“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” – Mark Twain

As I was walking through the kitchen during a break from work yesterday, I overheard this conversation between my nanny and my 5-year-old:

Nanny: “Would you like some carrots with your lunch?”

Kid: “Yuck”

Nanny: “I think you said that wrong. It’s pronounced ‘Yum’ as in short for scr-yum-deli-i-tious.”

All: <giggling>

She is a master of making my kids laugh – and getting them to do things. It’s such an effective tool but one I found hard to deploy at times. Like the other day when my 5-year-old daughter was screaming like crazy because she’d put popcorn up her nose. I managed to get her calm enough so that she could lie down on the floor, plug the other nostril and I blew into her mouth. It must have looked so fun because my toddler lay down next to her to wait his turn. I thought we were dealing with a kernel, turns out that it was a small popped piece of corn and whether it came out the nostril or worked its way into the throat, it’s still unclear but either way it was fine.

I was telling this story to my friend Katie later and we were crying we were laughing so hard. How long has it been since we were of the age that putting things up our nose seemed like a good idea? And how the scene must have looked – the kids lined up on the floor plugging their nostrils!

I think it takes practice to deploy humor in the moment. It’s one of the reason that I like the Parenting is Funny blog which is delightful – and inspirational! I also read a tip in a magazine the other day that suggested to smile when giving directions because it changes how you say things. Like you can’t say, “Oh good grief, I have asked you a 100 times to put your shoes away” with a smile on your face so it’s apt to come out more like “Oh, is the middle of the kitchen where we are keeping our shoes now? Let me add mine to the pile!”

I left the kitchen before I found out whether or not my daughter ate the carrots with her lunch. I wasn’t worried either way because I knew that the nanny was winning this war of sound bites!