The Language of Boys – Humor
How Bad Jokes and Silly Stories are the Foundation of Communication
Boys – those mystical creatures who fill our homes with mayhem and moments to treasure. Raising boys is sometimes like navigating a mine field of bottled energy, strings of confusing and humorous conversations, and armpit farts. As the mother of three sons, I’ve seen how boys bring a special kind of life into our home. I’ve also seen how I need to adjust my parenting as they grow and mature so that we can keep that bottled energy from exploding in our faces and keep the conversations flowing. Raising caring, compassionate boys is more than about teaching manners and laying down rules for behaviors. It is about allowing them to be boys and understanding how humor influences their communication styles and approaches (even those armpit farts).
Not a day goes by without a giggle fest in our home over bodily functions or sounds, tricks played on siblings, or repeated jokes. An interesting study done by Alexander Kozinstev, an anthropology professor, looked at how humor affects the communication skills of boys ages 9 through 18. In his findings, Kozinstev reports that, “From trying to deliver the funniest joke, to making the funniest bodily noises, boys used humor when communicating with peers 68 percent more than girls in similar social situations.” It appears that this sometimes raw humor is a boy’s way of navigating through social situations. When they are insecure humor is the tool with which they use to test the waters.
When boys make someone laugh, even laugh at them, it can feel like an acceptance and a reward. Silly things like putting a bug on their own nose and crossing their eyes or the ever popular belching duals are worn like a badge of honor on the sleeves of boys who can garnish the most laughter. Boys might try to deflect more serious conversations through humor, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the gravity of emotional issues – they just deal with them outwardly differently.
Other researchers agree with Kozinstev’s assessments, including the author of the Knowledge Essential Series Amy James. She claims that gender does influence the ways in which children communicate, especially when it comes to humor. This is absolutely true on our home, where my daughter and I have had many conversations about how you will never catch her and her female friends sitting around the living room having belching contests or being proud of bodily noises. The girls still giggle, but their reasons for laughter come from completely different sources of humor. They are also less inclined to joke easily with new acquaintances – they look more for emotional connections.
Humor and Communication
Our boys seem naturally drawn to use humor to communicate, and while it sometimes seems like they don’t take things seriously enough, there are ways to teach boys to use humor and still be respectful.
- Make sure your son understands the differences between teasing that hurts and truly good natured ribbing.
- Talk with your son about boundaries for boy humor – dinner table manners, socially acceptable behaviors, and so forth.
- Talk about empathy and how they can watch the body language of others to make sure their humor isn’t over the line.
- Establish rules for school. Remind them that answering a serious question from the teacher with a flippant remark is not only disrespectful, but it can have other negative consequences such as detention.
- Keep using your own verbal communication skills to talk about things with them. It is important that they learn that humor can’t always make the intended impact.
- Have fun with them – even if humor is your typical way to approach situations. They will sometimes respond so much better when we let ourselves remember what it is like to be kids.
Boys have their own special languages they use for communication – humor. It might sometimes scrape our nerves as nails scrape a chalkboard, but in reality it can be a very effective way to interact with others. As a child I remember not understanding how my own mother could have earned an actual Ph.D. in Rhetorical Theory and write a paper on Rhetorical Theory and Humor. Now I get it – she was probably just learning how to communicate with her own kids.
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