Credits: Social Media
Parents who employ humor have better relationships with their kids, new study highlights
A new study from Pennsylvania State University has highlighted how humor can be a vital parenting technique that encourages healthier relationships with your kids.
Parenting in the modern age is no easy task with people on the internet constantly getting in your business. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a wealth of knowledge at parents’ disposal, as evidenced by a Pediatrician’s warning about running your house like a restaurant.
Having a funny bone is a parental necessity
Over the last few years, gentle parenting has sprung up to challenge more traditional styles, with people largely celebrating the hippie-dippie approach to raising kids. But there might be an even better approach.
A new study, published in the PLOS One journal this week, delved into the role humor plays in parent and child relationships. The researchers at Penn State soon discovered that kids with humorous parents viewed their relationships in a more positive light.
Humor can teach people cognitive flexibility, relieve stress, and promote creative problem solving and resilience, said�Benjamin Levi, professor of pediatrics and humanities at Penn State College of Medicine and senior author of the study. My father used humor and it was very effective. I use humor in my clinical practice and with my own children. The question became, how does one constructively use humor?
Humor has been studied extensively
The role of humor in business settings has been shown to “help reduce hierarchies, create better environments for collaboration and creativity, and diffuse tension.” Naturally, this led scientists to speculate that it could have a similar function in parental relationships.
To test their theory, they surveyed 312 people and found that 50.5% of kids who had humorous parents said they had a good relationship with their parents. Meanwhile, 44.2% reported they felt their parents did a good job parenting them.
Interestingly, only 2.9% of kids without funny parents said they had a good relationship and 3.6% reported that they thought their parents did a good job parenting them.
My hope is that people can learn to use humor as an effective parenting tool, not only to diffuse tension but develop resilience and cognitive and emotional flexibility in themselves and model it for their children, Levi said.
More research is now needed to better understand the link between effective parenting and humor. Said research could also inspire new therapeutic techniques and advice for parents.
