SEL: Stress Management for our Children Through Laughter

Encouraging laughter is a great way to help our children with self-management and relationship skills, two key components of Social Emotional Learning.

Laughter, it is tied to great quotes, good memories and positive outcomes.  People feel “their load is lightened” with laughter. There is, of course,  a ton of research on the benefits of laughter. What I care about is how it affects our children and Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Parents, schools and businesses are now considering SEL skills as just as important and in many cases more important than the traditional academic learning. 

As a parent, how do you “teach” something or reinforce it in your home when you are not quite certain what it is or how to do this? It turns out, I totally love SEL and I am always looking for “sneaker” ways you can introduce “lessons” into your home painlessly.  Laughter helps our children manage their stress, maintain healthy relationships (you have heard “when you laugh, the world laughs with you”) and it teaches appropriate laughter/jokes which is part of evaluate and reflect, a higher level of SEL: responsible decision making. 

The researched benefits, so that you are aware why it is so worthwhile for you to make a conscious decision to make quality laughter a priority in your home:

Short term benefits:

• Stimulate many organs. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain.
• Activate and relieve your stress response. A rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response, and it can increase and then decrease your heart rate and blood pressure. The result? A good, relaxed feeling.
• Soothe tension. Laughter can also stimulate circulation and aid muscle relaxation, both of which can help reduce some of the physical symptoms of stress.

 Over time:

• Improve your immune system. Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can affect your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. By contrast, positive thoughts can actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses.
• Relieve pain. Laughter may ease pain by causing the body to produce its own natural painkillers.
• Increase personal satisfaction. Laughter can also make it easier to cope with difficult situations. It also helps you connect with other people.
• Improve your mood. Many people experience depression, sometimes due to chronic illnesses. Laughter can help lessen your stress, depression and anxiety and may make you feel happier. It can also improve your self-esteem.

These are great benefits for our children. Even if there was only one short term benefit: help with stress and one long term benefit: improve mood and help our children feel happier and more confident, these alone would be great reasons to jump on the “happy wagon.”

When we couple the benefits of laughter with the boxes a parent can “check” off on the SEL list, it is a home run!  

How do we encourage more laughter in our homes?

Have you noticed that our children have a very different sense of humor not only based on their personalities but also on their ages?

• Peek-A-Boo
• Item in “wrong” place
• Silly sounds/names
• Bathroom Humor
• Knock-Knock
• Jokes
• Riddles
• Puns
• Sex/Political/Religious/“Forbidden”
• Sarcasm-Careful!!! This is one that I strongly discourage.

Just like you played cars, tea party or dinosaurs in the sandbox, whether or not you were interested, even if you heard that knock-knock joke 25 times, you laugh and go through it.  Remember, the game is not the joke, the end game is the laughter. I had to remind myself of this during Go-Fish; each stage, whether you love the current one or not, will open into another.

Are you ready to share laughter with your child?

Get this list of 32 clean joke-“cut outs”!

• Two different lists, one with the punchline and one w/o
• Created on “cut outs” so you can do “a joke a day” for one month
• Hide a joke each day and create anticipation and fun
• Come together at the end of the day with guesses for the answer
• Creates a whole new game and topic of conversation

Email

Create Joyful Moments

What if you, the parent, are simply not funny?

I get it. You want to bring the laughter into the house, but you really don’t think you are that funny. Fortunately, your “funny bone” is not the one you were either born with or not; you can “grow” one.  Here are a few suggestions on how to grow your “funny” mom personality:

• Read funny books

Find your preferred genre and then more comedic books within that genre.  I like paranormal books simply because I read to totally escape from the world and in my opinion, absolutely nothing that happens in these books can be real; it is a complete escape from reality.  A series that I found that is hysterical within this genre is the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones. I have found humor with mysteries, historical fiction and the genre I call drama-narrative fiction.

• Watch funny movies

There are so many movies and books out there that I never watch or read the same one twice.  The exception is What About Bob? Every time I watch this movie I cannot be sad.  I don’t like slapstick or body humor, but the humor in this movie, really cracks me up. I have probably watched this movie 12 times and look forward to it each time. I notice that I feel lighter, it is almost like my heart is smiling and who doesn’t want to have a smiling heart?

• Live comedy shows

This is my husband’s and my favorite “date night.” We have gone into random clubs in New York, Las Vegas shows, “exclusives” in small towns and impromptu comedy nights. The end result is always the same, we spend the night laughing ad we feel great at the end of the night.

• Laughter Yoga

Oh my heck-this is actually a thing. Experience the benefits of pranayama (breathing exercises of yoga) and laughter exercises.

• Hang out with friends that make you laugh and you enjoy. Share funny stories with them.

• It is important to know what is NOT funny and what is inappropriate. If this challenges you, find a friend you can “grow” your comedy with.  Ask them to be nonjudgmental but to tell you when you are inappropriate and why.

As you, mom, are managing your own funny-meter, you need to help your child.  You need to encourage and grow their sense of humor. Use the same tricks you are using. 

Try these tips for bringing the funny into your home.

Before we get started, remember the #1 rule: no sarcasm. Explain the difference between sarcasm and funny. Sarcasm can hurt. We actually completely cut it out of our home. We wanted every member to feel safe within our family unit and home.

• Get a family group text going: someone shares a daily meme or comic
• Funny Quote of the Day: this can be done on that group text or on a whiteboard, you can do one person shares a quote a day for the week, or switch daily, just make sure everyone knows who’s day it is to share ahead of time
• Post a joke: everyone can post their answers at the end of the day
• Family movie night: find a funny movie
• Funny animal videos: my kids love these

There is so much research on the benefits of laughter.  I would be curious, what would your family answer about how they feel about themselves, the family and life before introducing regular laughter? What would they say after just 1 month of consistent laughter activities? This reflection of how a person feels and what affects them and their outlook on life, like laughter is a key component of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). If you try it, let me know.

“To laugh at yourself is to love yourself”

~Mickey Mouse