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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Sunday, March 1, 2009
Humor and kids: It’s good for them
There’s a ton of evidence that kids learn language best in conversation with adults. The more they speak with adults on a grown up level, the better there brain understands how sophisticated language works.
In my column this weekend, I argue that this also extends to adult humor. Many times, adults shield kids from grown up jokes or assume they can’t understand. But the truth is, they understand more than you think.
And, in fact, understanding why things are funny to adults — how language creates exaggeration or absurd understatement, or irony, or sarcasm — is actually good for their developing brains. Because to understand those humor concepts requires fairly sophisticated thinking and deepens the child’s understanding of language.
Take a look at the column and tell me what you think.
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