My Experience as Dad

Normally I focus this blog on ministry related things. That is kind of the point since I named it “My Experience as Youth Pastor.” I have some pretty cool kids though. If you don’t know I have 4 kids from 8 months old to 5 years old. Life tends to be hectic but fun. They are so funny but the oldest is really the most interesting right now. She is just starting to get jokes. She would laugh at stuff before but never really jokes unless others laughed and she was just laughing along.

I don’t know if you’ve had kids yet but they go through several stages of humor and understanding jokes is one of the later stages. My mother-in-law still doesn’t quite get it. It is so funny watching her think through a joke and laugh about it when she understands the play on words, but it is even funnier watching her try to make her own humor.

She is starting to tell knock knock jokes, but doesn’t fully understand what makes things funny. Here is one she told me the other day:

Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Me.
Me who?
Just me silly.

Followed by much laughter from her. She also tries playing jokes. Her teacher was sharing with me today about some of her jokes during class. She kept asking questions during the test and the teacher couldn’t answer them. In the past she has really struggled with her phonics tests in large part due to a speech problem she has and so asked these kinds of questions. Her teacher has always had to tell her she can’t answer them for her on the test and will say “what do you think it is?” Her teacher has expressed to me in the past how bad she feels to see her struggling with the test and unable to tell her the answers to the questions she asked. My daughter played on these emotions asking her time and time again during this test only to respond with “gotcha” and marking the right answers. She totally aced the test and also got a major sarcasm bonus.

She is really catching up in phonics and reading, doing great in numbers and math, and performing at a 5^th grade level in sarcasm. I can’t tell you how proud I am of my daughter.