Why are you laughing?

This blog post is a transcript of Episode 99 of my podcast/YouTube series. Because of that, it is not written to be grammatically/syntactically correct.

You can listen here and watch here.

Once upon a time, there were students who struggled to notice the feedback they got when they were trying to be funny or silly.

Some students said or did the same thing over and over because people laughed at it once or twice.

Other students weren't able to identify the difference between someone laughing with them versus someone laughing at them.

And then there were students who didn't engage in anything humorous, which caused them to have a reputation for being 'not funny'.

I created this lesson for all of these students.

In this lesson, students learn different clues to help them recognize if someone is laughing with them versus at them, and we talk about two additional reasons someone may laugh (one of which is really important for social bonding). We also role play how to respond to each type of humor feedback.

This is lesson four in module two. Module two is all about noticing and awareness. It's a really big piece of the puzzle when it comes to our kiddos and our students being able to make and maintain relationships. We all need to be able to notice social information, pay attention to the people around us, and be able to use what we're noticing in order to engage with the people that we want to build relationships with. This is a struggle for a lot of neurodivergent not even kids, just people in general. We tend to be really good at noticing information. Any time at Starfish, if I change anything, the students notice quickly. We tend to be good at noticing information. But we're not always so good at noticing the social world. We're also not always so good at paying attention, especially if what we're supposed to be paying attention to are things we don't really care about.

In this lesson, it is based on humor. It's a lesson about humor feedback. There is a recognition from the beginning that not every student who's in my program cares about having a reputation for being funny. It's actually number three on the list out of the top three. It's not one that everybody cares about, but I do share with my students that we don't want to have a reputation for being unfunny or not funny, so it is a good idea to try to at least engage in things that are humorous, even if we are not the one initiating the humor exchange.

We start this lesson by talking about: What is humor? What does that word mean? Everybody gets to share what this word means to them. What does humor mean to you?

We typically get different variations of: something that makes somebody laugh. Sometimes students will share examples of things they find humorous, like certain videos or certain types of jokes. After everybody shares their thought about it, I share my thought about it, and I give an example. I say, "If I were to tell a joke right now, and one other person laughed, out of this whole group, one of you laughed, could I say that it was funny?"

I really just want to hear everybody's response to that. Sometimes students say yes because one person laughed. Sometimes people say no because only one person laughed. There's no right or wrong answer to that, just like most things that we talk about, there's no right or wrong answer. My thought about it is that humor should be something that we share because we want multiple people to think it's funny. We want multiple people to laugh if there are multiple people available.

The next thing that we talk about is that there are three types of people when it comes to humor. Not everybody has the same sense of humor. Not everybody has the same idea of what's funny or not funny. As I'm sharing this, I'm having this realization that I had a student who was in my program at Starfish for several years, and I remember when he first started, he had zero sense of humor. Things weren't funny to him. He wasn't interested in sharing videos or jokes. He didn't appreciate or enjoy it when other people were sharing videos or jokes or trying to be silly. He would actually get a bit annoyed by things like that. A couple years later, he became somebody that was sharing jokes and videos, and actually got to the point where he kind of swung too far the other way (if you remember from a previous episode our reputation and moderation scale), where he was actually getting kind of annoying with how loudly he would laugh, and how often he would laugh. He started getting a lot of social feedback because he was laughing at things that weren't even meant to be funny.

It's interesting how really nothing about social is static. Our personalities aren't static, our humor types aren't static, even whether we're a circle or a triangle or a square is not static. This same kiddo was all three of them across the span of the years that I supported him. So there's nothing about social that's static, which is part of what makes it so difficult is it's always changing.

The three types of people when it comes to humor: The first type of person is what I call a joke giver. These are people who like to make other people laugh, or at least attempt to make other people laugh. They like to tell jokes. They like to share videos or memes. They like the response that they get when other people think something they have said or done is funny.

Triangles very much are joke givers. They love making other people laugh, which also means they typically fall under the pitfall of being someone who will continue saying or doing something over and over, either because they said or did it one time and it was funny and so they just grab onto it and keep saying or doing it, or because they saw someone else say or do it and it was funny, and so they grab onto it and try to make it their own. It's a typical downfall for triangle students when it comes to a sense of humor, is just finding something that worked once and continuing to try it over and over. Usually things are funny maybe twice, and after that, they typically become annoying. The exception would be an inside joke, which is typically funny forever in moderation, just like everything else in moderation.

The second type of person when it comes to humor is what I call a joke taker. They don't necessarily share humor with others. they're not creating jokes, they're not sharing videos, but they enjoy hearing jokes. They enjoy when people share humor with them. They like receiving humor. They like being in the midst of humor. These are typically circle students. Circle students typically really like silly videos, silly memes, even if they don't always understand them. They like when people include them in jokes and humor and just being silly. Circle people typically just enjoy silliness, being playful, but they typically aren't people who initiate humor. They just really enjoy being a recipient of it.

Square students also typically are joke takers, however, square students sometimes struggle to recognize when something is at their expense or not. They can struggle with recognizing whether humor is just a silly joke, or whether it was something personal. So square students can struggle with humor because they don't always know how to interpret it. They don't always know if something is truly just an innocent meme or joke or video, or if someone sent that to them personally because they think it has something to do with them. There's a little bit of anxiety that can come in with humor when it comes to our square students.

The third type when it comes to humor is a joke avoider. This was the student I described earlier. They don't think things are funny, they don't care about memes, they don't care about videos. They sometimes get frustrated or annoyed if other people are laughing or joking, especially if they feel like it's not the appropriate time or place for people to be laughing or joking. So a joke avoider is somebody that humor just isn't their thing. They tend to be black and white. This could be a square student, again, because of the anxiety that comes along with that. Humor can just be confusing and overwhelming to them, and so they're just not that interested in it. It can also be certain triangle students. So again, nothing is set in stone. It's all a little bit wavy. But they do tend to follow some more typical, predictable patterns for the most part.

None of these three are right or wrong. There's nothing wrong with being a joke avoider. There's nothing right with being a joke sharer. They're just different. Just like circle, triangle and square, none of them are right or wrong. They're just different.

Then it is time for our first poll question. For our students in person, I designate one part of the room as each possible answer choice, and for students on Zoom, I can create polls on Zoom. So the first poll for this lesson is: What type of humor do you have? Are you a joke giver, a joke taker or a joke avoider?

Not many people are joke avoiders. It's not a common thing, however, it is something that we all need to be aware of. So it's not very common for anybody to identify as a joke avoider, but when they do it, they are typically spot on. They are typically pretty self aware of the fact that humor just isn't really their thing.

The joke tellers and the joke takers and joke givers usually do a pretty good job of identifying which one they feel is most appropriate for them. Especially the joke givers, they're very aware that they like to make other people laugh. I think I'm kind of a fourth category. I love making myself laugh, and if other people laugh as a byproduct, that's awesome, but I just really love making myself laugh. So I'm not sure what category that is, and I don't know if there's anybody else in that category with me.

Next we talk about the different reasons people laugh, because this is super important to this whole topic that we're talking about this week. There are four reasons people laugh. There are probably more than that, in this lesson we talk about four specific reasons why people may laugh. On this episode, I'm only going to share two of them. The other two are reserved for the students that come to the group. If you think about that, those of you who are watching or listening or reading, off the top of your head, can you think about four reasons why people may laugh?

Most people can't. It's a tricky thing. Most people can't think of four reasons why people may laugh. When I ask the students, the first one that comes to everybody's mind is because they think something's funny. The challenge is that, for the majority of my students, that's their only answer to this question. The only reason they think somebody might laugh is because they think something's funny. If you think about that, how challenging that makes humor feedback in two ways. The first way is thinking, no matter why somebody's laughing, I think they think this is funny. That means we're going to keep doing whatever it is we were doing, if our goal is to get people to laugh. So no matter why they're laughing, I just think they think it's funny. This is when you get students who very easily and quickly cross the line into being annoying because they keep doing things just because someone was laughing, even though that person may not have been laughing because they thought it was funny.

The other challenge is a situation I shared in a previous episode where sometimes, especially triangle and square students, they think that if the only reason that people laugh is because they think something's funny and they didn't say or do anything funny, then they think people are laughing at them, and it's personal and it's negative. I shared a story about that in one of the previous episodes about the student who thought everybody on the playground was laughing at him when none of them were. They weren't even paying attention to him.

So only having one interpretation of why people laugh really causes a lot of social challenges. No matter what your interpretation of it is, if you only have one interpretation, it's really difficult to know how to respond to people laughing.

The first reason we talk about is someone laughing with you. This means that they think what you said or did was funny, and that you were... you might not have been trying to be funny, but there was kind of a lightness to whatever you guys are talking about or doing. Usually it's because you are trying to be funny, but sometimes some of us say or do things that are funny, even when we weren't trying to be. Laughing with us means that it's mutual. We're in this together.

We talk about, what are some of the clues that somebody is laughing with you? I ask the students: What are some of the ways that you can tell if somebody's laughing with you? Some of the things we share are that the person's laughter is genuine. It's real, it's authentic. It's a real laugh. It's not a fake laugh. Another one is they may engage by then sharing a joke or a video, so they may reciprocate. Whatever we did, they may reciprocate. So that shows that this is a genuine reciprocal interaction.

The next poll is: If we notice that someone is laughing with us, what should we do next? I'm going to keep this poll answer a secret and save it for the kids who come to the group, but that's our next poll. If we notice someone's laughing with us, where do we go from here? What do we do next? This is where so many of our triangle students get caught up because they notice, 'Hey, people are laughing. This is funny. This is cool.' But then their next step sometimes makes everything do a 180 and it kind of falls apart.

The second reason somebody may be laughing is that they're laughing at us. Triangle students and square students tend to have a really sensitive radar for this. For someone laughing at them. For triangle students, it's because it happens to them, sometimes frequently. For square students, it typically doesn't. Square students have social anxiety, not typically because of things that have happened to them, just because some people are naturally wired to be more anxious. Maybe they've seen things that have happened to other students that they have picked up on. Because of this, triangle students and square students tend to be much more aware of people laughing at them. And as I mentioned earlier, sometimes they interpret it that way, even when that's not actually the case.

Circle students do not tend to be aware of when people are laughing at them. Sometimes it's because they don't quite understand what's happening. They might not understand why this person is laughing, which means they can't figure out the reason behind it. They might not understand the joke behind what was said. If the humor is a little more mature, they might not even understand what's happening. Circle students often will laugh because other people are laughing, even if they don't really know what's going on. I actually put this in the book 'Social Skills is Canceled'. There's a scene with Circle where she's laughing because everybody around her is laughing, but she doesn't actually know what they're laughing at.

That's pretty common for circle students. They just don't always understand what's going on around them. They often have slower processing speeds. They may have some language delays or some language challenges, and so they don't typically think about people laughing at them. If they're in an environment where people are laughing, they're going to laugh along. And typically, circle students aren't targets of people laughing at them. Circle students are well liked, and so it's not common that somebody would be laughing at a circle student. It's not an experience that they have often.

I ask the group: What are some signs that someone is laughing at you? Another way to say that is they're teasing, they're making fun of. What are some signs that someone's laughing at you?

The first thing I always share is pointing. Pointing is almost always negatively interpreted. In our culture, pointing is considered rude, and so we tend to only do it if something's happening that's rude or disrespectful. In summer camp, we walked to the park every day to get to the playground. One of the students is really into all the different cars that we see while we're walking, and he would point at them and name them each as they drove by. I just encouraged him to do it without pointing, because if you can imagine driving down the road and someone's pointing at you as you're driving by, in our culture it's a negative sign. It's not a gesture that is without meaning. And so if somebody's laughing and pointing, we usually interpret that as they're laughing at someone or something.

We also talk about if it seems like they're laughing with other people, like it's an inside joke that they have about what we said or what we did. And that their laugh isn't a real laugh. It's a fake laugh, which could sound like a lot of different things. It could be really short, it could be ridiculously long, like they just keep laughing and keep laughing, but it's not real. It's not a real laugh.

The next poll question is: If somebody's laughing at us, what should we do? This poll question is much trickier than if somebody's laughing with us, because somebody laughing at us often means they're teasing us or they're making fun of us.

There's a word that I introduce in module one, it comes up a lot in the program, and it's the concept of taking a detour. It means doing something different. We talk about how a detour means you're still going to the same place, you just need to get there a different way. So we're not changing what we're trying to do. We're not changing the outcome. We're not completely changing the whole itinerary. We still want to get to the same place, but we recognize that the path we're on, we can't stay on that path. It's not working. We need to make a different plan. So I call that taking a detour.

We talk about what our options are if we notice that someone's laughing at us. I even talked about this in another recent episode that's not related to this lesson, because again, so many things that we talk about come up over and over. Number one, because they're applicable over and over, and number two, because I believe in the power of repetition. The more we talk about something, the more the students learn it and understand it and can internalize it and conceptualize it.

We talk about how everything's always an option. You can do anything. You can walk away. You can punch somebody. You can give somebody feedback. You can tell the teacher. There's an unlimited number of options that you can do. What we focus on is the ones that are likely to have the best outcome for us, because that's what we want. We want the best outcome for us. So we can punch somebody, absolutely. How's that likely going to work out for us? We can yell at this person and tell them to quit it and cut it out and quit being such a bully. How's that likely to work out for us? So we talk about how, if we notice people are laughing at us, we get to make the choice of what we want to do next.

And to also recognize that this person, or these people if it's more than one, are not people that we should try to share humor with again in the future. Sometimes, especially for triangle students, their people picker gets broken, and they have a hard time picking people, and so sometimes they will keep going back to the same person or the same people, even though there's a lot of conflict and struggle there. So that's part of this lesson as well is if you notice this person or this group of people is laughing at you, next time pick some different people. Pick people who laugh with you. We all need people in the world who laugh with us.

Next up in the lesson is the other two reasons why people may laugh, which, as I mentioned, I'm going to save those for the kids in the groups. I will share a story about one of them. I had a student who's about 13, and we had this lesson. He came back the next week and he said, "I'm so glad that we talked about that, because it happened to me." He said, "My mom had a friend over at our house, and I was showing them a video on my phone. I was laughing and my mom was laughing and her friend was laughing, but I recognized that her friend was laughing for reason number three, and that meant that I needed to stop the video." And he said, "I never knew that before. I never knew that. I would have just kept showing the video because I didn't know what that meant." So I thought that's just a really powerful testament to how important the little things that, I don't know that that's in any other social skills lesson that our kids ever get anywhere, but it's little things that, if we can just learn how to pay attention to things like that, it can make such a big difference in one interaction, which makes a big difference in the way that people perceive us and our ability to make and maintain relationships.

The fourth reason that we talk about is something that everybody should do in their social relationships. I guarantee, if you're a parent, you do this all the time. Teachers do it, I do it, and I teach the kids that they should be doing it too, because it's actually a big part of social bonding if we're laughing for this fourth reason. It's a secret for now.

That's our lesson about humor feedback. We get to talk about all four reasons, and then we practice them in the group. One of the funny things about this lesson is that everybody gets to share a joke. And again, not everybody's a joke sharer, so I they can even tell the chicken crossing the road joke. It doesn't even have to be funny. It doesn't even have to be novel. It can be whatever.

Everybody gets to share a joke, and then we all get to choose which one of the four laughs we want to do, and that student has to decide which type of laughter everybody is doing. And then, how do you respond to that? This person was laughing at you, how do you respond to that? If this student was laughing with you, how do you respond to that? And number three and number four as well. So the joke givers and takers really love being able to tell a joke in the class. And again, we don't often have students who don't like jokes, but even if they do, they just get to tell a chicken crossing the road. My goal for those students is to just not have a reputation for being unfunny. I want them to just have a normal, average humor reputation, as opposed to people thinking of them as the kid who's not funny. That's the lesson for humor feedback. That's lesson four in module two.

Let's see, random number generator, what our plan is for next time. Six. Six is module one, the identity module and lesson six, a reputation for being friendly. We'll do that one next week, how to have a reputation for being friendly. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you then.