Laughter should be a part of any household environment, especially when things don't go the way you planned. Learning how to laugh at mistakes and little mishaps can help ease tension in the home because things can get a lot worse before they get any better. Each household is different in the things they will find funny. In some homes, it may be nonsense or practical jokes. In others, it might be blunders or irony. Sometimes it's slapstick or even minor personal injury. Do you laugh when the picture is hung off-center, the shelf is not level, the toilet that you fixed won't stay fixed or when the Christmas tree falls over?
While personal injury might not be cause for amusement in your home, let me urge you to make our human failings a laughable offense.
Failure to laugh at failure can have some unwanted consequences. It's widely been accepted that laughing at failure can replace other feelings such as embarrassment, anger, inferiority and tension.
The idea of laughter in most homes originally gets molded by the wife or mother. She might find humor in poorly changed diapers, spilled milk and unusual behavior from our kids a lot faster than dads do. What they see as funny and a part of life, we as men often see as a lack of control or discipline. As we learn to laugh however, the stress of being perfect can be replaced by the realities of life.
Recent studies have shown that children with an involved dad have a broader sense of humor. I mean, who else is going to teach a child its okay to laugh when the Hoover Dam tour guide asks if you have any "dam questions." Probably not his mom!
How would your life be different if someone had taught you that it's okay to laugh at failure earlier in life? Would your stress level be lower? Could you find yourself happier at home or at work? Chances are- and experts agree that this is true, the more we laugh, the happier we are and the longer we will live.
So now I ask you, wouldn't you agree that one of the greatest gifts you could give a child would be the ability to laugh at mistakes and the unforeseen twists in everyday events that find their way into our lives?
