Joke's On You: The Importance of Humor in Childhood

Through years of teaching pre-K and working in the field of early childhood education, parents and fellow educators have had an ongoing dialogue about what skills children need to obtain before entering kindergarten. You can do a Google search with the words "kindergarten readiness" and you will come back dizzy with all of the results. If you want my opinion [I know, you didn't ask, but for unlimited time only I'll give it to you, completely free of charge], there is one developmental milestone that most children reach between the ages of 4 and 5 that I feel represents their readiness for kindergarten more than any other: the ability to effectively tell a knock-knock joke.

Ok, hear me out on this one! There comes a day in every ECE classroom when the lunch table conversation goes from the usual silliness and insanity to a more organized and orchestrated level of silliness and insanity. You'll hear it, I promise. "Knock knock...ok, now you say 'who's there..." [copious giggles] "who's there?" [at least one kid falls off his chair laughing followed by more copious giggles] "boo..."
"I said boo"

"uh...." [copious giggles, another kid inevitably falls off her chair...]

"you're supposed to say boo who?"

"oh, oh yeah...boo who..."

"Oh, hold on, I forgot...wait, let me start over...knock knock...."

And the right of passage between preschool and kindergarten occurs in the moment that the lunch table crowd finally and effectively carries out the completion of the joke. In less than 20 minutes. With at least one child still in a chair. Ok, maybe that's setting the bar a little too high...

But there is more value within the confines of a knock knock joke than meets the eye. In fact, there are a lot of important developmental skills within participating in the exchange. Children learn early reading concepts like sequencing through their ability to carry out the joke in proper order. Children learn math skills like timing--if you've ever heard the Interrupting Cow Joke, you know that timing is everything. And counting...you need to go through at least a few bananas before you get to "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" And science: you must understand the way the world does work in order to see the humor in a joke that goes against that. And most importantly, the exchange of a joke promotes the social skills of relationship. Of taking turns, of picking up on emotional cues, of sharing and connecting through laughter that, indeed, seems contagious even before you get to "who's there" sometimes...

Humor is important. Laughter matters. When I first spoke to my now husband over the phone, before we even met, I called a close friend and mentor to report back. "He seems like a great guy, wonderful character traits, kind, hardworking, intelligent...but...he doesn't seem to have a sense of humor." I was about to call off the whole thing but my friend told to me to give it a chance and see. And what I didn't know at the time is that my husband had (and has) an impeccable ability to pass complete nonsense over as fact with a totally straight face and flat affect. It is a nuance of humor that few can pull off and he still "gets" me several times a year. Indeed, I fell for several of his best jokes in that first phone call and was none the wiser. 

If you are familiar with "The Five Love Languages," I'd like to pose a sixth: humor. This language is more subtle and nuanced. It may tag along with one of the other more dominant dialects like quality time or positive affirmations. But humor is truly a language in and of its own right. Humor is what makes us resilient; it is our ability to laugh at ourselves or laugh it off altogether. The very fact that hearing someone else laugh can bring on the same response in ourselves--even more so if you are in the same room--says that we connect through laughter on a primal level. The response is involuntary, hence the concept that laughter is "contagious." We are as unable to avoid a giggle in the air as we are a bacterium or virus. And the idea of laughing until you cry--how can two, seemingly opposite physical responses be so closely linked? Humor is an expression of empathy. The ability to respond and react to emotional stimuli in others and in the environment around us.

Young children use humor in a variety of ways. There is an old-school phrase, "class clown" that was 

used to describe the kid in the room who always had to get the last laugh. He was usually a kid who was otherwise "a little bit different." Humor was, in a sense, his shield as well as his sword. They can't laugh at you if you make them laugh with you first. Indeed, humor is utilized by children as a means of self protection. Some children resort to silliness in times of anxiety. Some children use it as a means to connect and express friendship. Some love the feeling of getting a good laugh and indeed, their humor is a means of commerce. They exchange their silliness for the reception of laughter from their consumer, the audience at large. Many children use the language of humor for more than one reason. They may be silly to avoid something challenging, or to resolve conflict, or to dispel anxiety or simply to be silly for silliness's sake. [FYI, that's usually when somebody falls out of their chair...]

Humor has a time and a place. Navigating that boundary is harder for some than for others. The "class clown" often got himself into trouble because his timing and location were off. And in preschool and kindergarten, impulse control is not necessarily a strong suit yet. One of my own little comedians has on occasion had to sit out or be redirected in school because his silliness became disruptive to the classroom environment. But I do not worry about him or about those like him: I know that he will learn to gain control over the subtle parameters of when and where he can run his stand-up routine. And I know that his ability to laugh himself right off a chair and take the audience right along with him will give him two of the most valuable tools in life: resilience and relationship. 

As for me, I am still in preschool because whenever I try to tell The Interrupting Cow Joke, I inevitably burst into uncontrollable laughter before I even get to "Moo."