What is your idea of excitement? Does the answer to this question involve deflated balloons? If not, then perhaps you've forgotten how much fun balloons can be. I am a student teacher in a Durham kindergarten and the children I work with are excited by deflated balloons. But then, they know how to have fun!
When I walked into my classroom on Monday, the birthday balloons left over from last week were drooping. When my supervising teacher came into the room, she cut the strings off the deflating balloons. Instead of throwing the balloons away, she set them free in the classroom. Some had enough helium left in them to carry them up to the ceiling, but others bobbed up and down, suspended in mid-air.
The students came into the classroom and started working as usual. The balloons bobbed discreetly near the wall, unnoticed. When I glanced over a few minutes later, the balloons had definitely been noticed. A couple children stood underneath, looking up at them.
At this point I noticed that varying reactions occured all around the room in response to the balloons. On the far side of the room, some children were chasing a balloon, but it always stayed just ahead of and above them. Closer to me another group of children was trying to reach a balloon hovering above their heads, but their plan of action was different. They had pushed a chair under the balloon and took turns standing on the chair until the tallest was able to climb up and reach the balloon. Another child asked me to get a balloon for her.
Some children came into the classroom, and, after surveying the efforts of others to retrieve the balloons that were floating in the air, walked over to the balloons with less helium that lay unnoticed on the floor. To them, the particular balloon didn't matter, they just wanted one. Other children ignored both the balloons on the floor, and those in mid-air, and worried about the ones that had floated up to the ceiling. They tried to figure out how to get these down, and asked for my help. All of the children seemed delighted with the balloons.
As all of this occurred, I marveled at the reactions of the children. If adults came into a classroom to find balloons hovering in the air, the first question they would ask is why the balloons were there. I do not believe this is a question my students asked. Each of them had different strategies for interacting with the balloons, but they all accepted the fact of the balloons and made the best of it. I have a feeling that if the room flooded and the students walked in tomorrow to find three inches of water on the floor they would probably get out the toy boats and start splashing around, as long as the teachers acted like this development was normal.
Kids are very adaptable. They can think up fun things to do in almost any situation-including the ones adults rather they wouldn't, such as bedtime or during punishment. They are very good at making lemonade when life gives them lemons. Or making chocolate-strawberry-nut sundaes if they get chocolate. Situations can always be improved upon.
This is not to say that children never complain, because this isn't true. Children are much better than adults, though, at taking what life gives them and making good with it. As adults we could probably stand to take lessons in this. When something unexpected occurs, be it good or bad, we are much more likely to get hung up on it.
Car broke down? How are we going to afford it? What will we do? Did you get an unexpected refund in the mail? What is the most responsible way to spend this money? Should I invest it? Will I have to redo my budget? As adults we let the unexpected balloons we find floating in our lives stop us. We worry about them, good or bad, and we wait for others to tell us how to think about them and react to them.
When the children in my class encountered the balloons though, they accepted them and reacted. If their solution to retrieving the balloons didn't work they tried another one. None of them sat down and pondered what to do with the balloons, and none of them worried about what others would think of their reactions. It is good to think through situations, but adults think enough. Many of us need to take lessons from the children in my class, accept our situations and get to work acting on and enjoying them. We need to live in the moment and take what life gives because otherwise the balloons will become completely deflated, and everybody knows dead balloons are no fun.
Heather Morris is a Trinity senior.
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