Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 21, 1993 TAG: 9312210087
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PATRICIA MCCORMICK UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As unsavory and baffling as it can sometimes be, what amuses our children at different ages tells us a lot about what they know about the world so far. Humor, in fact, is one of the most reliable means we have of gauging a child's development. According to Joyce Anisman-Saltman, a humor specialist and associate professor of special education at Southern Connecticut State University, in New Haven, Conn., "Once a child has mastered a `straight' piece of information, he thinks it's funny to see an incongruous twist on that idea." She adds, "Kids also laugh to relieve tension over the things they haven't yet mastered."i
You can almost always coax a chuckle out of a 12-month-old by putting a Frisbee on your head. This is funny because he has mastered the concept of "hat," and like any self-respecting baby, he knows that a Frisbee is not a hat. It is, quite obviously, a teether.
Preschoolers, meanwhile, find gags like these to be, well, old hat. They prefer bathroom humor - partly to show off their newly acquired potty savvy and partly because they're still grappling with the realization that this is a topic to be handled discreetly. If you are 4, it's funny to display your newfound appreciation for social niceties by saying "poop" or "pee-pee" loudly and repeatedly whenever inappropriate.
And if you are 7, ribald jokes _ especially ones you don't quite understand - are funny because they demonstrate how worldly you are about sexual matters. Sitting in the back of the car and shouting, "Your girlfriend's a gorilla!" at passers-by is one way to release anxiety over adult matters that make you uneasy.
There is nothing subtle about children's humor. Favorite gags usually feature injury, goofy (and often forbidden) behavior, and, as kids get older, dumb adults getting their comeuppance. Children's jokes are typically filled with references to violence or anything that might conceivably be considered gross. There's little about these jokes for a parent to love. But then, that's often the point.
Strict humor theorists - that is, people who take humor seriously - maintain that children don't have the cognitive skills needed to display a true sense of humor until they are about 18 months old. Paul McGhee is director of the Laughter Remedy, a company in Montclair, N.J., that in McGhee's words "offers programs on the health benefits of humor." He says that a baby's early laughter at peekaboo is just her way of releasing tension over the unfamiliar sight of Mommy with a dish towel on her head, and over her disappearance and reappearance.
As early as 7 months, your baby might laugh when you drop your car keys and mutter "Damn!" in a tone of voice that he's not accustomed to hearing. He might continue laughing as you struggle to pick up the keys while balancing a diaper bag on your shoulder and him on your hip. He may just be reacting to your sudden outburst, or expressing delight as you dip him toward the floor to pick up the keys. Either way, it's a cue to even the most harried parent that the situation is worth a laugh.
"Your response will determine whether your baby goes on laughing or stops," says Anisman-Saltman. "If you join in his delight, you encourage him to develop a sense of humor. And if you show him the lighter side of life as a child, he's more likely to grow up as a fun-loving person."
Toddlers love an audience. If you are a toddler, good shticks include falling down on purpose, and stuffing your mouth full of food and then smiling broadly. Although exactly why the latter is funny remains unclear, the odds are pretty good that it's amusing because it's forbidden - a sign that your child has a rudimentary grasp of table etiquette (a small consolation as you wipe up the floor). It is also funny simply because it is disgusting and because it elicits such a powerful reaction from any hapless adult in range.
This sort of slapstick comprises most toddlers' basic comic repertoire until sometime between 18 and 24 months, when children make an intellectual breakthrough and begin to engage in pretend play, such as talking to Grandma on a toy phone. This behavior demonstrates that your child has begun to understand that objects and actions can be represented by symbols. And with this cognitive advance, kids can begin to appreciate what McGhee defines as true humor: "Children first display a real sense of humor when they pretend an object is something it's not - when they create a fantasy situation at odds with reality," he says. In other words, simply pretending to talk on the phone is not inherently funny. But holding a shoe to your ear and saying, "Hello? Hello?" Now, that's funny.
"When a toddler puts a shoe on his head, the impulse of the average parent might be to correct him and say, `That's dirty. Shoes don't go on your head,'" Anisman-Saltman says. "But that response underestimates his intelligence. He knows shoes don't go on heads - he's making a joke."
Instead, she says, "Laugh at your child. Or better yet, mimic his silly gesture by putting your shoe on your head. Your playful response tells him, `I get it. You're being funny.'"
Until the child is about 18 months old, his humor is visual. Parents tripping, toys falling and destruction in general are all funny to toddlers because they can literally see the humor in these situations. But toward the end of the second year, children typically have a verbal growth spurt that allows them to take their jokes to a higher level.
"At this point, incongruous verbal statements alone are enough to make children laugh," says McGhee. "This marks an important landmark in the development of humor - it is the first sign that the child is capable of abstract thinking."
Your child will probably demonstrate this newly acquired skill one day by intentionally misnaming a familiar object. "As any parent knows, a child this age will find it endlessly amusing to call a hand a foot, or a dog a cat," says McGhee. The only problem is that many kids don't tire of misnaming things until around the age of 5, by which time you may be truly tired of it.
But you're well advised to forget your weariness and join in the fun, for your child's sake as well as your own. With enthusiastic feedback from you - and later from their siblings and peers - children this age also learn that it is just as much fun to listen to someone else's jokes as it is to tell their own, according to McGhee. They begin to enjoy the wonderful and very intimate feeling of making someone else laugh and of having someone make a special effort to make them laugh.
Humor is a way of establishing a bond of fellowship. "When people laugh at our jokes, it tells us that they like us _ this is something even a toddler can understand," says McGhee. And as they move into the very social preschool years, "children quickly learn that making people laugh makes you more fun to be with."
"The house punched itself. The monkey ate the refrigerator and flew up to the ceiling." This sort of spontaneous storytelling is high comic art in the eyes of a preschooler. As nonsensical as these stories are, they show that your child has begun to understand the intricacies of language and logic, according to Anisman-Saltman: "The child who made up that story knows that monkeys can't eat refrigerators, and he feels confident enough in his understanding of those words and ideas to make a joke about them."
Silly sounds and gibberish, especially in answer to an adult's polite questions - "How old are you?" "Ke-ke-ko-ko" - are also very popular jokes among the - preschool set. And name-calling abounds, showing the preschooler's obsession with defining his identity.
In fact, identity jokes - such as addressing a boy, "Hi, girl" - are pretty much all funny. Ones that feature a food angle ("You're a marshmallow"; "Oh, yeah? You're a banana") get extra points for sophistication. Identity jokes involving exaggeration ("You're 2"; "You're 100") are even better. And identity jokes with a scatological punch line ("You're Winnie the Pooh"; "You're Winnie the Poop") are without exception positively sidesplitting.
And then there is the enduring charm of poop jokes. "Poop jokes are funny for the same reason that dirty jokes are funny to adults - they deal with taboo subjects," says Anisman-Saltman. "If we never told kids this was something not to be talked about, they'd never make a joke out of it. Besides, just the sound of the words "poo-poo" and "pee-pee" and "ka-ka" are funny. And with each repetition, they sound funnier."
At this age, children also begin to make up their own riddles. They usually begin by memorizing and repeating riddles before they really understand them. Soon, though, they invent riddles that are typically so nonsensical - and, often, so long, unrealistic and impossible to follow _that they're barely recognizable as jokes. These preriddles, as they are technically called, may not amount to much by adult standards, but according to Gary Alan Fine, professor of sociology at the University of Georgia in Athens, they are a sign of ever-improving linguistic and logic skills.
Jim Wiggins, a public relations executive from New York City, tells a story that illustrates the point. "My 5-year-old daughter, Alison, has a favorite riddle," he says. "It goes, 'What's your name?' `Jim.' `How do you spell it?' `J-I-M.' `No,' comes Alison's response, `I-T.' This is hysterical to Alison no matter how often she tells it."
When it comes to these self-devised riddles, children live by the reverse of the axiom - it's funniest the first time. To them, a homegrown joke that was funny the first time becomes absolutely uproarious the 41st time. That's because, for the increasingly social preschooler, the fun is not so much in the joke itself but in the telling.
"Did you take a bath?" I once asked my 6-year-old daughter.
"No," came the response. "Is one missing?"
I had, of course, heard that particular joke before. But hearing Meaghan tell it, in an attempt to lighten a somewhat tedious nightly routine, struck me as genuinely funny. Happily, when children turn 5 or 6, they begin to move out of the preriddle stage into a kind of humor that adults can enjoy. That this joke was told to make me feel somewhat stupid is also typical of school-age children - much of their humor involves demonstrating to adults the superior wisdom of the young (a mission that apparently lasts well into adolescence). "All children come equipped with a sense of humor," says Fine. "By their very nature they appreciate what's comical." They develop that appreciation when they discover that laughing at the incongruities in their world, especially the ones that make them uneasy, really helps - in dealing with stress and frustration, in solving problems, in relating successfully to their peers. There is evidence that a sense of humor may even enhance a child's learning and creativity, as well as boost the body's ability to fight pain and illness.
by CNB