The Balloon Rule
When is it time?
As I write this, there’s 1 heart balloon, 1 flower balloon, 2 balloons that say happy birthday and one huge number 7 balloon floating against the ceiling in the living room as a leftover reminder from the 7-year-olds birthday.
It’s been a week.
I bought these balloons last Saturday and they are still going strong for the most part, but there’s signs of them starting to die a slow and painful death.
This brings me to the question I have tonight: when to pop the birthday balloons?
I am going to hope this will be less of a problem when she’s in her teens but now it’s a real question because I’m tempted to toss them right now, but she still plays with them (one of them currently has a chip clip clipped to it as an anchor of sorts) and they’re cheap entertainment that she never seems to get tired of.
What happens usually is that the balloons start to lose their stamina and become deflated prunes - a sad reminder of what they once were. After a while, they seem to wander into another room and I swear sometimes I wake up and they’re in another room. This means the house is either haunted or a bit drafty - so I will go with the latter.
I’ve done some research and I think it’s time for them to go when they hit my eye level instead of being glued to the ceiling. The timing is right for this for a few reasons, but one is by then there’s a good chance the child has lost interest and is on to something else and it’s also time when they’re visible and in the way.
After a while they become like unwanted house guests - it’s nice to have them around at first but when the party has ended long ago and all the jokes have been told it’s time to go.
The trick is the child. She must not notice this culling of the balloons so you just can’t grab a pin and go pop, pop, pop! and you’re done. Oh no, you have to do it slowly over days.
By this time the balloons are not in the same room of the house due to different deflation levels and other reasons that math and science could explain - but I can’t.
When the time is right - usually when the child is away - you take some scissors and cut a small hole into the balloon. You don’t want to use a pin because it might make a sound and the trick to this is stealth.
Just like fight club, you do not talk about the balloons and the removal-they just disappear in the night. Whatever you do don’t bring this up with the child. If you talk about the balloons with the child you will be at the balloon store buying more balloons for no other reason than you did this to yourself.
Once you pop your first balloon and nobody notices then you can go onto the next and then the next until all the balloons are gone. This usually takes about a week or so depending on the balloon size, shape, air capacity and other such things I don’t really understand.
Then when you’ve got rid of the balloons in the house you will have a week or so of balloon freedom, but like all things in life - it’s cyclical and before you know it, somebody else in the family will have birthday or anniversary or graduation or whatever and it can’t be a party without balloons in the house!
Enter more balloons, and more days where the child acts like these are the best toys ever invented and they get sung to, and played with and games are invented and they’re tied to chairs and taped to walls and dolls and a lot of fun is had with 8 bucks worth of balloons from the Dollar Store.
Come to think of it, the Balloon rule is this:
They can stay as long as they want because they’re a whole lot of fun.
Until Next Time,
TH and Co.
It's one of the parenting skills you don't know you need until you become one :)