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Use Humor to Help with Frustration

Tags

Social-Emotional Learning ^Extra-curricular/At-Home All Ages Strategy

Skills

Anxiety Flexible Thinking Self-regulation Social Awareness

Use Humor to Help with Frustration

If your child struggles to cope with strong emotions

How To Apply It!

  1. Sometimes laughter really can be the best medicine. Teaching children to see the humor in a tough situation can be an extremely effective coping skill. Whether it is in the middle of a disagreement or when your child is relaying a troublesome incident at school, the ability to see the humorous side can dissolve negative feelings and enable children to see the situation from another point of view.
  2. Take care to ensure that laughter is always about the situation and not the person. It might sound obvious, but never laugh at your child, which is likely to cause anger. Focus laughter on the events and outcomes not the actions or the motives
  3. Make sure your child understands not to laugh at peers or a teacher. Providing students clarity on what might not be okay can help avoid missteps later on.
  4. Keep the goal in mind. As long as your humor is positive and not hurtful to your child or others, seeing the funny side or irony of a situation can be a critical first step to a positive resolution of the situation at hand and handling strong emotions in the future.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

When we can see the humor in a tough situation, this is just another way of seeing a different point of view. And when we can look at a situation from multiple points of view we tend to understand it better and realize why we might not need to be angry. In addition, the physical act of laughing releases hormones which truly make us feel better. While laughter is not always appropriate, developing an ability to see the humorous side can be a valuable life skill.