A Day for April Family Fun
April 1, 2009 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Parenting
In school, where I was substitute teaching second graders, we discussed April Fool’s Day and playing jokes…but having fun that wasn’t mean. The youngsters even wrote about this in their journals.
Image: istockphoto
When I was a youngster, we enjoyed April Fool’s Day jokes in our family. However, Mother stressed ones that didn’t hurt other people nor their feelings.
Teach youngsters a sense of humor that encourages laughter, but not laughter at the expense of someone else. Find jokes that are comic, not mean. Discover antics that may be slapstick, but not harmful.
My mother told of her father’s sense of humor that involved actions such as wearing his glasses upside down on April Fool’s Day to see if anyone would notice.
Her brothers might button their shirts unevenly, wear a belt buckled in the back, shoes on the wrong feet (if they would fit that way).
She and her sister might put water in the milk pitcher, turn the calendar to May 1 instead of April and see if anyone would notice, pin a bow on the dog’s hair, wear different colored socks.
So Mother taught us to develop comedy that brought laughter, sometimes at oneself, sometimes at others, but not in a harmful or hurtful way. This became a day of family fun. I hope that I’ve passed this on to my family, too.
What April Fool’s Day fun do you and your family have?
