J is for Jokes

Children advance through different stages.
There's the stage where they discover their fists and wave them about in the air like midget dictators.
There's scooting, crawling, walking, penis obsession, and finally there's joke telling.
Some experts like the joke telling stage because they say it's proof positive that your child's developing their sense of humor  - a sophisticated development. 
The people who say this, don't have any children and haven't been hounded by their joke-telling offspring telling bad jokes for months on end. 
It would be okay if the joke telling stage came after the learning to read stage but it doesn't. What that means is that kids can't read their own jokes, they need you to read them out loud - or worse - they make up their own jokes.
And let's face it, kids don't make up clever, endearing jokes. They make up bad ones.
For example my son once told this joke: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because a man was chasing him with a gun.
That's perfect really. Why would a chicken cross the road - unless he was being chased by a homicidal maniac?
After the make-up-your-own joke phase, comes the knock, knock joke phase; another joke phase where children don't seem to realize that a joke is meant to be funny.
Then they start school and guess what? Their classmates will teach them jokes that will actually be funny. There's only one problem. It would seem that your son or daughter is in school with the exact same kids you went to elementary school with 30 years ago. How else to explain the proliferation of ancient jokes?
We all know what time it is when an elephant sits on your fence.
But for God's sake - laugh anyway.

 Read my A-to-Z posts to see if you have what it takes to be the parent of four boys.
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