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Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: I'm Aimee Prasek. So here at Joy Lab we infuse science with soul to help you build resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are talking about the mental health benefits of dad jokes. You must be thinking, Shirley, you can't be serious. Well, I am, and please don't call me Shirley. Heyo!
Thank you.
Henry: that's a good start.
Aimee: I heard that on Airplane was a movie from the eighties, Leslie Nielsen. I think it's a dad joke. All right. So yeah, we are serious. So I'm going to start by reading a fantastic article from a humor researcher, Marc Hye-Knudsen. This is on the British Psychological Society's journal or website. So he wrote about the pedagogical or teaching value of dad jokes. Here it is:
" By teasingly striking at their children's egos and emotions without teetering over into bullying, fathers build their children's resilience and train them to withstand minor attacks and bouts of negative emotion without getting worked up or acting out, teaching them impulse control and emotional regulation.
In light of this, it is worth considering dad jokes a pedagogical tool that may serve a beneficial function for the very children who roll their eyes at them. By continually telling their children jokes that are so bad that they're embarrassing, fathers may push their children's limits for how much embarrassment they can handle."
This is brilliant. He continues, "They show their children that embarrassment isn't fatal." I love that. Sorry, continuing. I'm adding pieces here. "For a child who is approaching or has entered adolescence, which appears to be a sensitive period for sociocultural processing, this is an immensely valuable lesson. In this sense, dad jokes may have a positive pedagogical effect, toughening up the kids who are begrudgingly exposed to them." I will link to the, full article in the show notes. It is really fantastic. I encourage everybody to read it. And I think there is some truth here.
A lot of truth here. I think there are, this is a weird statement that I never thought I'd make. I think there are some real tangible impacts, value to dad jokes when it comes to mental health for our kids. Every dad is like, I told you so!
Henry: Oh my gosh. Wow, that researcher is very good at positive
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: It makes it seem like dads who tell bad puns are actually very clever tricksters, like they planned this all along. It's just a way to help their kids grow to become more resilient.
Aimee: Brilliant dads.
Henry: I think it might be giving us too much credit, but I like it.
There's also something just kind of wholesome and innocent about it. I think, too, that in a weird sort of way, it demonstrates really good self esteem on the part of the dads, because they apparently don't care what other people think of them and their jokes.
They're going to just go ahead and do it anyway. So, I will admit, I've made more than my fair share of bad puns and word plays. I actually love doing it. I also love teasing. And I can't stop myself, even though my two sons are now in their 30s. They have a great, very well developed sense of humor, which I don't take credit for, but I really do enjoy it. And I just have always seen humor as such an advanced skill of resilience and a sign of good mental health. And it's also a great tool to maintain really good mental health.
Aimee: Yeah. I think this is a testament to how humor and resilience are, and healing are related. Just like you said. We really are a silly species. We connect through humor by sharing our embarrassing moments and not taking ourselves too seriously.The catharsis of laughing something out, of moving past something with humor, of understanding our shortcomings by finding some humor in them, I think those are real coping skills.
And they can be really helpful when used appropriately.
Henry: Yeah, I totally agree. So I had an opportunity just this weekend to,to practice a little bit of this, our son and daughter in law and their two little ones spent the weekend with us. These are really little ones. My, my high level of humor kind of just sails right over their, their heads. But I think we should probably share a couple of dad jokes.
You okay with that?
Aimee (2): Absolutely!
Henry (2): So I read the article that you were referencing, Aimee, and they had a bunch of jokes in there that, some of which I thought were worthy of . sharing, so here's a couple., What did the drummer call his twin daughters? And a one, and a two.
Aimee: Hope everybody's laughing!
Henry: Okay, and here's the second one, then I will stop. To whoever stole my copy of Microsoft Office, I will find you. You have my word.
Aimee: Those of you who schedule sessions with Henry, he just tells puns and dad jokes the entire time. That's your, that's your philosophy of psychiatry, right? I love it.
Henry: You could do worse
Aimee: Right. Lord. Oh, I feel more resilient already after those jokes. Thank you, Henry. and your self esteem is shining.
Henry: Oh,
Aimee: That was actually,
Henry: That's
Aimee: The article, that was another note, self esteem is sort of, you're able to tell those terrible jokes and just like get the eye rolls and whatever else without, without shifting, holding your resilience.
So I challenge everyone listening today. Here is your mental health, as we do in the community, simple joy challenge. We can all do it. Look up a terrible cheesy dad joke and tell it to somebody today. And tell it to somebody today who you wouldn't necessarily tell a terrible joke to, like, catch them off guard.
I hope you can all laugh a bit more today. It really is good for our mental health. We should do, actually, an episode on humor and laughter because there is so much research to support mental health on, yeah, how powerful laughter is and humor. To close, I want to share some wisdom from two of my favorite thinkers and creatives, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner.
They wrote, "Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest. Then we can all die laughing."
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