to them, but the very sight of them sends him into a panic. His preferred reaction is to flee for the house whenever he sees one. His fear is strong enough that there have been times when he wanted to play outside, but didn’t because there might be a wasp out there. Faced with wasps in the lawn that he was to mow, Link froze. He did not flee into the house, but neither did he start mowing. Instead he stood on the sidewalk and dithered in fear.

I am afraid that I did not react well to Link’s paralysis. His increasing size speaks to the instinctual part of my brain which says “we need to be preparing this one to jump from the nest and fly” The problem is that this proto-fledgling would dearly like to stay in the very center of the nest, cuddled in the downy feathers, and let me continue to drop food in his mouth when he squawks. The more logical parts of my brain are also urging me to prepare him for the things that are to come. I worry about him displaying his fears in front of peers who will not be kind. I worry about his ability to work through his emotions in healthy ways. I really want to help him learn the tools he needs so that his quirks will not turn into neuroses. I was also frustrated because the point of paying kids to mow the lawn is so that I don’t have to take the time to do it myself. And yet I ended up having to stand over Link to make sure the work got done. How exactly did that save me any time and stress? With all of those thoughts churning in my brain, I was unable to stay focused on the fact that this is a learning experience for Link. I did not remain encouraging and kind. I was angry and frustrated. Most of my words and actions expressed that frustration to Link. Having mom mad at him did not help poor Link manage his fears. It was not a particularly happy event, but the mowing did get done.

Link and I are in one of those phases where our natures are in conflict. It is his turn to be the child who is driving me to distraction. They’ve all had turns before. They’ll all have turns again. It gets especially interesting when multiple children take simultaneous turns at driving mom crazy. One of the most frustrating things about the conflicts with Link is that I can see that half the problem is in me, not him. I am very goal oriented. I always have been. I identify the things I want and then plow through all the obstacles even if they terrify me. Sometimes the fact that I’ll have to do scary things is part of the attraction of the goal. I like stretching myself and seeing what I am capable of accomplishing. I want to run with long strides into the future. Link is different. He is careful. He moves toward the future with small steps. He wants to assure himself of security and safety. Sometimes he laments the fact that he has to move forward at all, because he can see the wonderful things that are behind him and he does not want to move farther away from them. Logically I comprehend that Link’s approach to the world is as valid as mine. Logically I understand that Link must find his own way and that I should trust him. Emotionally, I keep trying to push him into answering his challenges as I would answer them, because my solutions feel so obviously correct. And they are. For me.

I don’t want to be the pushy mom, but I can’t help it. I can can see so clearly how if he’d only work on this, then it would solve that problem. We particularly come to trouble when I’m pushing him now, hoping to prevent problems that he doesn’t comprehend could even be problems for him. Cleanliness is a good example. I push now to teach him good hygiene habits because I know that someday he’ll want to impress a girl. But I can’t use that argument to get him to shower because he doesn’t currently believe that impressing girls could possibly be important. And yet, part of a mother’s job is to push. It is my job to take that middle-of-the-nest fledgling and teach him how to fly, how to find his own worms. The tricky bit is knowing when I’m nudging him enough for him to find his own way and when I’m pushing him to use my answers instead of finding his own. Even trickier is the fact that Link is a very trusting child. He can see that my ways look impossible to him, but instead of realizing that he needs to find his own solutions, he just feels like a failure for not being able to do what I want him to do in the ways that I’m pushing him to do them.

One comforting thing is remembering that Kiki and I had a couple of tumultuous years when she was in fifth and sixth grade. I think it is very natural for kids to go through a phase where they want increased independence, but only when it is convenient. They simultaneously want to retain all the perks of being little, and catered to. The expression of this emotional tangle is different for Link than it was for Kiki, but the landscape is familiar. I’ve covered this ground before. But just because I recognize where I’m at, does not make the hike any less weary. (Also, it exhausts me to realize that I’m going to have to hike this ground again with two more kids, and it will probably drive me crazy both times.) The really good news is that there is a lovely place at the end of this road. Kiki is now solidly in her teens and she is a joy to live with. We still have our frustrated moments, but I love the conversations and interactions that I have with her now. I love how responsible and thoughtful she frequently is. I love seeing her step forward and manage her own challenges. I have to believe that Link will get there too. I’ve seen glimpses of it. When he wants something he works very quietly and persistently to make it happen. He is a good kid. I need to remember to trust in that. I need to remember that his solutions are good ones even if they are not the solutions I would have picked. I need to remember that I said almost that exact same sentence when Kiki was this age.

Later, after the mowing was done and we’d both had a break, Link came to me and said “I forgive you for yelling.” His big blue eyes looked at me. He wanted to have an exchange of apologies. He needed to know that everything was all right between us. And it is. I gave him the hugs and apologies that he desired. I also told him a little bit about how we’re different and that being different is okay. I also told him that just because I get mad, does not mean that he is in the wrong. I’m not sure he’s ready yet to believe it, but at least he heard the words.

Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day sneaked up on us this year. I knew it was coming, but I’ve been to busy to give it more than the occasional thought. This is very different from the Mother’s Day 14 years ago when I was expecting Kiki. I was so pleased to lay claim to Mother’s Day. It had become a day for my efforts to be appreciated. It stayed that way for all the intervening years. Some years I desperately needed that show of appreciation. But this year is different. This year I am realizing that collecting praises is not what Mother’s Day should be about. It should be like Christmas, where the focus is on the giving rather than the receiving. And then I realize that because I have been so busy, I have not planned anything for the mothers in my life. I had a plan. I’d intended to finish a photo book to give to my mother and grandmother, but time slipped away and the project is not done. Once again I’ll be left to making phone calls. My mother and grandmother will not mind, just as I don’t mind the fact that Mother’s Day caught Howard and the kids unaware. The important piece is the love and appreciation we give rather than the shape that love and appreciation takes.

Tayler Corporation To Do List

We have seven major events scheduled in the next four months. Three of them are occurring this month. Two are occurring in July. Two are occurring in August. It is tempting to ignore the end-of-summer events until after the May events, but I can’t afford to do that because some necessary preparations need significant lead time. This morning I tried to sleep in, but instead my brain kept churning with thoughts about even preparation. I finally grabbed a notepad and started scribbling down To Do items. That was smart because I finally feel like I may be able to manage this mess. I also had a revelatory realization “Oh, that’s why I’m feeling stressed.” So behind the cut is a glimpse at the To Do list for the Tayler Corporation. The Tayler family has a completely different To Do list, and yes they do conflict in more than one place.

Conflicting needs, parenting guilt, and brownies

Gleek thrashed in the tub water as I tried to wash her hair. The water was too hot. Sitting up was too cold. Why did she need to wash anyway? Um… maybe because it has been three days and she was grubby, filthy, sweaty. But she did not want a bath. She wanted to be downstairs with her brothers watching Kirby over the internet. Part of the reason she was upstairs bathing was she had been squabbling with those same brothers for the prior 30 minutes. It had been a cranky day. Gleeks emotional space between happy and full-out tantrum was negligible.

In the midst of conditioner application (and complaints about water-in-the-eyes), Kiki shouted from the kitchen. It was a piteous cry for help. I quickly dunked Gleek to rinse her off, then hurried to the kitchen to see what the new emergency might be. Kiki was making brownies for her school class. She was doing it all by herself, her first foray into solo baking. She had added twice the necessary water to the mix. Kiki was emotionally devastated by this disaster. I was trying to wrap my head around the problem and formulate a solution. This was when Gleek wandered in and lit-up like a little spotlight at the bowl full of chocolate batter. Kiki snarled at Gleek to back off because these were for school. Gleek devolved into tears that the bowl full of chocolatey goodness would be completely denied to her. I attempted to placate Gleek. Kiki grumped at me about the still-unsolved too-much-water problem. Then there was the influx of boys drawn like little metal filings to the magnet of the chocolate filled bowl while Kiki growled territorially about her baking efforts. We added another mix to even out the water ratio, but then there was the crisis of the oil not mixing in. Kiki was not calmed by my assurance that continued stirring would solve the problem.

In the midst of all the chaos, with the kids squabbling and the fan humming, and the dishwasher running, I had strong desire just to flee. The kitchen was awash with conflicting needs. Kiki needed me to stand over her shoulder and help her bake. Gleek needed love and reassurance. The boys needed attention. I needed to just sleep, or hide, or something. Moments like that one are fairly common. It is unsurprising that the emotional needs of one child will conflict with those of another. On my good days I can anticipate and prevent conflicts before they occur. On my tired days, I am as bad as the kids about adding to the conflict. Strange how we’ve had so much more conflict and crankiness in the week after I stopped working 10-12 hour days. It is like the kids were waiting to ambush me once the XDM project was complete.

I look at myself and all that I manage. Then I remember back to the years when 90% of my creative energy was completely engaged by my children. I’m not sure what percentage they get now, 50% maybe. Some of that is the simple result that I’ve made many of the tasks of parenting into routine habit. Those tasks used to require creative energy, but they don’t anymore. And yet I still sometimes feel guilty for spending so much energy on things that do not directly benefit the kids. Part of me believes that 90% is the correct amount to spend on kids, and that if some tasks have become routine, I should then be ramping things up and stretching my parenting in a new direction. Then another part of me argues that children are not benefited by over-parenting.

I guess it comes down to concerns about usage of time. Right this minute I am blogging, trying to wrap words around the thoughts in my head and trying to do it well. This time could be spent preparing for tomorrow. I could be doing laundry so that Gleek will have clean shorts to wear. I could be cleaning the family room so the kids have space to play. I could be planning healthy meals for tomorrow. But I don’t want to do those things. They are boring. I’ve done them thousands of times over, and if I do them instead of blogging, I’ll still have to do them yet again. And yet these maintenance tasks make such a huge difference in how our family runs. If the kitchen had been clean, everyone would have been better able to manage the brownie incidents. On the other hand, if I blog there is the chance that I will say something profound, or funny, or useful. If I do, then the words are pinned to the page and they will always be there. But then I remember that during the course of writing this blog I have told two children “just a minute.” It has been 10 minutes since I said it and I still have not responded to the query. Am I teaching them that sometimes waiting is necessary? Or am I teaching them that Mom is always busy and pre-occupied, Unavailable when they need her? Just today I dashed to Patch’s class, a couple minutes late for his Kindergarten event. I never used to be late for that sort of thing. As we walked back to the car I was only half listening to Patch’s rambling talk until I heard him state that he knows I am always late because I am working.

When did I become the always-late working mom instead of being ready-and-waiting when my kids needed me? Was I too available before, or am I not available enough now? Or have the needs of my family shifted so that I was correct in both times and places? That last one is what I’d like to be true. I want to believe that I am sensing the needs and answering them. That my life is different now because the needs are different.

And this is when I remember Kiki’s brownies. The making of them was chaos. Kids were squabbling. The kitchen was a mess. And Kiki was convinced that they were ruined more than once. Like Kiki, I am in the middle of making something and it feels like I’m ruining it. But those brownies turned out delicious despite Kiki’s fears. Kiki shared them joyfully with those same siblings at whom she grouched while mixing. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been afraid that I’m ruining the family I’m trying to build. But somehow I don’t think I am. If I keep trying my best, it will all come out just fine.

Hope of America Again

I am very tired just now. I just got back from the annual Hope of America program. I was a little less stressed about it than last year, because this year I was only shepherding two kids instead of four. All the same inconveniences and annoyances were present. It was crowded and Gleek kept trying to dive through Gleek-sized holes in the crowd. If I was holding her hand, I could pull her back (much to her frustration. Could I not see the space?) If I was not holding her hand, I just had to call and try to keep her in sight as I wove through the crowd after her. I suspect that we were an annoyance to those seated around us, because for Gleek music is always participatory. She jumped. She clapped. She sang along. She declared her desire to be able to do every dance and perform every trick. (Especially the one where a girl somehow made five hula hoops look and move like bird wings. “Mom! I want five hula hoops!”) So I spent a good part of the evening like a record on repeat. “Don’t kick the seats in front of you.” “Sit down, the people behind us need to see.” “We need to calm it down a little.” “Shh! If you must sing, sing softly so the others can hear their kids.” Fortunately many of the numbers explicitly encouraged audience participation. Gleek particularly loved when the wave traveled around the stadium three or four times before petering out. After the show was over, Gleek and I climbed to the very top of the stadium. She sat there on the very highest bench and I swear her whole face glowed. She felt on top of the world. She danced all the way back to the car.

But the real reason we went to the show was for Link. He got to be part of the chorus this year. For five years Link watched other kids get to sit as part of the flag and shine lights. This was finally his turn. He was so excited that he lay out all his clothes last night. He was out of bed and dressed this morning before I’d even stumbled my way to the kitchen. My son, whom I have to scowl into mumbling along with the singing at church, was thrilled to spend hours practicing songs and the performing songs. This was his moment to shine a flashlight and wear sunglasses. He got to be cool. The press of people after the show was crazy. There are designated meeting places for parents to pick up their performing children. Teachers do their best to shepherd their students to the meeting spots, but it is a mad house. When Gleek and I arrived next to Link’s teacher, Link was not there. It was futile to go searching for him. Our best option was to wait. I could picture him lost in the crowd feeling anxious and scared. But when he turned up a few minutes later, he was grinning. He’d gone to the wrong meeting place, then found the right one. I have times when I really worry about Link. Then there are times like today when he demonstrates how much he is capable of accomplishing when the goal is something that he wants rather than something I think he ought to want.

This year’s program featured many beautiful dance numbers. I found it fascinating that every number which was not performed by a school class, was performed by a cultural minority group. There were Bolivian dances, salsa dances, sambas, traditional Mexican dances, two Native American dances, and a gospel singing group. I guess the one exception to this would be Jean’s Golden Girls which was a troupe of women aged 50 to 92. They perform every year and they are always good. 92 year old Jean always ends the performance with high kicks and the splits. It was fascinating to me to see all the school classes full of mostly white faces. And then see the dance troupes full of dark hair and brown skin. It was lovely to see these minority cultural traditions thriving in a location that is so overwhelmingly white.

I cried again. I always do, every year. How can I not cry when I see all the enthusiastic effort from all of those young performers? From the tiny kindergarteners who have to be herded into place by their teachers, to the self conscious middle schoolers who are afraid to look silly as they dance, to the chorus with their hand motions and flashlights. The event represents thousands, or perhaps even tens of thousands, of hours of preparation. The event got so big, that they now have half the schools performing one night and the other half performing on a different night. It is an amazing accomplishment and a beautiful expression of desire for a bright and beautiful future. This program is one that exposes kids to ideals they can strive for and dreams that they can reach. I know that both of my kids came home exhausted and inspired. … and singing that song about Abe Lincoln that none of us can get out of our heads. I just wish they could remember more than the chorus.

Helping stressed kids

Patch stormed into the house and stomped his way into his room. Then the crying began. I excused myself from the kitchen table where I was having a business meeting with a couple of (fortunately very understanding) friends. Patch sobbed out his tale of woe: My neighbor had sliced the hot dog rather than poking it with a fork, thereby ruining it. Then she completely refused to make another hot dog for him. Patch’s emotional reaction to this event was so huge that it required tag-team parenting, fifteen minutes, starting a movie, and a correctly prepared hot dog to calm him down. Usually Patch is a pretty easy-going kid. It is only occasionally that he winds himself up like this. Except that he’s done it several times in the last week. And he has been crawling into bed with us. And he’s been pretty rigid about what food is acceptable. These are all signs of stress. Patch is not the only one. Link has been acting about six years younger than his age. Gleek has gotten screaming mad and stomped to her room several times in the last week as well. She even buried herself under her covers and fell asleep in the middle of the day.

It is tempting for me to attribute all of this to my lack of nurturing attention in the past month. I’m certain that my stress level has been a factor, but it is not the only one. Another major factor is the daylight savings time switch, which makes putting kids to bed on time increasingly difficult. So they’ve been short on sleep, packed with junk food, and lacking in regular adult attention. Not surprising that they’re acting out a bit.

After Patch’s meltdown and the end of my meeting, I decided that the major imperative for the rest of the day was for me to be available to intervene in child conflicts, and to get everyone (including me) to bed on time. In order to get kids to sleep by 8:30, I have to start snack time no later than 7:30. This is because snack time involves me reading aloud while the kids eat. Then there is individual reading time. This reading time helps the kids slow down enough to feel tired. But this was also Monday, which means we have an hour or more of family time prior to snack. To make space for that, dinner had to be pushed earlier. So I started cooking dinner at 4:30. It was served by 5:30. Family Home Evening started at 6 and ran until 7:30. Snack and reading ran until 8. Gleek and Patch were both asleep by 8:30. Link and Kiki stayed up later. It was important for Link to be allowed to stay up and do something fun after the little kids had gone to bed. He needs to be reminded why he likes being one of the bigger kids. So we played Phase 10 for awhile. Pre-bedtime games may need to be a staple for us this summer as Link begins his transition from child to teenager.

So today was a good family day. Now I need to figure out how to not lose ground on the new family initiatives while also getting some work done.

Success and criticism

“I did it myself!” Patch announced.
I looked down at him. He was wearing his Sunday dress shirt and the buttons were already buttoned. Maneuvering those tiny buttons into the tiny holes is a major accomplishment for six-year-old fingers. Another major accomplishment is making sure that the buttons and holes are aligned correctly. Patch had managed the first, but not the second. His shirt hung crookedly on his front. I looked down into his bright blue eyes. He was so pleased with his accomplishment. I had no heart to criticize, to steal the joy of his triumph and replace it with embarrassment. I hugged him tight and told him what a great job he had done. Then I let him wear his crooked shirt to church. He never noticed the mistake. Next Sunday when I hand him his shirt, I’ll casually drop the hint that buttons and holes are easier to line up if he starts from the bottom instead of the top. He’ll be set up to succeed again, rather than doubting his capabilities because of the prior week’s failure. Sometimes it is far more important to let people bask in the joy of a difficult task accomplished, than to tell them how to do it better next time.