A few summers ago I was on vacation with my children in Minnesota. It was early evening, and I needed a way to occupy them for a couple of hours in order to make it to the end of what felt like a very long day. I was tired, and my fuse was short. I had them put on their bathing suits, and we piled into the car, heading to what someone had recommended as a perfect swimming spot in one of the 10,000 lakes surrounding us. In the wilderness, my GPS was less than helpful. I turned down one gravelly dirt road after another, finding private homes and campsites but no public lake access. My frustration grew. I muttered under my breath and swore out loud.
Turning the car around, yet again, I opened my mouth to make another angry sound — but then I caught my kids’ eyes in the rearview mirror. There was fear in them. They were visibly worried that if we didn’t find this lake, I was going to — well, I don’t know what they thought I would do, but it was definitely something scary.
I was at a total loss, and I gripped the sides of the wheel and said, “I’m going to blow!” Then I shook my head around wildly and yelled “Ahhhhh!” on and on, turning it into a sort of rage-y yodel. Think Animal from the Muppets. My kids fell silent. Their eyes grew wide with surprise, mouths dangling open — then my son’s lips shifted into a smile. He started laughing, with his little sister immediately following suit. Soon, they were cracking up.
When I ran out of air to continue my performance, they shouted, “Again! Again!”
The Muppets Studio via Getty Images
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done, but was relieved that I’d managed to make it through the moment without turning into the bad guy.
Humour can be an effective way to defuse a tense situation, of which parenting offers plenty. Yet for all the talk of parenting styles, strategies, tools, tips and hacks, humour is something that seldom gets discussed beyond a comment here or there about “dad jokes.”
But a new, preliminary study about the use of humour in parenting shows that most of us view humour as a valuable parenting tool. Not only that, but researchers found a correlation between parents’ use of humour and the quality of their relationships with their children.
In a survey of 312 respondents, ages 18-45, more than half (55.2%) said that the people who raised them used humour in their parenting. A majority (71.8%) agreed that humour can be an effective parenting tool, that it has more potential for benefit than harm (63.3%) and that they plan to (or do) use it with their own children (61.8%). These responses didn’t differ significantly when compared by age or gender.
Dr. Benjamin Levi, a professor at Penn State and one of the study’s authors, told HuffPost that these findings were interesting, although perhaps not that surprising. After all, most people view humour in a positive light.
What was unexpected, Levi said, was the correlation the study found between parents’ use of humour and the way their (now adult) children viewed both the way they were parented and their relationship with their parents.
“People who said that their parents used humour, those folks were much more likely to report that they had a good relationship with their parents, and that they thought that their parents did a good job,” he said.
“Not surprisingly,” he continued, those same people were more likely “to say that they would use the same kinds of techniques” with their own children.
The numbers are startling. Among respondents who reported that their parents used humour, 50.5% said they had a good relationship with their parents. Among respondents who said their parents did not use humour, however, only 2.9% reported a good relationship with their parents. Among respondents who said their parents used humour, 44.2% reported that they felt their parents did a good job parenting them. Among those who said their parents did not use humour, however, the number who thought their parents did a good job dropped to 3.6%.
Levi is quick to note that this is only a preliminary study. The intriguing numbers call for further investigation, and Levi says a larger, more comprehensive study is already in the works.
It’s unclear what, exactly, the connection is between humour and effective parenting. “My guess is that it’s something that was modelled for them, where they tried and they saw that it worked,” Levi said of the majority of survey respondents who viewed humour positively.
He also mentioned that a parent can use humour in an unexpected way in order to break the tension, like I managed to do with my Animal impression in the car. He recalled the story of a dad who, when his daughters were fighting, would grab one in each arm and jump, all of them fully-clothed, into the pool. Wild? Yes. Wet? Absurdly. But also, effective.
In terms of strengthening people’s relationships with their kids, he said, “It could be the case that the people who use humour are a particular kind of person, right? And they may parent differently entirely apart from the humour.”
But there’s also the particular value of a well-timed joke.
“My guess is that [humour] opens up new patterns for communication and interaction, because it changes dynamics that may fall into patterns or ruts,” Levi said. “It’s sort of an invitation to be creative and imaginative.”
Here at HuffPost, we know that parents often lean on their funny bones in order to get through the tough moments, as evidenced by readers’ enthusiasm for our regular round-ups of funny parenting tweets. We asked some of the parents whose tweets frequently appear in these collections their thoughts on the relationship between humour and parenting.
Humour can cut the tension.
Meg St-Esprit is mom to a 12-year-old, twin 10-year-olds and an almost 6-year old. “Parenting and family life are hard, especially in a big family with a lot of different needs, preferences, and ways of viewing the world,” she said. “Humour can be a tool to defuse some of those places where we chafe against one another, or help us look at a situation less seriously when we are worked up.”
Rodney Lacroix, whose kids are 23, 21, 19 and 15, said, “I’ve always shown my kids that there is always a lighter side to things, and that humour can come from the most unlikely places — even in failure or times of despair.”
“Like when we are out of pizza rolls,” he added.
But, it should be used cautiously.
Humour, St-Esprit noted, is “tricky to do well.”
“Most young kids and even some teens don’t truly understand sarcasm, even if they sometimes appear to. They may laugh but wonder internally if it’s true, so we do try to be careful not to cross a line between light humour and trolling our kids or one another,” she said.
“I do think there is a difference between using humour with our kids and making fun of them,” she continued. “Humour within families should build one another up, not tear anyone down. Like anything, it’s a tool that can be used well or used to cause harm.”
Humour can add to the enjoyment of authentic, real-life interactions.
While plenty of us go looking for humour online, there’s a special value to sharing laughter together in person.
“In today’s world where their screens define what the kids see and the humour online is so different and forced for likes, being around a family that is able to go through the emotions and laugh together at situations goes a long way,” said Vinod Chhaproo, a parent to two daughters ages 11 and 9.
Humour can soften the delivery of directives.
“I told my girls that the way they brush their teeth, they’ll never see a cavity on their bathroom sink,” said Chhaproo. “They laughed and got the message. Telling them that their winter jackets have been ordered and shipped to the school’s lost and found directly made them roll their eyes,” he said, noting that “they’ve not lost many jackets since.”
Humour can help us take ourselves less seriously.
“I use humour at every opportunity, if I burn the pancakes or add salt to my coffee, or google up the answers to 5th grade math homework,” Chhaproo added. “My girls have also learnt to laugh at themselves, take jokes and react positively to the mistakes and not be beaten down by them.”
Shane B., a father of three who tweets as Dadman Walking, said, “I think it helps show them you don’t have to be so serious all the time.”
“You can take a crappy situation and be able to handle it better. I make jokes on things too when I’m uncomfortable … I think less emotions are buried because of it.”
Without laughter, he said, “life is scary nonstop. Especially to kids.”
“I love making people laugh, and it’s an even greater feeling getting my kids laughing. Especially when they’re crying over physical or emotional pain. Laughter helps heal the heart,” he added.
Humour can help forge bonds in relationships.
Shane B. said his kids “constantly come to me to tell me anything funny that happened in their day.”
“Laughter brings a special connection and opens up the door for that conversation to sometimes end up with a lot of meaning,” he continued.
Lacroix noted that it’s important to take advantages of opportunities to share laughter when kids are little, as they may become less frequent as they grow up.
“I find I am becoming more serious in my parenting. My kids are still funny, but now the conversations are about jobs, school and life. Try to keep it light when you can. Make light of serious situations — treading carefully — to get them to see that, even though life is a giant bucket of suck, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel if you can crack a smile about it,” he said.
