Your Child’s Bathroom Humor and How to Handle it

Many kids pick up bathroom humor shortly after being potty trained. This phase can last a long time but usually diminishes when they head off to school. While this is a completely natural experience for both boys and girls of the toddler age, it can leave parents in pure disgust and shock. The first step in learning how to handle your children’s bathroom humor is to realize that there is nothing wrong with them. This is a completely normal experience you are dealing with and there are ways to manage it without totally destroying your child’s sense of humor.

Child's Bathroom Humor

Child’s Bathroom Humor- How to Deal

Start teaching your Child the proper terminology for body parts and bodily functions. Keeping an open mind and having a matter-of-fact attitude towards bathroom topics from onset of bathroom humor will help minimize the appeal to your son or daughter. While you won’t have to get into the mind of a doctor, you can teach your child the proper way to address bathroom topics, using words that are not so insanely shocking to hear. The best way to educate your children on proper word usage for body parts and bodily functions is to start reading age-appropriate books that cover this topic, as young kids tend to learn best through colorful storybooks.

This is a completely natural part of your children growing up. You may want to nip the whole bathroom humor in the butt, though you really need to take into consideration that this is simply a part of your child learning to grow.  Learn to manage bathroom humor by setting boundaries and limits, such as telling a fart joke may be acceptable in your home but perhaps you only allow bathroom jokes in one area of the home – like the bathroom. Teaching your son or daughter boundaries as to where their bathroom humor is allowed will also teach them self-control, a skill they will need once they enter into preschool.

Last but certainly not least, you need to keep some element of being okay with bathroom humor because if not, your child will be learning from his peers all about this topic and that could lead to trouble. Children will have this bathroom sense of humor for years to come. It’s simply part of their wiring, so you will have to learn to be a parent who guides their child into an appropriate direction when it comes to their use of bathroom humor.  Take time to giggle at your child’s jokes from time to time, so that they feel good about it and remember some children work best with any sort of attention. This means negative attention towards bathroom humor may backfire rather than mold your child into being a polite, well-mannered kid who knows the limits on bathroom humor.

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