Laughter

Laughter is good medicine and laughter is often the tool that I find most helpful in working with easily frustrated youth. Jamal is 12 and often begins his day with us very moody and upset. Anything and everything we have planned for the day is in opposition of what he wants and that He isn’t even sure about. With every passing instruction is mood often sinks to a put where he hides his face away and sits motionless.

Homework time is something that causes frustration for a lot of the youth, let’s face it, no one wants to leave school and come to camp for the purpose of doing more homework. The other day one of my interns cleverly tricked them into a writing a story by first getting them to write a word on a page, then to write 6 words that come to mind when they think of the first word. Then to finish, write a story including all of these words.

Jamal avoided the work as much as possible till I sat down with him and he continued to make up excuses. Finally one stuck, his right hand was still slightly swollen from hurting in on the weekend and he figured this was a good enough excuse since he couldn't write. I dramatically told him that I would give of myself and do the writing portion of it for him, but he had to tell me what to write. He thought this was great and we began. “Orange” he said, “How do you spell it?” I asked. Bursting out laughing at the fact that I didn't know how to spell orange he helped me out. “Round, orange, sweet, tree, delicious and green” he said. I asked again “how do you spell that?” His laughed spilled over and he got the words out slowly between his laughter, “r-o-u-n-d, o-r-a-n-g-e”. This continued on as he spoke his story out to me. By the end he was lying on the floor laughing when he realized and I written everything that had come out of his mouth including his laughs creating a very humorous story.

Laughter so often can change the course of a day!