When it comes to baby milestones, parents tend to focus on first steps or first words, but there’s a milestone that is just as important: a baby’s first joke. Before they can bat at a toy, babies can laugh. Before they can recognize themselves in the mirror, many babies can engage in humor that requires making intuitions about people around them. Baby humor is serious business — it helps them pay attention to and resolve incongruities, a crucial part of learning about the world. It creates the social glue that lets them thrive.
For a forthcoming project, Times Opinion invites readers to share videos of their babies’ early attempts at being funny, up to 16 months of age. We’d love to see your baby laughing for the first time, as well as using physical humor to clown around or teasing to amuse the people in their lives. Other great examples of baby humor include breaking down into giggles over something surprising, using language incorrectly on purpose and even testing a boundary or playfully disobeying to provoke a response from parents, guardians or siblings.
Humor is social, so we welcome videos that also include family and friends, but please make sure videos are framed so that we can clearly see the babies as well as the people they’re engaging with. If they’re looking straight into the camera and engaging with the person behind it, that’s great, too!
An editor will contact you before publishing your submission.
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