Developing humour

As the child starts to understand the words they use and how to put words together in sentences, so they start to learn how to use humour and to tell jokes. Where the 3 or 4 year old will often find a single word funny and keep repeating it, for example "bottom", the jokes that older children and young people make up are often a play on words they’ve learnt or information they’ve just learnt.

The child has learnt that homophones exist and the same sounding word can have very different meanings.

The way in which a child uses humour can show both how they are thinking and what they consider important. A 5 year old may find jokes involving toilets still very funny, whilst a child of 12 years old is likely to feel this is just silly.

The 12 year old child typically will develop jokes that reflect subjects and knowledge they learn about in school.