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Developing Humor in Children
There are many child development benefits offered by developing humor in children, even at an early age. Humor facilitates a child's intellectual, emotional and social development, and one of the one of the greatest benefits threaded throughout these is the self esteem it promotes. Laughter creates "feel good" neuro chemicals in the brain in both the laugher and the laughee, which builds a number of social belonging, bonding and self esteem benefits as it generates a lot of positive feedback from others.
Parents can help developing humor by first acquiring a good understanding of a child's "humor stages", how young children’s humor changes as they get older. This makes it easier to provide humor that matches the child’s current developmental level and to appreciate children’s own attempts at humor. WHAT IS SO FUNNY? When developing humor, it is important to remember that a child's sense of humor reflects his newest level of intellectual achievements. Humor is basically a form of intellectual play with ideas. Children have a built-in tendency to have fun with any newly developed skill, whether physical or mental. Humor is generally funniest at the time it can first be understood, and for a number of months following. Jokes become progressively less funny after you "get them". This is why you'll find adults groan at some puns. Finding ways to develop humor in children is all relative to their developmental stage, and at every stage a responsive parent will want to include suitable elements of Laughter, Silly Games and Songs, Incongruity, Funny Physical Play, Funny Storytelling and Joke Telling. HUMOR HELPS A CHILD GAIN CONTROL OVER THEIR MENTAL STATES In the early developing humor stages you can stimulate your children’s sense of humor by simply playing with them every day. When young children play they spontaneously laugh. Silly play (announcing with great gusto that you are hungry and pretending to munch on his toes)serves by stimulating his laughter response and elliciting his social connection response. Happiness and play go together. Laughter is a reflection of the happiness that humor and play provide, but we now know that laughter can also help generate a feel-good state where there was none before. Numerous studies show that humor is a very effective means of managing one’s emotions. So, even in the early years, nurturing children’s sense of humor with silly play that involves incongruity (wearing your shoe as a hat) helps them practice gaining mastery of their feelings and moods for those times in life when things don't happen quite as we think they should. HUMOR HELPS A CHILD GAIN SOCIAL BENEFITS Humor is a key social skill and it will serve your child well in interpersonal relationships right from the beginning, and on into their adult life and career. Even as a toddler you can ask your child at the end of the day about something they laughed at that day, or asking him to recall a funny laughter-filled incident to another family member to practice his humorous story-telling skills with positive feedback assured. Of course, one of the best ways for developing humor is by being a role model of humor yourself. Initiate funny stories that happened to you that day, or funny realizations you have. Pay particular attention to avoid modeling disparging, hurtful or sarcastic humor. In this way, by your own behavior, you are both teaching what humor is and your are teaching with humor. And just as importantly, you are developing humor in your child by providing positive humor experiences firsthand, and the feel-good benefits of postitive humor enable them to assing it an important place in their value system at an early age. Children who initiate humor are more likely to participate in more social activities, further developing a solid sense of self competence and confidence in their all round abilities generally. Socially, humorous children tend to be judged by their peers as being more likeable, and so are more popular. This is true from the preschool years on through high school and into adulthood. Also, children who become comfortable and skilled at using humor in social interaction are better at putting others at ease, which makes all communication easier. HUMOR HELPS CHILDREN DEVELOP INTELLECTUALLY Many child professionals believe that humor is really a form of intellectual play, since language is our main vehicle for thought. As children develop intellectually they love to play with words. First they play with the sounds and rythms of words (one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish), and then with meanings. A parent can help a child develop this skill through story time, by reading a variety of books such as rhyming books and self esteem building storybooks geared to the the preschool developmental stages, later incorporating stories that tell about funny incidents or laughable situations children can relate to. The discovery that the same work can have two meanings is an intellectually exciting one, and motivates them on to find even more double word meanings to play with. When children are at the developmental stage where they can understand the double meaning in jokes such as the ones below, you are seeing a child demonstrating intellectual play and in this stage you are seeing the first signs of adult humor emerging. In these jokes below you can see the sophistication increasing, which let's you gage where your child is in this stage of developing humor. Q. What kind of button won't unbutton?
Q. Why can't your nose be 12 inches long?
Q. Why don't skeletons go to movies? Q. Where does your computer go when it feels like dancing?
Q. Why do sea-gulls fly over the sea? HELPING A CHILD EXERCISE HIS FUNNY BONE AND HIS BRAIN CELLS Children, and adults too, need to practice verbal and intellectual humor skills. Here is a wonderful teaching example for developing humor in children from Paul McGee, a humor educator and comedian offering programs on humor and health/stress management to corporations. When do astronauts eat pizza? At _______ time. 1st clue: Think of the name of one of the three meals of the day. 2nd clue: You use this word when you start a new project. 3rd clue: What do you call it when they send off a rocket? In all of the examples shown here, a key part of the punch line is missing. Be sure to ask your child to use the clues to try to create a funny answer before looking at the answers; otherwise the exercise does not help build humor skills. Please note that adults will also benefit from these exercises. Even though adults will not need all the clues, you will probably find it difficult to come up with a word play answer using no clues at all. The more examples like this that your child goes through, the greater the extent to which this form of verbal humor (quickly seeing double meanings as a basis for humor) will become a permanent skill within his/her developing sense of humor.
HUMOR DEVELOPS STRONG SELF ESTEEM AND COPING SKILLS Good humor skills during childhood help build a solid sense of self-esteem. Since humor and shared laughter help the child receive a lot of positive feedback from other kids (and adults), this gradually builds a strong sense of good feeling about oneself. One of the most useful and long range benefits of developing humor during childhood, one that goes along with developing a strong sense of self esteem, is a range healhty kind of coping skills known to be associated with humor. Numerous research studies document humor’s power in helping adults and adolescents cope with life stress. Children who develop humor skills early on are able to benefit from this coping advantage throughout life.
Look for More Developing Humor ideas in our Esteem Blog
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