Families occasionally find themselves in a situation where all the fun seems to have disappeared from the home. Blended families face their own particular tensions and cold patches. It’s an awful feeling as an adult to have children shy away from you or exhibit hostility toward you. Especially with Christmas fast approaching!

If you find yourself in one of those periods where you long for warmth, communication and cooperation to return to the home, consider some steps you can take over the next few weeks. While no two human beings will respond to a formula in the same way- and children are certainly no exception - there are principles you can use to warm up most audiences.

1. Unleash your sense of humor.

We know what kids need: things like security, food in their stomachs, a roof over their head and to get their homework and chores finished. But you’ve probably noticed that what they want is best described by these three words: fun, fun, fun!

But is fun just a ‘want’? (When I write that, I betray my own assumption that wants and needs are always different). I’m not the only one around who suspects that laughter fun and tomfoolery are actually childhood needs … and possibly experiences that adults could benefit from more of also. Fun and laughter promote wellbeing, partly by lowering anxiety levels.

Fun and laughter can promote socialization. Fun and laughter add colour to our lives. Fun and laughter enable children and adults to drop their defences. And let’s face it - fun and laughter are fun! Children will go where the fun is. Why not become a major source of fun and laughter in their lives? Your sense of humour is one of your most effective tools of maintaining connection with your children - keeping them on-side. Come on, Mum, Dad, you know it’s there. You just have to tap it and unleash it. For more on this, the short article at http://aath.org/articles/art_bhaerman_01.html is worth a read.

2. Find their level

Although the following statement seems like a no-brainer, it still needs to be said: children change. Their tastes change, their interests change, and their needs change. That joke that once sent Johnny into paroxysms of laughter now provokes nothing more than a bored glance in our direction. Where Suzie used to love having stories read to her, now she seems to sneer at the offer. Sometimes maintaining the warmth with kids requires a course correction. In other words, assessing the ways in which they’ve changed then adapting parenting style and behaviours to suit that. This may include adapting your sense of humour or at least the kind of jokes you use.

At the risk of generalizing, some research indicates the following stages of humour development in a child’s life. It may guide you to what is age-appropriate at this time.

Preschool: Slapstick, funny words and over the top physical humour. “Acting silly” enables the child to demonstrate a mastery of physical skills. The child delights in misnaming objects, or creating new words with nonsensical endings, or endlessly rhyming real or nonsense words.

Primary/elementary School: children’s humor reflects increased understanding of words and the double meanings in words. Riddles become very popular. By ten, the riddles may take on aggressive or “sick” humour as the child tries to make them more complex and fit their enhanced cognitive growth. A sense of irony often develops in late childhood. This is important to play along with as it is often misconstrued as sarcasm or mocking, while keeping it out of the hurting-others-feelings zone.

High School: The young teenager will normally lose interest in riddles and appreciate the humor found in real life stories or anecdotes. Teenagers enjoy talking about others and finding faults in them that can promote humour. Around the time of puberty, humour becomes aggressive and sexual. These aggressive and sexual jokes reflect the adolescent’s own developmental concerns. Joking about developmental concerns, death or disasters enable the teenager to feel in control and a master of the situation. Tap into this and guide it from within rather than standing apart from it in judgment.

Humour is only one of the areas in which you will need to adjust your approach and expectations. Another is the felt needs they seek to be met…

Meet their need

We’ve heard it before: irritating behavior can be a child’s only way of expressing a need. The five year old who feels he’s not getting enough attention will act up to get himself in trouble; to him, even negative attention is better than no attention at all. It’s fine that we know that in principle. The trick is to actually step back from a situation and reflect on what might be the need that drives the behavior. Directly addressing their need for affirmation, reassurance, clear boundaries or physical affection is often better than creating a new rule or issuing a punishment.

In summary:

• Make time to have fun and be fun
• Adjust your approach to suit the age and stage of the child
• Be focused on meeting a child’s needs as much as changing their behaviour

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Special Offer: Parents often find themselves in a situation where anger and conflict levels have risen to painful levels within their home. Great Circle Life Coaching offers a 5-part coaching program for parents aimed at increasing their children’s cooperation levels and raising affection and fun in the household. Interested and wanting more info? Contact me via the CONTACT page for more details.