 Your baby's sense of humour
The sound of a child laughing is one that lifts the mood of most people.
But when do babies actually start developing a sense of humour? We investigate...
"Your baby’s first 'real' smiles appear at around the age of
six weeks." says psychologist Richard Smale of Bournemouth University.
"He’ll start to laugh at around three to four months
when his vocal cords have become stronger. Though laughter is at first a semi-fear reaction
when your
baby is startled by something, for example if you’re playing
peekaboo with him or if you bounce him on your knee or lift him high in
the air, but then he realises that he’s perfectly safe. Result - he
laughs!"
Laughing’s very good for babies in a physical sense. It helps to
exercise their lungs, oxygenate their blood, stabilise their blood
pressure and helps their digestion.
Over the first two years, your baby’s sense of humour will
develop from gentle humour through to slapstick physical humour (such
as dropping things and peekaboo), through to verbal humour – though
don’t expect him to enjoy knock-knock jokes until he’s rising
four!
 In
the first six months, your baby likes smiling games, which also act
as an early form of turn-taking, and developing conversational skills
– he’ll enjoy it if you make funny noises. Physical humour
such as tickling goes down well. If you tickle him to ‘Round and
Round the Garden’, he’ll come to expect to be tickled after the
words, ‘one step, two step’ and you’ll see him anticipate the
tickling with a smile. He’ll laugh even more if you pause!
Raspberries are something else that babies love – he’ll try to
copy you and blow them back.
 From
six to 12 months, his humour becomes a little more slapstick. He’ll
still enjoy making faces at you and will start to take part in
peekaboo, hiding perhaps behind a cushion or his hands. He’ll also
start to tease you by pretending to give you a toy and snatching it
back, and dropping games become a firm favourite, where he’ll
deliberately let a toy fall to the floor from his high chair (or a
supermarket trolley!) and wait for you to pick it up for him, then
start laughing. (If this becomes too wearing, put a Velcro strap on
the toy so he can haul it up again himself.)
 He’s
more mobile now, probably walking or at least crawling at high speed,
and he enjoys more physical humour such as being ‘chased’ by
you, especially if you’re on your hands and knees as well. He’ll
also enjoy lift-the-flap books, particularly ones which have a surprise
such as a pop-up lion (the Rod Campbell books are good for this) or ones
which make a noise. Early television programmes such as the Fimbles will
go down well now, particularly because of the music, the ‘falling
over’ slapstick humour and repetition (so he can enjoy the joke again
and again), and he’ll also start to copy you more and more.
 His speech has really started to take off, now, so he’ll begin to
enjoy more verbal humour. He’s a long way away from appreciating
Christmas cracker jokes, but he’ll find it funny if you get things
deliberately wrong, such as pointing to a picture of a cow and telling
him that cows say ‘woof’ (when he knows quite well that they say
‘moo’).
So enjoy
having fun with your baby and watching his sense of humour develop.
Laughter helps the bonding process with your baby’s carers and
creates a sense of wellbeing. "It’s good for the parents as well
as the baby," adds psychologist Richard Smale.
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