Often what is needed to head off a full-blown melt-down is just a little humor to lighten things up and regain perspective.  Let me give you an example.  Recently, I had spent a full day washing every dirty article of clothing in our house.  A small feat in itself.  I hadn’t, however, folded any of it yet.  So at the end of the day, I was exhausted, folding laundry on my bed, just trying to get to the bottom of it so I could climb in!  Well, my five year-old came in, with body language and a voice that conveyed that he just might try a bit of whining and fit-throwing to get his way as he said, “But I wanted to sit there!”  I responded that the bed was “closed”.  Then realizing the humor, said, “Get it?  The bed is closed with clothes!”  He paused for a moment, then his five year-old logic grasped it and his whole demeanor changed.  He visibly relaxed, laughed a bit, and then moved to another part of the room to settle in and talk to me about something else.

Humor is an excellent distraction.  It lightens the mood and shifts attention, often facilitating either natural or adult-prompted redirection.  It’s not always the children who are the ones who need to lighten up.  They’re naturals at funny business.  In fact, I recently read that, on average, a child laughs 300 times each day, while an adult laughs only 15 times each day.  So it’s logical that humor would be a natural tool to use when working with children.

[Read more…]