Finding your happy place...

As I have mentioned before, I teach a wonderful group of third graders who are a mere three weeks away from the State required exam for promotion. Needless to say, when they walked into the room on that very first day, you could smell the fear radiating from them.

We have spent the better part of the year preparing for the test. New skills and concepts taught and reinforced, practiced, drilled, tested, reinforced, drilled... you get the picture. And while their confidence is starting to become a little more evident, the worry-wart faces were there last week. Deeply burrowed foreheads, eyes shifting from one side to the other, nervously licking their lips; waiting, wondering when the other shoe would drop...So I stopped all the teaching of stuff that will be remembered for a short time and when on to teach them something that they will use for a long time. I taught them to find their happy place.

Wait a minute, you might ask. You are there to teach the state mandated curriculum and prepare these children for the exam that will promote them to the next grade. Yes, all of that is true. However, what good is it if they have learned all this material and they get so nervous, they can't perform...How good is all this preparation if I don't take it to the next level?

So, on that Wednesday afternoon, we closed our books and our eyes. I guided them into their happiest memories; trips to Disney, their own rooms, their grandparents' homes, even a bowl of buttered noodles (Hey, who am I to judge? Sometimes, your happy place is a plate full of carbs!) and let them stay there awhile, relishing in the sounds, smells, feelings of their happy thoughts. And you want to know something? The anxiety melted off those precious faces so beautifully. It was better than seeing them master a particularly hard concept, because they were happy. They were kids, thinking about things that bring them joy! When they opened their eyes, their expressions were knowing, as if they had unlocked this fabulous secret about themselves, and they couldn't wait to know more.

That afternoon, part of their unofficial homework was to fill in more details about their place. When they got back the next day, they were eager to share tidbits they had added, and to describe what their parents had thought and commented on. Some parents, God bless them, shared their own happiness havens...

What a gift for these kids! That their parents validated something that they so desperately needed! That they have found that they can do the very best job of calming themselves...that they will be okay...

As parents, we all need to have a place where we can retreat to when parenthood gets to be too much. We all need a place where the pressures cannot get to us, where we can decompress. Time and distance constraints keep us from being in a particular location, but we are always free to wander in our minds. We need to find ways in which we detach ourselves from the reality we find ourselves in and escape, for just a few moments, so we can regain our perspective, our balance, and we can go on, being the best we can be.

This lesson was not just for my students. While I was guiding them through, I thought about my own happy place. In my happy place, the sunlight dances on the ocean's waves, lifting the sun's rays back into the infinite blue sky. In my happy place, my children are laughing and chasing each other in the glorious sea shore, foaming under their brown toes...In my happy place, the sounds of the waves are the perfect backdrop to those three beautiful boys that I have been blessed with...and even when I open my eyes, I am still there...