“If I had no sense of humor, I should long ago have committed suicide.” (Mohandas K. Gandhi)

Psychiatrist to her receptionist: “Just say we’re very busy; don’t keep saying ‘It’s a madhouse’ here.”

You were asked following last week’s (Feb 10) radio show to immerse yourself in humor in every way you could think of. Check back to the Feb. 10 article at this website for reminders of those ways. The goal here was to help you get started obtaining a better understanding of your sense of humor as it stands now. If you are planning to go through the 7 Humor Habits Program (7HHP) either alone or with a friend, but have not yet done this “Home Play” (this is the term I will use from now on to describe the exercises and activities designed to build each Humor Habit) for this First Habit, you should do that now, and then come back to this article at a later time.

If you haven’t already done so, take the Sense of Humor Test posted in the Feb 3 article at this website. This test and the activities proposed in the Feb 10 article are an important part of the 7HHP. Most people just want to jump right in and start working on the “good stuff”—i.e., learning to be witty and find the funny stuff going on in everyday life. But trust me, you’ll see that getting yourself thinking more actively about your own sense of humor as it stand now will help ignite strong Humor Habits when we start with those in a couple of weeks.

7HHP Exercises for Week 2 of the 7HHP (consolidating your insights related to the First Humor Habit)

I am assuming here that you really did spend a week watching more sit coms on television, listening to your favorite comedians (on television, at comedy clubs, on CDs, etc.), seeking out cartoons in magazines and the daily newspaper, hanging around more with your funniest friends, etc. Again, if you did not do that, spend more time doing so before you move on with the 7HHP. The more time you spend following the suggestions of activities and exercises provided here, the more progress you’ll make. There is now plenty of research evidence documenting that THIS PROGRAM WORKS, but there is no evidence showing that it works when you just do a little here and a little there when it comes to the exercises. So the amount you gain from the radio humor series and the weekly humor development articles presented here is totally up to you.

Start Keeping a Weekly Humor Log on Your Computer, Starting Now

Since you are reading this article on your computer, you will clearly have regular access to your computer. So create a new word processing folder, into which you can save weekly or bi-weekly ideas/insights related to your sense of humor as you complete the weekly Home Play presented here. (Again, if you want to do this in a more systematic fashion, the full manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program, along with a discussion of the research documenting its effectiveness, is presented in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program.)

In the 7HHP manual, I have suggested keeping a Humor Log, which contains a summary of things you do from week to week related to each of Humor Habits—as well as your insights obtained in the process.

So you should create your first Humor Log document on your computer now. Include the following in your entry for the First Humor Habit.

1) List the various things you did during the past week in your efforts to immerse yourself in as many outside sources of humor as possible. Which things did you do most often, and which did you do only once? Continue doing these things during the coming week before we move on to the Second Humor Habit.

2) Write down any common themes you noted in the humor you do and do not find funny. This will start to give you a good sense of the nature of your sense of humor.

3) Write down how other people view your sense of humor. If you did not talk about that with friends and family during the week, do so this week.

4) Write down the people you think had the most important influences on your sense of humor when you were growing up.

5) Again, just keep as engaged as possible in humor throughout the coming week. Remember, this early involvement in thinking about humor is important in laying the foundation for the actual work on humor skills coming very shortly.

Next week’s radio show and article will focus on the Second Humor Habit.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee. This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Dr. McGhee.

“You show your character in nothing more clearly than what you think laughable.” (Goethe, German philosopher)

“Remember, it is not written down on tablets of stone somewhere, ‘This is funny! Thou shalt laugh!’ You are the world’s best expert on what is funny . . . to you.” (Paul McGhee)

My daughter recently had her ears pierced for the first time in a temporary booth set up in our local mall. A sign by the booth said, “Ears pierced while you wait.”

I did a mental double take when I first saw that sign. I couldn’t help but laugh. Very clever advertising, I thought. Bringing a chuckle to people walking by brightens their day and probably even makes them pay attention to the product being sold. It definitely DID tap into my sense of humor. How about yours? This may not be your cup of comical tea, and that’s fine. It might be too simple, or maybe you just don’t like word play humor in general. The important thing is that there is something that DOES come up in everyday life that strikes your funny bone. The goal in this first part of the 7 Humor Habits Program (7HHP) is to start thinking more about the things you do laugh at.

If you haven’t already done so, take the Sense of Humor Test posted in the Feb 3 article at this website.

7HHP Exercises for Week 1

The main goal for Week 1 is to start thinking about the nature of your sense of humor and getting a better understanding of it. An important part of this will occur when you take the Sense of Humor test. But it is just as important for you to spend this week immersing yourself in humor in every way you can. As you do this, use the following suggestions to start gaining more insight into your sense of humor as it is now. Some suggestions below are also designed to get you thinking about early and current influences on your sense of humor.

1) Make a list of the different ways you can build more outside sources of humor into your daily life. Include spending more time with friends who make you laugh, watching sit coms or other funny TV shows, go to comedy movies, read the cartoons first whenever you pick up a magazine, start looking at the comics in your newspaper, listen to comedy performances by your favorite comedians and comedians you don’t like, etc.

2) Do as many things on the list as you can each day. As you do so, make it a point to actively think about the things that DO and DO NOT make you laugh (or that strike you as funny, even if you don’t laugh). Keep a little notebook (or your favorite electronic device) with you so you can jot down your observations or insights as they occur to you. THIS IS IMPORTANT; do it as they occur to you. You’ll forget many of these insights if you don’t.

3) Look for common themes in the humor you do and do not find funny. This will start to give you a good sense of the nature of your sense of humor. Here are just a few considerations: a) the content (hostile/put-down, sexual, clever plays on words, political, etc.; also make up your own ways of thinking about differences in the content of TV shows, cartoons, jokes, etc.) b) memorized jokes vs. spontaneous wit, c) everyday situations that come up in life, d) situations where people are able to laugh at themselves in some way.

4) To generate your own ideas for thinking how to describe your sense of humor, spend the week talking to friends and colleagues about the things they think are funny. It’s not always easy to say why you find something funny, but engage in that conversation with people; you’ll be surprised at some of the things you hear. You’ll also get some good insights about your own sense of humor as you discuss this with people.

5) Give some thought to how important humor was in your parents’ lives and in your everyday experiences in your family in growing up. Who had the most important influence on your sense of humor when you were growing up?

For more detailed and systematic guidelines for mapping out the nature of your sense of humor, see the manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee. This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Dr. McGhee.

Over the next three months, people around the world will begin doing something that many think cannot be done—improving their sense of humor! I’ve had many people tell me that “You’re either born with a good sense of humor or you’re not . . . and there’s nothing I can do about it.” We now have evidence that this is NOT true. I have developed a hands-on Humor Training Program, called The 7 Humor Habits Program, which shows in a step-by-step fashion exactly what you need to do over a period of two or three months to strengthen the basic foundation components of your sense of humor so that you can use it to cope better with the daily stress in your life and boost your physical and mental health and happiness.

This Humor Training Program is presented in my book Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program. (Click on “Books by Dr. McGhee at www.LaughterRemedy.com for ordering information.) The effectiveness of this program has been documented in the USA, Australia, Germany and Switzerland (the Appendix to the book discusses the supporting research). This program will not make you a standup comedian, but it will help you laugh more often and more heartily and boost your ability to adopt a more playful outlook on life, play with language and create your own verbal humor, find the funny stuff that’s been going on around you all the time (but you didn’t know it!) and your ability to laugh at yourself. Finally, it will help you do all of these things when you’re having a bad day (which is probably when your sense of humor abandons you now); that is, it will help you cope better in everyday life.

Next week’s (Feb. 10) radio broadcast will focus on the first Humor Habit to be cultivated as we move toward the goal of using humor to cope. But if you want to determine for yourself just how much progress you make in listening tot these broadcasts and doing the humor-boosting exercises and activities suggested in each show, it is important to first get some measure of your present sense of humor—including its strengths and weaknesses. To do this, take the Sense of Humor pre-test provided below. (This measure is taken from Dr. McGhee’s book, Humor as Survival Training . . . Please cite the book if you reproduce the Sense of Humor test for your own use.) This will give you a “base line” for comparison with the post-test, so that you can determine how much you’ve gained when you’ve completed this Humor Habits Training Program.

In addition to completing the pre-test yourself, ask another person (your spouse or a friend or colleague who knows you well) to rate your sense of humor using the same pre-test. Having other people rate you will give you a better picture of your current sense of humor; it may also surprise you. Be sure to rate yourself as honestly as possible. No one else will see your ratings, so rate yourself as you really are—not as you’d like to be. Once you’ve completed the pre-test, do not look at your answers until you’ve completed the 7HH Program and the post-test.

Sense of Humor Pre-Test

Use the 7-point scale (including #2, 4 & 6) provided here to answer the rest of the items below. Again, avoid the tendency to give what you consider a “good” answer.

1 = Strongly Disagree
2
3 = Mildly Disagree
4
5 = Mildly Agree
6
7 = Strongly Agree

Enjoyment of Humor

____ 1. I generally look for sit coms or other funny programs to watch on TV.
____ 2. When I pick up magazines, I generally look at the cartoons in them first.
____ 3. When I go to the movies, my preference is generally to see a good comedy.
____ 4. It is important for me to have a lot of humor in my life.
____ Total EH score (add items 1- 4)

Laughter

____ 5. I have a good belly laugh many times each day.
____ 6. I have a heartier, more robust laugh than most people.
____ 7. I feel comfortable laughing, even when others aren’t.
____ 8. One or both of my parents laughed a lot when I was growing up.
____ Total L score (add items 5 –

Verbal Humor

____ 9. I often tell jokes.
____ 10. I often tell funny stories.
____ 11. I often create my own spontaneous puns.
____ 12. I often make other spontaneous witty remarks (other than 9-11).
____ Total VH score (add items 9 – 12)

Finding Humor in Everyday Life

____ 13. I often find humor in things that happen at work.
____ 14. I often find humor in things that happen at home.
____ 15. I often find humor in things that happen outside of work & family settings.
____ 16. I often share with others the funny incidents I observe, or that happen to me.
____ Total FHEL score (add items 13 – 16)

Laughing at Yourself

____ 17. I have no trouble poking fun at my physical imperfections.
____ 18. I often find humor in my own embarrassing incidents or personal blunders.
____ 19. I often share with others the humor in my blunders/embarrassing incidents.
____ 20. I find it easy to laugh when I am the butt of the joke.
____ Total LY score (add items 17 – 20)

Humor Under Stress

____ 21. My sense of humor rarely abandons me under stress.
____ 22. I often use my sense of humor to control the effect of stress on my mood.
____ 23. I often use humor at work to reduce stress and stay effective on the job.
____ 24. My sense of humor is my most effective tool in coping with life stress.
____ Total HUS score (add items 21 – 24)

____ Total Sense of Humor score (add items 1- 24)

This is your Humor Quotient. Lowest possible score = 24. Highest = 168. Your goal upon completing the 7HHP should be to score at 140 or higher.

Every Friday, 11-11:15 a.m. (Eastern time in the USA)
February 10 – April 27, 2012
Weekly Skill-Development Exercises Posted after each Show at www.LaughterRemedy.com.

WNZK (690 AM) & WCXI (1160 AM) in the Detroit, Michigan area & on the Internet at www.birach.com (or directly at http://wnzk.birach.com:9000

This series of broadcasts marks an innovative breakthrough in radio broadcasting. A weekly live radio show will be used as a vehicle for actively engaging listeners around the world in working on improving their sense of humor and learning to use humor to cope with the stress in their lives. This will occur in the first 15 minutes of the popular weekly show, The Bright Side of Aging, hosted by Ike Englebaum in Detroit, Michigan. The featured guest for these programs is Dr. Paul McGhee, President of The Laughter Remedy in Wilmington, DE. Dr. McGhee is internationally known for his own research on humor and has published 15 books on the topic. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his research and active promotion of therapeutic humor from both Oakland University (Rochester, MI) and the American Association for Therapeutic Humor.

The Bright Side of Aging is broadcast live every Friday from 11-11:30 a.m. (Eastern time in the USA) on WNZK (690 AM) and WCXI (1160 AM) in the Detroit area and on the Internet at www.birach.com for everyone else in the USA and abroad. This address puts you into the Birach Broadcasting Corp. website. On the right side of the Home Page, you will see 9 or 10 buttons. Click on either “Listen to WNZK, 690 AM” or “Listen to WCXI, 1160 AM”. As noted at the Home Page, you will need winamp, real player or an MP3 player on your computer to listen online. You can also get directly to the broadcast by going to http://wnzk.birach.com:9000.

* Note: While these humor programs occur in the context of a radio show on aging, all of the humor training ideas presented work for adults (and teens) of all ages.

The Health and Happiness through Humor series of shows began on Jan 13, 2012. The Jan. 13, 20, 27 & Feb. 3 shows discuss(ed) the physical health benefits resulting from humor and how humor helps cope with the stress in one’s life. (For a discussion of these benefits, see www.LaughterRemedy.com.) Starting in February, audio clips of each Humor Show will available to re-listen to within a few days after that show at www.americanseniorgazette.com. Beginning Feb. 10, and continuing through April, each show will offer listeners guidelines for improving a specific component of their sense of humor. Listeners will then spend the next 7 days cultivating specific Habits related to that part of their sense of humor before moving on to the next set of Humor Habits. Tune in the week following the initial discussion of a specific Humor Habit for a discussion of progress in improving that part of your sense of humor. To allow adequate time for live conversation with radio listeners working to build these humor habits between radio shows, a total of two weeks may be spent on each Humor Habit.

This is the first time anything like this has been done on live radio. Participants around the world, listening via the Internet, will spend a three- or four-month period building the basic foundation humor skills needed to boost emotional resilience and use humor to cope with the stress in their daily lives.

Research in university settings in 5 countries has documented the effectiveness of this 7 Humor Habits Program. The Program has also been shown to work with seniors (average age in their 70s).

Using this Program in the Context of Patient Support Groups or Senior Residential Communities

Activity Directors in Senior Residential Communities, leaders of patient (e.g., cancer) support groups or leaders of any other kind of ongoing self-help support group may also choose to use the radio broadcasts to go through the 7 Humor Habits Program in a more systematic fashion. To do so, the discussion leader will need a copy of the complete manual for the Program, which is contained in Dr. McGhee’s book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program. (See www.LaughterRemedy.com. for ordering information.) Guidelines for leading a weekly discussion of each Humor Habit are provided. This book contains the 7 Humor Habits Program in its entirety, so a much fuller and more detailed set of activities and exercises for building humor skills is provided than will occur in the radio broadcasts.

Again, you may choose to use archives of the radio broadcasts when you are leading such a group discussion yourself. If you have a question regarding how to lead such a group, contact Dr. McGhee at paulmcghee@verizon.net. Also see Dr McGhee’s website after each show for weekly updates on (and a more detailed listing of) activities and exercises for strengthening each Humor Habit.

An earlier article at this website noted that children become intellectually capable of understanding the double meanings that form the basis for most riddles at six or seven years of age.  Since this new form of verbal humor automatically occurs when children achieve the prerequisite level of cognitive (intellectual) development, your child will get hooked on riddles for a few years regardless of whether you make an effort to nurture this skill or not.  The reason for making the effort to play with your child the kind of game discussed below is that most kids simply memorize riddles and tell them over and over—without building their own skills at playing with language! 

This is the best time to get them started creating their own double meanings—while the whole idea is so exciting to them.  Without this kind of practice, children become adolescents with limited spontaneous verbal humor skills.  And if the language-play habit is not well-established by mid-adolescence, it is very unlikely to be present during the adult years.

Some kids get so turned on to humor that they are motivated on their own make the effort to create their own word-play humor.  But these kids are the exception.  The children who are most likely to build their verbal humor skills through childhood and adolescence are those who have parents or other family members who consistently model verbal humor—day after day, month after month.  These kids generally have this skill as part of their personality—part of their way of interacting with others—even if they only occasionally use it during the preadolescent years.  The constant early exposure to verbal humor supports the capacity to actively use humor when the interest in doing so emerges later on.  Even for these lucky kids, however, practice at creating humor in the manner shown below will boost their humor skills.

In all of the examples shown here, a key part of the punch line is missing.  The answers are given at the end of the article.  Be sure to ask your child to use the clues to try to create a funny answer before looking at the answers; otherwise the exercise does not help build humor skills.  Please note that adults will also benefit from these exercises.  Even though adults generally do not need all the clues, they find it difficult to come up with a word play answer using no clues at all.  The more examples like this that your child goes through, the greater the extent to which this form of verbal humor (quickly seeing double meanings as a basis for humor) will become a permanent skill within his/her developing sense of humor.

My book Stumble Bees and Pelephones includes 250 riddles like those included here.  By the time children complete the entire book, thinking of spontaneous puns and other forms of play with words starts to become automatic—popping into mind without the mental effort required to complete the punch lines offered here.  Building a strong set of verbal humor skills at this early point in life assures that this particular coping tool will probably remain with the child throughout his/her life. 

[Adolescents and adults may find the riddles included here boring, even though they are hard to figure out without the clues.  My book Small Medium at Large uses this same principle of leaving out a key part of the punch line for adult jokes and stories.  A few examples are offered at the end of this article in order for you to determine whether your child is old enough to benefit from this exercise with more adult forms of humor.  This book is equally powerful in building the verbal humor skills of adolescents and adults.]

Be sure to try all of the examples before looking at the answers below.

1.  How do skunks say grace before their meals?  “Let us _______.”

1^st clue: What do many families do just before their meals?

2^nd clue: Another word for a fine mist.

3^rd clue: You can paint things using this fine mist.

2.  What do you call a bee that is clumsy and trips a lot?  A(n) _________ bee.

1^st clue: Find a word that means to trip and fall.

2^nd clue: It starts with an “s.”

3^rd clue: It rhymes with “humble.”

3.  What is a cow’s favorite part of a salad?  ____________.

1^st clue: It’s long and green.

2^nd clue: It starts with a “c.”

3^rd clue: Substitute “cow” for the beginning of this word.

4. Teacher to unruly students: “If I don’t get some order in this classroom, you’ll all be expelled from school.

Student: “I’ll _____  __  __________  ____  ________.”

1^st clue: This is not what the teacher meant.

2^nd clue: Where else does someone ask for your order.

3^rd clue: Restaurant.

5.  What cat never plays fair in games?  A(n) __________.

1^st clue: It starts with a “c.”

2^nd clue: What word means to not play fair?

3^rd clue: This cat runs faster than any other animal.

6.  What’s the only hot dog vampires eat?  ____________.

1^st clue: What do vampires use to bite your neck?

2^nd clue: The first part rhymes with “hang.”

3^rd clue: It starts with an “f.”

7.  What cookie can bite you back?  A ________  _______.

1^st clue: To bite very quickly.  You can also do this with your fingers.

2^nd clue: The first word is a spice.

3^rd clue: The first letters of the two words are “g” and “s.”

8.  When do astronauts eat pizza?  At _______ time.

1^st clue: Play with the name of one of the three meals of the day.

2^nd clue: You use this word when you start a new project.

3^rd clue: What do you call it when they send off a rocket?

Answers to Children’s Riddles:

[Be sure to cover the answer following the one you’re checking to be sure you don’t accidentally notice the answer to the next riddle.]

1.  spray

2.  stumble (vs. bumble)

3.  Cowcumber (cucumber)

4.  have a hamburger and fries (or any other food order)

5.  cheetah (cheater)

6.  Fangfurters (frankfurters)

7.  ginger snap

8.  launch (lunch)

See Stumble Bees & Pelephones for an entire book of skill-development riddles.

Adolescent and Adult Jokes

(Taken from Small Medium at Large: How to Develop a Powerful Verbal Sense of Humor.  See “Books by Dr. McGhee” to order.)

 1.  A handsome young man invited his beautiful Chinese date up to his apartment to see his stamp collection.  He told her he found her very attractive, intelligent and talented.  The girl smiled, shook her head “no,” and said, “___________ will get you nowhere.”

Clue: Think of the familiar phrase women use when reacting to a compliment.  Also, what is the name given to stamp collecting?  The fact that she’s Chinese adds a little something extra.

2.  Sign in front of a Body and Fender Repair Shop: “May we have the next _______?”

Clue: Play with the formerly familiar phrase from ballrooms.

3.  A well-known singer was tired of singing alone all the time, but he could never get a partner to agree to join him.  Finally, he solved the problem by going out and buying a(n) __________________________.”

Clue:  What do we generally buy when we don’t want to pay someone else to do something?  Use the term for two people singing together.

Extra Clue: It’s a kind of kit.

4.  A father looked outside and saw his own children and their playmates pressing their hands into the cement of his newly laid sidewalk.  He ran to the door and angrily gave the kids a real tongue-lashing and paddled their behinds.  His shocked wife asked, “How can you do that?  Don’t you love your children?” 

He answered: “In the abstract, yes; but not in ____________.”

Clue:  You may not need a clue for this one.  But just in case, find another word for what sidewalks are made of.

Answers to Adolescent/Adult Jokes:

1.  Philately (flattery)

2.  dents (dance)

3.  duet (do it) yourself kit

4.  the concrete

Because he was on a ________ diet.  (Answer is given at end of article.)

[Adapted from P. McGhee, Understanding and Promoting the Development of Children’s Humor.  See “Books by Dr. McGhee” to order.]

The previous article on children’s humor discussed the important benefits that the active use of humor during childhood has on the child’s intellectual development.  Most of my programs for early childhood educators emphasize the importance of learning to use the love of humor to support children’s acquisition of new knowledge by bringing age-appropriate humor in educational settings.  While we all know about the importance of play for learning, parents and early childhood educators have generally not given much attention to the positive role played by humor (which is on form of play—mental play, or play with ideas) in children’s development.  In this article, we focus on the social and emotional benefits resulting from children’s active use of their growing sense of humor.

Social Benefits

 Among both children and adults, humor is now understood to be one component of interpersonal competence.  It is a key social skill that will serve your child well in the work world down the road and in interpersonal relationships generally from this point on.  Children who initiate humor more often than their peers have been found to show more social participation in activities; they also tend to be judged by their peers as being more sociable.  This is true from the preschool years on through high school and into adulthood.  Children who know how to use humor in social interaction are also better at putting others at ease.  This creates an environment in which all communication is easier—an enormous benefit at all stages of life.

Kids who initiate humor more often are also seen by other children as being more likeable.  Thus, these kids tend to me more popular and have more friends.  For those children who have difficulty making social connections with other kids (for any reason), supporting the development of a good sense of humor by parents is especially important.  Many children find themselves being isolated at recess or during other social activities for any number of reasons—poor social skills in general, poor athletic/gross motor abilities, learning disabilities, unusual physical characteristics (skinny, overweight, big ears, etc.), a lisp or stutter when speaking, and so forth.  These same kids create their own path toward overcoming this social rejection when they develop strong skills at making other kids laugh.  This, in turn, opens the door to future opportunities to improve their skills at interacting socially in general.

Emotional Benefits

Finally, humor provides children with a socially acceptable means of expressing anger.  This will facilitate the handling of conflicts in social situations throughout the developmental years.  A great deal of attention has been given in the past decade or so to emotional intelligence—a form of intelligence that has long been neglected.  The ability to manage one’s own emotional state (as well as the emotions of others) is considered by virtually all of the major researchers/experts on this topic to be a key component of emotional intelligence. 

There is ample research showing that humor is a very effective means of managing one’s emotions—of sustaining a more positive, upbeat mood and attitude on the tough days as well as on the good days.  My book, Humor: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health, documents this evidence.

When you see young children playing, you generally see them laughing.  This laughter is a reflection of the joy and happiness that humor and play provide, but we now know that laughter can also help generate a joyous and happy state in children where there was none before.  So nurturing children’s sense of humor helps them gain a measure of control of their daily mood.  (And you know that when they’re in a good mood, it’s easier for you to sustain a good mood.)

Good humor skills during childhood help build a solid sense of self-esteem.  Since humor and shared laughter help the child receive a lot of positive feedback from other kids (and adults), this gradually builds a strong sense of good feeling about oneself.

Perhaps the most important long-range emotional benefit of humor resulting from the development of good humor skills during childhood is the coping skill known to be associated with humor.  There is a large body of research documenting humor’s power in helping adults and adolescents cope with life stress.  Kids who build this skill early on are able to benefit from this coping advantage throughout their life.

[Answer to above riddle: “crash.”

A good sense of humor provides a broad range of important developmental benefits to children, just as it does to adults.  You can help assure that your own children receive these benefits by actively supporting the development of their humor skills.  Earlier articles posted here focused developmental changes in children’s humor, noting that these are a reflection of underlying progress in the child’s intellectual development.  Those articles help you understand your child’s current sense of humor, so that you can more easily provide humor at the child’s level.  These basic developmental changes will occur regardless of any efforts on your part to support your children’s sense of humor.  It is important, however, to support and nurture their budding sense of humor from infancy on.

You can support your children’s sense of humor by simply spending some time playing with them every day.  This sustains the frame of mind in which they will automatically engage in mental play at their present developmental level.  Also make a special effort to at least occasionally laugh or otherwise respond to their attempts to make you laugh (you don’t have to do this all the time; you’ll run out of steam before they do).  The more you support children’s sense of humor at this early stage, the more likely they are to emerge into adolescence and adulthood with a well-developed set of humor skills that support good mental and physical health, while contributing key developmental benefits along the way.  Of course, it is important to be a positive model of humor in your own life, as well.  This article focuses on intellectual benefits; the next article on children’s humor discusses humor’s positive impact on social and emotional development.

Intellectual benefits

A six-year-old boy in a drug store with his mom puts a box of Tampax on the counter. The person behind the counter says, “Are you sure this is what you want?” The boy says, “Yeah, I’m sure. It says right on the box that with these you can swim, ride a bicycle and play tennis . . . and I can’t do any of those things.”

Since humor (in my view) is really a form of intellectual play, and language is our main vehicle for thought, it comes as no surprise that children love to play with words.  As discussed in the previous children’s humor articles, they first play with the sounds of words, and then with meanings.  The discovery that the same word can have two meanings is an exciting one, and spurs them on to find even more words to play with.  This is why you’ll want to use the humor exercises provided in the next two children’s humor articles to help your six- to 10-year-old strengthen the basic ability to create puns and other forms of verbal humor.  (You’ll also benefit from this yourself!)  The excitement of playing with meanings is at its peak at this point and is responsible for your child’s great interest in riddle books during this period.

One direct result of this excitement about double meanings of words is an enriched vocabulary.  Riddles expose children to new words and meanings, and the repeated telling of the riddles consolidates the memory of those words and makes them more accessible in everyday life.

Reading skills also receive a boost as a result of the keen interest in riddle books and other funny books.  The best way to build reading skills is to find a way to make reading exciting for kids, and nothing beats humor when it comes to generating excitement.  Some kids read the same riddle books over and over again when they can’t find new ones.  The reading skills acquired from reading riddles generalize, of course, to all forms of reading.

In the process of reading riddles and other funny books, children acquire new information about their world in a general sense.  This learning is sometimes direct via the humor, and sometimes very indirect.  All riddles contain general background information about the world in addition to the basic play on words.  This information is assimilated and stored as part of the child’s growing general knowledge base.

Humor also boosts children’s creative thinking capacity.  Research showed decades ago that there is a close relationship between the kind of thinking involved in humor and other forms of creative thinking.  Children who spend more time finding new and incongruous ways of making sense out of words develop a generalized skill of thinking in innovative ways in connection with other questions or problems.  This skill is increasingly valued in all areas of the workplace at present, so this is one way of boosting your child’s eventual success in the work world.

A future article will show you how to use riddles to strengthen your child’s (and your own) ability create his/her own verbal humor.  The skills developed now will serve the child well throughout adolescence and adulthood

Intuitively, you would assume that laughter would not be a good idea for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD—a condition (which may result from emphysema or chronic bronchitis) characterized by generally irreversible airway obstruction (air trapping), resulting in a slowed rate of exhalation.  In COPD, the bronchial passages are seriously impaired in their ability to rid the lungs of air, leading to hyperinflation.  “Pursed lip” breathing is often recommended to help patients get a good exchange of air in the lungs.  Bronchodilators are also used to help empty air and reduce the level of hyperinflation.

On the one hand, you might expect the forcefulness of hearty laughter to help force more air through the bronchi and reduce the level of trapped air.  We know that laughter does reduce residual air in the lungs of healthy individuals.  But if the laughter does not successfully push out trapped air in COPD patients, it could actually cause more air to get trapped in the lungs.  When a healthy person laughs hard, a series of expiratory pushes (the “ha ha’s”) rapidly forces air out until we run out of air.  We then take a quick deep breath and continue pushing air out until the hilarity settles down.  For a COPD patient, if the lungs do not permit this rapid expulsion of air, the deep inspirations could actually increase the level of trapped air.  This is why slow and steady breathing is generally seen as the way to go for these patients.

One very recent study has taken the first step toward determining the possible value or harm of laughter for COPD patients.  Lung volume was measured in patients with severe COPD and healthy controls both before and after a performance by a clown within the hospital.  (COPD patients have greater lung volume in their residual air, as well as immediately after a full inspiration—defined as “total lung capacity” or TLC—in comparison to healthy individuals).  This was a very funny clown who worked well with adults, and a lot of laughter occurred among both patients and the control adults.  Total lung capacity was significantly reduced among the COPD patients, but not in the control group.  (This reduction in TLC was relatively short-lived, however; it was no longer present two hours later.)  Among those patients showing the greatest reduction of TLC (10% or more), there was a sharp drop in residual air volume.  This suggests that a reduction in air-trapping did occur for them. 

Since one concern prior to this study was whether laughter would even be safe for COPD patients, it should be noted that the researchers concluded that mild laughter is safe for this patient group—even for patients with severe COPD.  But they also found that patients showing the most intense laughter did show increased hyperinflation.  It was “gentle” laughter that was associated with reduced lung volume.  This suggests that COPD patients should be cautioned to restrict their laughter to more moderate levels. 

Of special interest is the finding that those patients who showed the greatest reduction in trapped residual air smiled more than patients showing minimal reduction in trapped residual air.  So smiling may also help COPD patients get rid of trapped air and breathe more easily.  These researchers specifically recommended that smiling-while-breathing be considered as an additional breathing technique, along with the traditional pursed-lip breathing.  To be most effective, this should be encouraged in the context of comedy videos, friendly banter, or any other approach to generating amusement in patients.

This article may not be copied or reproduced without the permission of Paul McGhee.

Researchers have recently begun to study the pulmonary benefits of humor and laughter.  If you are already in good health, their contribution to pulmonary health is probably negligible.  For individuals with a respiratory illness (or who are confined to a bed), however, the picture may be quite different.  Such individuals are more likely to have a shallow breathing pattern, which leaves a larger (than desired) volume of “residual air” (the air remaining in the lungs when your outward breath is replaced by the next inhalation) in the lungs.  More active individuals breathe out more of the residual air and replace it on a regular basis with new oxygen-enriched air. 

The risk associated with excess residual air in the lungs on an ongoing basis lies in the fact that there is a progressive buildup in this air of both water vapor and carbon dioxide.  This leaves shallow breathers and chronically inactive people at greater risk of pulmonary infection.  As this residual air stays in the lungs for longer periods of time, its oxygen content drops, and the levels of water vapor and carbon dioxide increase.  Again, the health risk here arises for individuals already prone to respiratory difficulties, since the increased water vapor creates a more favorable environment for bacterial growth and pulmonary infection.

You know from your own experience, however, that there is a dramatic change in your breathing pattern when you have a good belly laugh.  When you laugh, you repeatedly push air out of your lungs (with each “ha”) until you can’t push out any more.  Then you take a deep breath and start the same process all over again.  This is repeated over and over until the exhilarating feeling of amusement has passed.  Each time you laugh, you get rid of the excess carbon dioxide and water vapor that’s built up and replace it with oxygen-rich air.  So frequent belly laughter reduces the risk of pulmonary infection by emptying your lungs of more of the air that’s taken in. 

Hospitalized patients with respiratory problems are often encouraged to breathe deeply and exhale fully, but nurses generally have difficulty getting them to do so.  Most patients enjoy a good laugh, though, so many nurses have learned to tell them a joke from time to time or give them a comedy tape to view.  This automatically achieves the respiratory goals the nurse has for the patient.  This is also one reason why many nursing homes now provide comedy programs to their residents on a regular basis (especially humor from their early adult years that still makes seniors laugh).

A 90-year-old woman went to see a new doctor.  He asked her how she was doing, so she gave him the full list of complaints—this hurts, that’s stiff, I’m tired and slower, etc.

He responded with, “Mrs. Weiss, you have to expect things to start deteriorating at this point in life.  After all, who wants to live to 100?”

She looked him in the eye and said, “Anyone who’s 99.”

If you’ve ever had a good belly laugh in the midst of a cold, you’re sure to have noticed that the laughing quickly turns into coughing.  The laughing and coughing reflexes are very similar, so the laughter is quickly overtaken by persistent coughing.  This laughing-coughing link is normally just an annoyance, since coughing is not nearly as enjoyable as laughing (as we shall see in a later article, humor and laughter activate known pleasure or reward centers in the brain; while no one has yet studied the impact of coughing on these reward centers, I would bet my retirement fund that they are not activated by a hacking cough).

There are some conditions, however, in which the laugh-cough connection is a good thing.  For example, nurses and respiratory therapists often encourage certain patients to cough to help discharge mucous plugs accumulating in the respiratory tract.  The problem is that even well-motivated patients have a difficult time following through on the advice to cough periodically.  But if you can get patients laughing from time to time, this problem takes care of itself.  The laughter triggers coughing and automatically achieves the goal of clearing mucous from the respiratory system—and the patients have a good time in the process.

A pulmonary researcher has emphasized to me, however, that there are good coughs and bad coughs when it comes to many pulmonary conditions.  A good cough is one that clears out mucous plugs; a bad one is irritating and actually causes more inflammation.  In cases where the lungs are already inflamed, repetitive coughing (which is likely to be triggered by laughter) just worsens the irritation and inflammation.

In the next two or three articles, we will look at the (surprising) benefits mild levels of humor/laughter have been found to offer to patients with asthma and COPD.

This article may not be copied or reproduced without the permission of Paul McGhee.