How a sense of humor comes to children

Try playing on words or sarcasm at a toddler, in return you might only get a blank stare. Babies' reactions can be unpredictable - if they ignore your best clown performances, they may laugh at something completely innocuous. Of course, children are not completely devoid of humor. But how do you know what will amuse them at such and such an age? And when are they able to perceive irony and sarcasm?

Recently my two-year-old has been having fun grabbing my nose and pretending to throw it in the kitchen trash can, which makes him giggle. It might not be a joke I'll try out at my next dinner in town, but it shows that his sense of humor is kicking.

Socialization is one of the main ingredients necessary for its development. Children must first be aware of the resonance that their reactions can have in others. This is what we typically do when we laugh and exchange impressions - interactions possible as soon as the newborn can make eye contact and smile. Psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that humoristic interactions facilitate children's cognitive development.

However, in order to be able to make a joke, beyond a simple face, a number of cognitive skills come into play. The most important are imagination, the ability to change perspective, and language. Since these skills develop at different rates in different children and continue to evolve through adolescence and adulthood, there is no solid theory by which to determine precise stages in the process. developing a sense of humor.

A surprise effect

Almost all types of humor assume that there is an incongruity between a concept and a situation. In other words, we laugh when things surprise us because they don't seem out of place. Take the example of the following joke: "A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks him, 'But why are you making a head three feet long?'" Part of the fact that we find it funny is that horses don't normally go to bars. But the fall is entertaining as we don't first understand why the horse would be sad. Then we hear the double meaning of the expression - horses do have long heads.

So it may seem that fluency in the language is a prerequisite for humor. Infants and children with still limited expressive abilities are generally more sensitive to gestural comedy such as hide and seek games. But simple jokes like this, although they require less cognitive skills than jokes that play on words, also rely on performing incongruous events. There is an element of surprise that comes with playing "hello, peek" with a baby, because it's all about making someone suddenly appear out of nowhere.

In fact, many researchers argue that it is communication that is crucial and that humor makes learning a language easier.

Indispensable imagination

Imagination plays a vital role in detecting incongruity. She helps children see things from a different perspective, take on social roles they might not otherwise have taken on, and even pretend their noses have come off their bodies.

The imagination begins to manifest in children around twelve to eighteen months old. Interestingly, this corresponds to the time when children begin to attempt to copy their parents' jokes, which allows them to forge their own style of humor. In fact, as young as seven months old, babies can imitate behaviors that make them laugh, such as facial expressions they find funny, or hide-and-seek gestures.

It is important that the child has developed his imagination to be able to invent his own jokes. It starts around the age of two, with jokes based on objects, like putting underwear on your head, or more conceptual, like saying that "the pig goes 'moo'".

When they make jokes, children often take inspiration from what they are learning. This is important because it helps them to familiarize themselves with the rules of social life. So my son often jokes that his friend Lilly "pooped on the floor." This is because potty training is central to his current life. Laughing at these rituals is a great way to make them your own and tame the emotions that accompany them - especially when it comes to accidents.