I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Queen of England yucking it up with her kid, but there it is. Even though the Queen had little to do with the actual parenting of her children,, at least she laughedwith them on occasion.  Parenting is no laughing matter, but if you don’t have a good sense of humor, you will soon wind up in the loony bin along with a lot of other parents.

I remember an occasion when I’d purchased some yummy looking cream puffs as a special treat for the family.  They burned a pretty good hole in the weekly budget.  Upon the first bite, it was obvious that they weren’t as good as they looked.  What ensued would raise some eyebrows.  I don’t know who exactly started it, but whipped cream was flying all over the place and cream puff shells became ballistic missiles.  We eventually took the hilarious pie slinging outside, but in the meantime our dog was having a blast in the house with the uneaten dessert. This isn’t something I’d normally condone, but we laughed and laughed for quite a while during and after this episode.  It was spontaneous, genuine laughter that left our sides and faces hurting. It’s good for kids to see your humorous side – your ability to have fun – your humanity.  Of course there still has to be that balance of being the one in charge.

It makes us feel good to laugh.  There’s nothing like the sound of a child’s laughter, or the toothless guffaw from an older adult.  Somewhere in between, we sometimes forget the power of a good chuckle  So much energy is spent on negativity, that there’s barely time for a good belly laugh.  When we get mired in the humdrum of the every day, no amount of Botox is going to lift that face. Instilling a sense of humor in your children will give them hope for the future.

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe