Laughing isn't always funny

What is your sense of humor and how to you help foster a healthy sense of humor within your child? Looking for signs of engagement and signs within your child's body that the joke is perceived as funny is important.  Plus thinking about our child's developmental age and whether or not the child is even able to understand the difference between reality and a joke, or an even higher level of humor sense as sarcasm.  But just as tickling isn't always funny for the child, sometimes, sarcasm crossing the line.  And even though it was not intended to be mean or ill-spirited, the child perceives it as such.

So notice within you child the reaction to a joke and understand that their perception of reality is real.  And in order to better teach about humor, we as parents must keep safety for the child in mind first.  You would not keep tickling the child if the child started crying or screaming, but since laughter is also a release of buffer to stress and stressful situations, watching for other signs, like turning away, guarding with a hand, closing into a ball can help us know when we have gone too far or when the joke is not perceived well by the child.

Observing and respecting the child's perception will help grow the child's ability to learn about humor in a positive healthy way and not actually begin to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism themselves.