Keeping Your Sense of Humor

Keep your sense of humor.

If there was a written job description for parents, this would be at the top of the list of requirements to do this job well. Being a parent means being faced with the unexpected on a daily basis.

For instance, I once saw a young boy drop a cantaloupe in a supermarket. It rolled with lightning speed toward an elderly woman who literally jumped a foot in the air to avoid being a human bowling pin. I’m happy to say the boy’s mother recognized that it was unintentional and hurried him away from the scene. They were both red-faced and trying not to giggle. Mom was able to keep her sense of humor.

At a young age, my daughter shut herself in a closet and cut off all her hair. I’ve heard this is a common stunt for young children. I’ve heard of equally unsettling stunts, like shaving the fur off pets or getting hold of the car keys and driving the car through the bushes in front of the house. Many parents can relate to the effort it takes to keep your sense of humor when you discover your child has colored a wall with his favorite crayon, fed his homework to the dog or broken the neighbor’s window.

Sometimes you’ve got to hang onto your sense of humor with both hands. After all, children can sometimes bring out the worst in us. We may be embarrassed by their loudness and irritated by their clumsiness. Nothing will make us feel as vulnerable, as much in the line of fire of criticism from teachers and other parents than the very act of raising kids.

Frankly, if I didn’t have a sense of humor, some of the embarrassing moments may have been too much to bear, moments when my children were particularly loud or blunt. For example, I used to walk to a convenience store with my younger daughter. The store manager was sometimes friendly, sometimes rude. On one of the days he was friendly, my daughter said, “He’s nice.”

“I think he’s a strange man,” I said, half to myself.

Well, don’t you know the next time we visited that store, he was friendly to my daughter again. She said to him simply, “I think you’re a strange man.”

I have learned to giggle in times of extreme stress. Keeping your sense of humor is exactly that – learned. Sometimes we have to practice looking for humor when we’ve lost our emotional balance.

But we have fragile young lives and egos at our mercy. Flying into a rage is not only frightening for the child, it’s setting a poor example of our own lack of self-control. We can learn to giggle for the sheer delight of being alive, as our children do.

Kids can be a challenge and an embarrassment. They cost a lot of money and deprive us of hours of sleep. But without my kids, I wouldn’t have an excuse to ride swings, play hide and seek and jump in mud puddles. I wouldn’t be able to giggle at my own clumsiness, snicker at life’s curve balls.

I’d probably lose my sense of humor.

Quote

"A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke, and that joke is oneself."

--Clifton Fadiman

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