How lucky are children with a sense of humor?

Humorous people are often in a happy mood and live a happy life. Humor is a great way to relieve stress and build good relationships with others. However, babies are not born with an understanding of humor. They go from not understanding humor to being very humorous. What is the core of cultivating humor in babies? Humor sparkles with wisdom. Cognitive psychologists believe that children\’s understanding and use of humor are closely related to their cognitive and thinking development levels. From the beginning to the moment of laughter, there is a castle of thinking in the middle. In the understanding of humor, one factor is crucial, and that is – \”inconsistency\”. \”Inconsistency\” is the most essential factor in understanding humor. This \”inconsistency\” is often considered comical and laughable. Generally speaking, we all predict the development of events. If the outcome of the development of an event is inconsistent with our prediction, and we think about it for a while, we realize that this \”inconsistency\” is intentional and has a gentle and well-intentioned meaning. At this time, we often smile. Therefore, humor requires a castle of thinking between the beginning and the moment of laughter. Only with corresponding cognitive abilities can we successfully cross this castle of thinking and achieve humorous effects. For example, in the following joke, only those who have mastered the concept of \”conservation\” can understand the point of the joke. A gentleman walked into a restaurant and ordered a whole pizza for dinner. When the waiter asked him whether he wanted to cut the pizza into 6 or 8 pieces, the gentleman responded: \”Oh, you\’d better cut it into 6 pieces, I can\’t finish 8 pieces.\” The development of humor depends on cognitive abilities Psychologists believe that the development of children\’s humor is consistent with the development of children\’s cognitive structures proposed by Piaget. Let\’s take a look at how the baby\’s humor development level gradually improves as his cognition and thinking develop. What is conservation? If you take two identical cups A and B, they contain the same amount of water. Then, pour the water in cup A into a tall and thin cup C; the water in cup B remains unchanged. At this time, ask: \”Now, do the two cups B and C have the same amount of water?\” Children who answer \”the same amount\” have the knowledge of \”conservation\”. That is, he is able to recognize that while the appearance of an object changes in certain surface features, the object\’s qualities (such as capacity, volume, number) do not change. This cognitive ability is called \”conservation\” by the psychologist Piaget. The development of humor from 0 to 2 years old: laughing because of actions. The improvement of cognitive ability: at this stage, babies use their sensory abilities to understand the world. Babies are most likely to find the behavior and actions themselves ridiculous. This is because babies at this time like to use all sensory abilities, such as touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell and movement to understand the world. The buds of humor from 0 to 8 months: Your baby\’s laughter when he knows you are teasing him first appears as early as 2 months old. Gradually, he was able to understand the adults\’ intentions. The 6-month-old baby was lying on the bed, and his mother picked up a toy and wanted to hand it to him. When the baby reaches out his arms and is about to reach the toy, the mother suddenly moves the toy away. After doing this two or three times, when the mother removed the toy again, the baby did not show any anxiety or anger, but smiled. He understands, MomYou are kidding him! This is the most primitive expression of humor. Although this expression is limited by vocal ability, play between babies and adults does induce adult-like humorous reactions. Some studies believe that a baby who understands humor at this time shows that he has a sense of security and is very close to his caregiver. 8 to 18 months: Incessant giggling at grimaces and funny exaggerated movements. At this stage, a grimace, an exaggerated movement, a strange voice, a weird dress, and some deliberate shouting of pain and falling down, etc. Wait, it will make the baby happy. These senses of humor are related to the fact that babies are more sensitive to expressions and movements at this time. It’s so funny that 18 to 24 months use clothes as pillows! Psychologist Piaget observed that his daughter would use a piece of clothing as a pillow. She held the clothes in her hands, sucked her thumb, then lay down and closed her eyes. Also, she laughs out loud while she pretends to sleep. Because she thought it was ridiculous to use clothes as pillows. Why does the baby find it funny? It is because he knows that clothes are not pillows and he can distinguish the two things as different. But because he has the ability to imagine and pretend at this stage, he uses the object \”clothes\” instead of the object \”pillow\”, and calls it a pillow when it is actually clothes. He will feel funny because of this \”inconsistency\” ,interesting. In this process, the baby can pretend and symbolize, which shows that he can use symbolic symbols to think. This is a big breakthrough for the baby\’s thinking. Without this kind of thinking ability, he would not be able to laugh. The development of humor between 2 and 4 years old: laughing because of language. The improvement of cognitive ability: at this stage, babies can use words in language to represent things. Baby\’s humor is an intellectual game that requires the participation of symbols. The humor produced by the symbol of language is called lexical joke. The simplest vocabulary joke is calling something by the wrong name. For example, a 3-year-old baby points to the eyes and says they are noses, and points to the nose and says they are eyes. Then he would laugh. Or, he calls daddy mommy, mommy baby, and baby daddy. This kind of pretentious game is very interesting to him. This kind of humor matches the baby\’s cognitive abilities at this stage. At this stage, the baby already has symbolic functions and begins to use language or other symbols to represent things. Compared with the humor caused by motor behaviors and physical props in pretend play in the first stage, the baby\’s humor at this time requires stronger abstract abilities. For them, just the words themselves are enough to make them laugh. How can parents improve their baby\’s sense of humor? The core of humor is cognition. With the development of cognitive abilities, children\’s understanding and appreciation of humor are constantly changing. Of course, humor is also affected by many other factors, such as adult feedback and the child\’s own personality. Therefore, here are some suggestions on how to improve children\’s sense of humor: ● Scientifically understand the developmental stages of children\’s cognitive levels and the characteristics of each stage, and promote children\’s cognitive development through appropriate methods. ●In a home environment, it is best to arrange some secludedPictures with tacit elements, such as exaggerated expressions of characters, strong contrasts in colors and graphics, etc. ●In the process of interacting with the baby, you can have less serious faces and get along with the baby more relaxedly and happily, laying a good emotional foundation for the development of the baby\’s sense of humor. ●Appreciate, cooperate and respond to the baby\’s humorous expressions, encourage the baby\’s humor creation, and have fun with the baby. ●Parents should consciously create humorous scenes when playing games and activities with their babies, such as doing some funny actions and watching some books or cartoons with their children that contain elements such as exaggeration, surprise, and accident. ●When educating your baby, appropriately turn admonishment into humor. The development of humor between 4 and 7 years old: laughing because of inconsistent concepts and expectations. The improvement of cognitive abilities: babies can use concepts and begin to have the ability to observe and logically reason. A 4-year-old baby will think that calling a dog is a dog. A cat is not interesting, but if he sees a picture of an elephant sitting in a tree, he will laugh. He knew that elephants were very heavy. How could such a heavy elephant sit on a tree? So weird and so funny! This is because the baby\’s thinking ability has developed again. He began to understand that a word not only refers to a specific object, but also refers to a certain type of object. For example, electric lights not only represent the electric lights at home. Although the shapes of the electric lights in restaurants outside are different from those at home, they are also called electric lights. There are also some words that are conceptually classified. For example, apples and bananas are called fruits, and kittens, puppies, and mice are called animals. This is the conceptual classification. They also learn to use conceptual terms such as big and small, light and heavy, square and round, early and late, etc. At this stage, your baby\’s thinking will focus on the process of classifying and understanding the sensations of objects or events. This new understanding brought about by the observation and classification of things and phenomena often affects the baby\’s understanding of humor. However, this \”inconsistency\” with objective facts is obvious and does not require logical reasoning. As cognitive abilities develop, the humor that babies can detect and understand becomes more and more complex. For example, when a 5-year-old baby was reading the story of Pete the Cat, he discovered that most of the friends that Pete the Cat invited were cats of various colors, and only one friend was a puppy. He burst into laughter when he discovered that his canine friend was different from his other feline friends. For another example, in a kindergarten class, the teacher said that 30 children in the class would be given colored paper to do handicrafts. At this time, a child shouted: \”Send 100!\” The children in the class laughed. Such humor requires babies to have certain powers of observation and logical reasoning. Because there are expectations in this kind of humor, it is precisely because the actual situation is \”inconsistent\” with the baby\’s expectations that triggers the humor. The development of humor over the age of 7: triggered by multiple meanings, similar to the improvement of adult humor cognitive ability: the ability to understand double or multiple meanings of words and sentences. At this time, adults may also find jokes that make children roll on the floor laughing. funny. Because at this time, children also have the ability to understand the dual meanings of words and sentences, and realize that a single situation has multiple meanings. For example, a poorThe poet and a rich man sat side by side. The rich man wanted to humiliate the poet, so he asked him: \”Tell me, how different can you be from a donkey?\” The poet deliberately looked at the distance between him and the rich man, and replied: \”No. Far, only 25 centimeters in total.\” This joke requires understanding that in the specific language environment, the poet\’s words have a \”pun\” meaning. When the rich man said \”How different are you from a donkey?\” he actually wanted to use a rhetorical question to mock the poet, saying that he was the same as a donkey. The poet took advantage of the situation and deliberately understood \”how much difference\” to mean \”what is the distance\”, and the answer became \”25 centimeters separate me from the donkey\”, implying that the rich man is a donkey. This is what we call \”pun\”. If a sentence has a strictly limited connotation, it would be ridiculous to define it in a different light.