http://www.parentingontrack.com/parenting-strategies/cheesy-joker/ Your Family. Your Solutions! Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:54:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 http://www.parentingontrack.com/parenting-strategies/cheesy-joker/#comment-346 nate Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:56:46 +0000 http://www.parentingontrack.com/?p=3855#comment-346 As my kids get into preteen years I'm finding that humor becomes a great way to connect with them. I notice more and more that they are understanding the phase " know your audience" and can make fairly good judgments about the appropriateness of their humor in a given situation. They miss sometimes, but I do too. (If you don't take a chance sometimes, you really can't learn the limits.) It is particularly fun to let them see my own off-color sense of humor little by little which I held back on when the fear was there that they would repeat something at school or whatever, and get us all in trouble. I think it helps in our relationship when they realize that all the jokes about sex and body function that they are hearing from their friends are the same ones we told (and still do.) It seems to loosen them up to to talk about some things that are not necessarily so funny, but important. There are still a lot of things I can learn, especially about what they are thinking and talking about with their friends. As my kids get into preteen years I’m finding that humor becomes a great way to connect with them. I notice more and more that they are understanding the phase ” know your audience” and can make fairly good judgments about the appropriateness of their humor in a given situation. They miss sometimes, but I do too. (If you don’t take a chance sometimes, you really can’t learn the limits.) It is particularly fun to let them see my own off-color sense of humor little by little which I held back on when the fear was there that they would repeat something at school or whatever, and get us all in trouble. I think it helps in our relationship when they realize that all the jokes about sex and body function that they are hearing from their friends are the same ones we told (and still do.) It seems to loosen them up to to talk about some things that are not necessarily so funny, but important. There are still a lot of things I can learn, especially about what they are thinking and talking about with their friends.

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