humor

“I left a baby gift for you on your doorstep. It’s the perfect thing for a mom with four boys.”

My friend mentioned this to me casually as we both worked in our neighbor’s kitchen, preparing refreshments for a wedding.

The “impulsive three-year old” section of my brain wanted to drop what I was doing and immediately run next door to tear open this gift. What could possibly be the perfect baby gift for a mom who had just had her fourth boy? It was even more intriguing to me because this friend is an amazing mom herself. She has seven children, and while I’m sure she has stories that would contradict my accounting, every one of them always seems so well-behaved, so kind, so creative, so smart, and so sweet. She certainly knows a thing or two about motherhood, and so I hoped that this gift was some secret of the trade. A talisman from my Jedi master.

The “responsible adult” section of my brain won out, and I helped out with food for a few more hours before making my way home to find a small wrapped box on my doorstep. I slid my fingers through the tape and pulled out the box.

And started laughing immediately.

Here’s a look at what I found inside:

That binky. I laughed because it was hilarious, but I also laughed at myself for thinking the gift would be so serious. [Read more…]

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…]