Four-Year-Old Humor

by tedgar | More from this Blogger

27 Oct 2009 11:05 AM

I'm sure that I could be a hit at fourth birthday parties. You see, I work at a nature center, where I often talk about animal poo, because that's an animal sign that we use when we're tracking. And pee? Well, that's a scent marker. Sometimes I even talk about throw up - some animals regurgitate to feed their young. From the small children, I am met with various gasps of delighted horror. Occasionally I've been told that I'm not to use potty language. That is, I've been told that by the preschoolers in the room.

Now that I have a four-year-old, I get it. Four-year-olds are just beginning to develop a sense of humor, and one of the funniest things in the world is bathroom humor. Experiencing bathroom humor with grace seems to be one of the badges that an experienced parent collects along this journey.

I wonder if this is a cross-cultural thing. I suppose that anything that is usually a forbidden topic is fair game for humor, although in our house we're not particularly disgusted by anything that happens in the bathroom. I know that my daughter is starting to become aware of social norms and when they're being broken, and the development of a sense of humor is part of challenging those social norms.

So what's a parent to do when a four-year-old says, "What if a horse had a great big giant poo on your head?" and then starts laughing hysterically? What do I do? Well, I try to suppress the urge to laugh, because my daughter's hysterical laughter is actually quite amusing. I have a touch of bathroom humor myself. No, I usually answer the question or make a fairly benign comment back, treating it like any other question. I'm trying not to actively discourage the behavior, because in my experience, a four-year-old who's been told not to do something will enjoy doing it all the more. I'm also trying not to encourage the behavior by breaking into gales of laughter myself.

What do you do when your child breaks out the bathroom jokes?

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Tricia Edgar is a mom of one lovely daughter. Before her daughter was born, she decided to be guided by the needs of her child, and this led her to attachment parenting philosophies.

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