Can Laughter Be The Best Medicine?

Just as adults are using humor to cope during this challenging time of COVID-19, parents can employ laughter as an effective antidote to the stress our children may be feeling.

While your young child may not fully understand or may even be oblivious to the reasons for all the changes in daily life due to the Coronavirus, they may be experiencing distress nonetheless. This anxiety may be caused by the changes in their routine, their lack of social contact, cabin fever, or just by tuning in to the stress the adults around them are feeling. But whatever the cause, just as adults find a release in laughing, so will your child.

Even infants quickly respond to the social connection that humor provides. Tickling games and Peek-a-boo are universal experiences with babies. These interactions continue to grow as toddlers find hilarity in silly words and actions, whether they invent them themselves or imitate grown-ups or peers.

By age four, children love a good riddle or joke even when they don't fully understand them. My three and half-year-old granddaughter, Alma, has taken a joke that I told her and made up a variation of her own, which she thinks is hilarious (and so do I!)

My joke: Knock Knock... Who's there? Lettuce... Lettuce Who? Let-us-in!

Her version: Knock Knock...Who's there? Salad!!

Here are some of the other ways that we get the giggles:

read a silly book together, any Doctor Seuss book is a good place to start.

sing a funny song like “Shake the Sillies Out” or the classic “All Around the Kitchen, Cock-a-doodle Doodle Do”.

call each other by the wrong name… I know… a total knee slapper!

During this time when we are feeling the pressure to try to fit so much in, let yourself be spontaneous and silly. Children will quickly join in when parents send the message that it’s time for fun… to everyone’s benefit.

Please share how your family uses humor to get through this time of social distancing and unprecedented disruption.