Laugh Therapy For Families

There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t find myself laughing, belly-laugh type laughing, with my children. Just the other day Porter and I were driving down the road and I mixed my words up which was kind of comical. When this happened, Porter started laughing. Then I started laughing. We ended up laughing most of the way home from the store.

Life is just like that. I like being silly and having fun even if it is awkward to watch. I’m serious. I dance around my kitchen like a chicken, a ballerina, and a crazy woman. We laugh. Next I often grab one of the children and start swinging them around the room with me too. Then is the perfect time to say at the top of my voice, “I love you!”

I often say “home should be the safest place to make mistakes.” However, home should also be the safest place to get out of your comfort zone.

In a day and time when social image seems to be increasingly more important it is vital that we keep ourselves real, honest, and united by having fun and laughing as a family.

Some parents have confessed to me that they don’t feel like having fun is their forte. In fact, they don’t feel like they really know where to start.

Here are a few simple tips for how to have more fun during your day to day routine.

1. Don’t be in a rush! Plan ahead if possible. Hurry is the scourge of the world. When we hurry we will not even see the fun times we could have had with our children.

2. When you get a dream stop and do it now, don’t wait. Sometimes we get small images of a possible fun thing we could do with our children. When those impressions come, it doesn’t matter what is happening now, just change plans. Spontaneity is fuel for fun. I know not everyone feels happy without a plan, but good memories are made when the impression comes, not usually by a plan.

3. Laugh at yourself! Really, the best way to lighten the mood is to share something embarrassing or funny that you thought, said or did. It could be a current situation or a story from the past. If you can laugh at yourself, you can always be prepared to have fun.

4. Humor can and should be innocent. Don’t be crass. Don’t be mean or sarcastic. Don’t be inappropriate or unkind to get a joke, even if the person you are talking about isn’t there. These kinds of jokes are not the kind that encourage unity and happiness. They do just the opposite in the end. There are enough organically and innocently funny moments in each day to smile or laugh at.

5. When all else fails and you need to lighten the mood sing off key on purpose, dance like no one is watching, and make up meaningless rhymes. Come on, we all love the line from The Princess Bride that says, “You better stop it and I mean it. — Anybody want a peanut?” Classic.

6. Last, when hard times come, because they always will, remember it is sometimes better to laugh than cry, and humor can make a hard situation seem manageable. When I recently ran over a pitch fork and popped my car tire and ripped up the side of my car…I laughed. Why not?