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Parental Coping Skills:
How to Use Humor to Defuse Fights with Your Child
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As a parent, when all else fails, sometimes all you can do is
laugh. But did you also know that finding the humor in a situation is actually
a helpful coping skill that, when used correctly, can be very effective? For
starters, laughter helps give you some objectivity and allows you to find
common ground with your child, even during an interaction that might have been
tense and angry moments before. Simply put, it’s hard to be mad and laugh at
the same time. As you've probably noticed in your own life, the ability to find
the humor in a situation can instantly dissolve a fight or help us relate to
one another in a new way.
Laughter
should always be about the situation, and not about the person. If you laugh at
your child that can be shaming— and will probably cause his anger to escalate.
Remember, how we look at things affects how we choose to react or
respond to a situation. The ability to view the situation from a lighter
perspective, when it's appropriate, can help keep you calm and help you
respond from a more thoughtful place, rather than from an emotional one.
It’s important to note that one of the very first things we do in
life is laugh, before we speak or even walk. There’s a reason people say,
“Laughter is good for the soul,” and “Laughter is the best medicine”—there
really is that physical benefit, because it relieves stress and benefits your
circulation and respiratory system, to name just a few things. Not only that,
but as Bill Cosby says, “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst
blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your
situation might be, you can survive it.”
You may be sitting there saying, “You don’t know my kid—there’s nothing funny
about his behavior.” We’ve worked with oppositional and defiant children
and teens for years, and Kim is the mother of an adult child with ODD.
Believe me, we know where you’re coming from! We’ll be addressing how to use a
sense of humor with ODD kids later on in the article.
7 Ways to Use Humor Effectively as a Parent
Remember, it’s about the situation, not the
person. The number one rule about using humor with your child is
that the laughter should always be about the situation, and not about
the person. If you laugh at your child, that can be shaming — and
will probably cause his anger to escalate. Here’s an example from Kim’s life:
When her ODD son was about 11 years old, he was mad about something and went to
kick a cabinet door in the kitchen. In doing so, he slipped and fell on the
floor, not hurting himself. They both started laughing at the absurdity of the
situation, and he completely forgot what he was angry about in the first place.
In that moment, Kim was able to look at him and say,“Okay, c’mon, that was
funny. I love you, but that was funny.”
As a parent, the question to ask yourself with humor is, are you
joining with your child—is it shared humor? Or are you laughing at your
child? Laughing at someone’s pain, hopes, fears or beliefs isn’t funny, but
laughing together during a silly moment can do wonders to bridge a gap or
defuse a fight.
Above all, you don’t want to hurt your child’s feelings—that’s not
the goal here. You don’t want to laugh at something that’s important to him or
her. And of course, it’s never good to laugh when your kid has
been hurt physically or emotionally.
Learn to laugh at yourself. As a
parent, it’s good to laugh at yourself once in a while. This is also something
that we can model for our kids. It’s so important to show them how to refrain
from taking themselves so seriously all the time, and that it’s okay to laugh
when you make a mistake. You can even chuckle, shrug and say, “I can’t
believe I was so steamed about that customer who cut in line at the bank today.
I should’ve just let it go. I guess I was just in a bad mood or something.” By
doing this, you’re literally showing your child how to “laugh it off.”
A question that can help your child. A
great question to ask when things are getting tense is, “Wow, why are we
arguing about something so small?” This pulls both of you out of the argument,
lightens the mood, and gives you some objectivity and perspective. Let’s say
you want to see one movie but your child would rather go to another, and you
start to argue. You can calm things down by saying, “Okay, this is silly, huh?
You pick the movie this time, and I’ll pick the next one.” That way, you are
modeling to your child how to change the mood and put things into perspective.
Focus on your child’s strengths. One parent we knew had a
son who would argue and argue, no matter what was at stake. He always had
to have the last word, and his mom said it was exhausting. One
day when he was explaining yet again why he shouldn’t have to do his chores,
she thought to herself, “Man, someday he’s going to make a really good lawyer.
I can just see him up there arguing in front of a judge. And the judge is going
to say, ‘Oh my Lord, enough already!’” The mom didn’t share this with her son
in that moment—he would have gotten defensive and angry—but it helped her put
his behavior into perspective and have a moment of private amusement.
For Parents of Defiant or Oppositional Kids: For
parents of really defiant, oppositional kids, it may feel like there’s nothing
to laugh at. Life can get so difficult with these kids – it can become very
intense and exhausting. But even with ODD kids, there’s actually a lot that you
can find to laugh about. Again, you don’t want to start laughing at your
child—you probably already know that if you laugh at an ODD kid, he’ll usually
escalate. You can laugh to yourself, though, when the situation gets
ridiculous.
Here’s a good example. One parent we worked with had a 16-year-old
boy with ODD. She had to call the police because he'd become violent and
broken some things in the house. While talking to the officers on the front
porch, the boy actually said, "I want to get emancipated and live on my
own, but my mom won't give me a ride down to the courthouse so I can fill out
the paperwork." (He didn't have a driver's license and hadn't yet taken
driver's ed.) The mom walked away and chuckled to herself privately.
The point is, sometimes it’s good to just walk away. You may need
to go in your own room and laugh quietly to yourself, like this mom did. When
Kim was raising her ODD son, she became adept at stepping back and taking
herself out of the equation and looking at everything from an outside
perspective. She maintains that finding the humor in the situation
"saved me on many, many occasions."
Will we laugh about this later? Another great
question to ask yourself when you’re upset about your child’s behavior is,
“Will this matter in a few months or years?” If the answer is “no,” you can
probably let it go after you address the situation with your child. And, while
this may not be a laughing matter right now, recognize that it might be
funny later on. It’s good if you can say to yourself, “Someday, we’re
going to look back on this and laugh.”
We also want to state here that just because you
find some humor in the situation doesn’t mean you’re minimizing it. It doesn’t
mean you’re saying “This is funny so there aren’t going to be any
consequences.” You’re still following through as a parent, but you’re also
keeping your head above water by allowing humor to give you some perspective.
Use laughter to connect with other parents. If
you can find other parents to connect with over your kids’ behavior, it can be
so helpful. It normalizes things, releases tension to laugh together, and helps
you relate to someone else and find that common ground. When you can empathize
with each other and find the humor in your own situation, it lightens the load,
even when you’re going through a rough period with your child. In the movie Steel
Magnolias, Dolly Parton’s character says it so well: “Laughter through
tears is my favorite emotion.”
Taken from: http://www.empoweringparents.com
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