Chinese Version
2022-10-03，Monday

Ben, my grandson who was born during the 2021 Lunar Year, is more than eight months old now.

Recently, Ben started to express more emotions than just laughing out loudly. On Sunday yesterday, I experienced the bodily reaction of Ben being frightened when he saw a balloon for the first time.

Last night, after seeing that the birthday balloon with many dinosaurs had been placed in the bathtub, I asked why. Alex said: “Ben was afraid of the balloon so we hid it here.”
I immediately asked: “Really?”
Alex answered: “This afternoon, while video calling my parents, we told them: ‘Ben is afraid of the balloon.’ They didn’t believe it either, so we had to show how Ben reacts to the balloon again, and then my parents believed it. If you don’t believe it, you can try.”

Curiously, I brought Ben from his playroom to the bathroom where the balloon was hidden. When he saw the balloon, Ben cried loudly and turned his head away, at the same time, my arm and chin felt that he was hunching up his shoulders as if he wanted to hide his neck and head inside his body. This was the first time I felt Ben hunching up his shoulders, shrinking his neck, and turning his head while crying loudly, so I knew Ben was truly afraid of the balloon!

I asked why Ben reacted like this. After analyzing for a while, the young parents said that perhaps the balloon was round, similar to a human face. A human face has two eyes, one nose and one mouth. The pattern of a human face was simple, symmetrical and easy to recognize. On the other hand, the balloon had many dinosaurs along with Happy Birthday letters, which makes for a confused shining moving face. Ben probably thought the balloon is a terrible face, so he was afraid.

This morning, at 8:00 AM, Ben and I were playing on the wooden floor in his playroom. I was lying down and he was crawling and playing with his toys. I remember his fear of the balloon and the reason was that the balloon was like a terrible human face. According to the my reasoning, if Ben knows the balloon is not a human face, but just a new toy he has never seen before, he will not be afraid of the balloon. So I put Ben in a corner of the playroom, and went to the bathroom to bring the balloon to another corner of the playroom far away from Ben. I played with the balloon by hugging it, touching it, folding the rope that tied to the balloon to let it touch the ground, and releasing the rope to let the balloon touch the ceiling. Ben looked at me nervously from afar, but he did not cry. I hid the balloon on my left side, crawled over to Ben and let him lie down on my right side.

While lying on the floor, my left hand released the balloon to hover over my body so Ben could see it, my right hand across my body then touched the balloon gently and then I pointed to the dinosaurs on the balloon and said: “Those are dinosaurs, your uncle loved dinosaurs when he was little.” Then my left hand pulled the balloon back so Ben could not see it. I repeated the same pattern of movements so Ben saw the balloon, Ben saw me touching it while talking, and then Ben could not see the balloon. Slowly, my right hand grabbed Ben’s hand to touch the balloon on my left side, but Ben firmly refused by pulling back his hand. I let his hand go, continuing my movements so Ben saw the balloon, Ben saw me touching it while talking about it, then Ben didn’t see the balloon, and I grabbed his hand to touch the balloon again. This time, Ben didn’t pull back his hand, but he was afraid of touching the balloon, he even hid his face on my right side. I started to hold his hand, let the balloon on my left side closer to my right side; while saying: “This is a balloon with lots of dinosaurs on it, your uncle loves dinosaurs when he was little.” Then I pulled his hand over to touch the balloon. Ben started to touch the balloon. Ben and I repeatedly touched the balloon to let Ben feel even a gentle touching causes the balloon to make big movements, I repeatedly said: “This is a balloon, it flies. Lots of dinosaurs are on the balloon, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

At 9:30 AM, Ben began to chase after the flying balloon that he was afraid to see earlier.

Ben and the balloon