James' World 2

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When I was 15, my mom announced at the breakfast table that I had a job interview that morning.

She said there was no getting out of it because it was all arranged. Dad would drive me to the new bakery that her friend’s son was about to open in our hometown in northern England.

Two hours later, I sat opposite the manager as she read aloud parts of the application my mom had forged without my knowledge.

“You wrote that math is one of your best subjects,” the woman said, noting that the position was for a part-time counter person at the bakery.

I was abysmal at math. Sure enough, when the manager asked me to solve a simple equation to test my mental arithmetic, I got the answer spectacularly wrong.

Next, the woman showed me the personal note my mom had mailed with my application, addressed to the business owner and introducing herself as his mother’s friend. “Congratulations, John,” she wrote. “Wishing you all the best with your new business venture.”

I cringed, barely believing Mom had tried to pull so many strings to get me the job. The manager had my number, and I didn’t get hired.

When I got home, I argued with my parents. “We were just trying to help,” my dad said. “Don’t ever do that again,” I yelled.

They had good intentions, but it was an example of helicopter parenting at its worse. They wanted to instill a work ethic in me, but it backfired.

When I was hired after showing initiative myself, I felt proud

A few months later, I secured a part-time job by randomly asking for shifts at a local café. The owner said he admired my initiative, which boosted my bank account and self-esteem.

I later found part-time work as a dishwasher at a restaurant, a sales assistant in a menswear store, and a bartender. Toward the end of college, I was a breakfast waitress at a hotel, starting at 6. am.

I tried to get my teenage daughter a job, too

You’d have thought the humiliating experience at the bakery would have taught me a lesson forever. But now, as the mom of a 16-year-old girl, it’s difficult not to copy my parents.

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Jane Ridley (not pictured) is trying not to make the same mistakes her helicopter parents did. standret/Getty Images

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CLIMATEWIRE | Global losses from natural disasters eclipsed the long-term average in the first half of 2024, with thunderstorms causing more damage in the U.S. than hurricanes, wildfires, or other catastrophes.

An analysis from the reinsurance company Munich Re found that severe thunderstorms in the U.S. caused $45 billion in losses from January to June, $34 billion of which were insured. That makes 2024 the fourth-costliest thunderstorm year on record, based on the first six months.

Many of the losses were driven by tornadoes and hail spawned from the storms, the report notes.

North America accounted for $60 billion in losses — half of all damages worldwide. Globally, insured losses totaled $62 billion, compared with the 10-year average of $37 billion.

Thunderstorms may seem like small events compared with other kinds of disasters. Individually, they tend to cause less damage than earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, and floods. But they also strike more frequently than many other severe weather events, and their damages add up over time.

A January report from Munich Re found that thunderstorm losses in Europe and North America broke records in 2023, causing damages totaling $76 billion and $58 billion in insured losses.

A report from another reinsurance company, Swiss Re, also warned last year that thunderstorm damage is growing worldwide. A high number of low- to medium-severity events occurred around the globe last year, causing more than $100 billion in losses. Thunderstorms were the main contributor.

“The cumulative effect of frequent, low-loss events, along with increasing property values and repair costs, has a big impact on an insurer’s profitability over a longer period,” said Jérôme Jean Haegeli, chief economist at Swiss Re, in a statement last year. “The high frequency of severe thunderstorms in 2023 has been an earnings test for the primary insurance industry.”

Studies show that climate change worsens thunderstorms around the world. That’s largely a matter of simple physics — a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, allowing for more intense rainfall events.

That doesn’t always translate to more frequent storms. In some places, the total number of thunderstorms might not change much — but the ones that do occur may grow stronger. Research already shows that extreme precipitation events have worsened across the U.S., according to the federal government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment. A 2023 study also found that severe thunderstorm winds are affecting a larger area of the country over time.

Research also indicates that some regions could see an increase in the number of thunderstorms as temperatures continue to rise.

The rising risks of thunderstorms are taking a toll on the United States. According to NOAA, severe storms account for half of all the country’s billion-dollar disasters since 1980. And the number of billion-dollar thunderstorms is rising over time.

“Climate change entails evolving risks that everyone — society, the economy, and the insurance sector alike — will have to adapt to, so as to mitigate the growing losses from weather-related events,” said Thomas Blunck, member of Munich Re’s Board of Management, in a statement.

Disasters around the world

A variety of other disasters caused havoc around the world in the first half of 2024, Munich Re found.

Not all were climate-related. Earthquakes in Japan and Taiwan this year caused billions of dollars in losses each. The 7.3 magnitude event in Taiwan was the worst the region had experienced since 1999.

Floods caused the greatest losses elsewhere.

Heavy rainfall triggered severe floods and landslides in Brazil in April and May, amounting to $7 billion in total losses. Devastating floods also struck Germany in May, with the costliest event totaling $5 billion in damages.

Seasonal monsoon rains caused severe floods in East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, and Somalia earlier this year. And in May, tropical cyclones Hidaya and Ialy struck the same region, exacerbating previous destruction and killing hundreds, and displacing around half a million people.

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For many athletes, it is the pinnacle of their career. They have trained hard for years to take part in the Olympic Games. Winning a medal is a childhood dream for most of them—only surpassed by setting a new world record during the competitions.

And that happens again and again. At the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, existing world records were broken in several disciplines, six in swimming alone, mostly by a difference of tenths or even hundredths of a second. As in most Olympic sports, it’s all about precision: the slightest wrong move or external disturbance can make the difference between success and failure. Nevertheless, swimming stands out in one respect: It takes place in water, or more precisely, in a pool filled with water. And the shape of the pool can have a strong influence on the performance of Olympic athletes.

Before the start of this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, hopes for new records were high. One of the reasons for this was new training techniques using “digital twins.” These are computer models of swimmers that mathematicians use to help the athletes achieve peak performance.

So far results for swimmers in Paris have been sobering. Only one world record had been broken as of August 1. And even worse: the Olympians seem to be falling far short of expectations. Nicolò Martinenghi, the winner of the men’s 100-meter breaststroke, only managed a time of 59.03 seconds—the slowest winning time in the event at an Olympic Game since 2004.

A cause was purportedly found: the Olympic swimming pool was not deep enough. A few days after the opening of the Games, the headlines were published: “Paris Olympics Swimmers Noticing Pool Is ‘Slow’ as Gold-Medal Times Don’t Come Near World Records,” “No World Records through Two Nights in Paris, Is the Pool in Paris ‘Slow’?,” “How Slow Paris Pool Is Thwarting Swimmers’ World Record Bids.” But can it be true? Is the pool really to blame for the lack of records? Anyone waiting for a “yes” or “no” will be disappointed. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer because the question is related to one of the most complex problems in mathematics.

The Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre, a suburb of the city, is actually a rugby stadium and concert venue—Taylor Swift performed there in May—and has been converted into an indoor swimming pool for the Games. The huge pool will be dismantled afterward. This approach makes sense: during the summer Games, the many spectators are entitled to watch the athletes compete, but outside of these events, swimming pools with a grandstand that can accommodate 15,000 people seem completely oversize. This is why many Olympic swimming pools are designed to be temporary solutions.

What is surprising, however, is the depth of this year’s pool, which is unusually shallow at 2.15 meters. There is no standardized regulation as to what dimensions an Olympic pool should have. Until a few years ago, it had to be at least two meters deep, but now the minimum depth is 2.5 meters. A depth of three meters, however, is recommended. When construction of the Olympic pool started in 2017, the two-meter rule still applied. The pool in Nanterre is therefore permitted despite its comparatively shallow depth. And this, many are convinced, means that it is “slow.”

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I turn away from my husband and his snoring, using my back to try to block out the light from my phone. It is my favorite time of day: 10 p.m., in bed, secretly scrolling my favorite app, NYTimes Recipes. Looking at all the beautiful pictures, I feel myself getting excited, hopeful even. I click on family-friendly dinners, and my heart drops instantly: It reads like a list of rejection letters. Fajitas. Chili. Tortellini soup. Lasagna. I swipe, faster and faster, rejecting things left and right (though I still think of left swipe as rejection), and I am reminded of the years I spent swiping on other apps, picky in a different way. Back then, I rejected men for being too square, too edgy, too comfortable with typos. Now I swipe and make the rejections on my children’s behalf: This recipe looks too spicy. Too cheesy. Too saucy. Too meat-y, too bean-y.

It took me years to admit my family, happy in almost every way, would completely implode if asked to live on what the Internet tells me are “Family-Friendly Dinners.” I read other families’ meal plans like other moms read romance novels, fascinated but incredulous, sure no one is being whisked off to Paris or that people’s kids are eating fish tacos in real life.

It wasn’t always this way. For years, I persisted, an acolyte in Ellyn Satter’s church of feeding, sure that if I just put certain foods (namely, healthy home-cooked ones) on the table 10, 20, 50, 5,000 times, my kids would eventually be called “good eaters,” Internet code for adventurous, polite, nonpicky dinner companions, basically little 45-year-olds in children’s bodies. But after years of this, years of heroic dinnertime effort met with routine, resounding rejection, it finally happened. I broke.

The scene that played out in our dining room last fall was a familiar one to anyone with kids. I had spent Sunday meal planning the week’s meals, my cookbooks around me on the living room floor, avoiding the allergens (avocado, tomatoes, peppers) and preferences (no broccoli, fish, “saucy” food, spice) of my family members. I’d found some that threaded the very fine needle of food preferences and time allowances I’d have to cook during the week. I grocery shopped, labeled what food should not be eaten before it was made for dinner (“DO NOT TOUCH!” the egg carton said, as they were destined for pad Thai), and got to cooking.

And so, on that night last September, I cooked. Chicken shawarma — a recipe that promised, literally, to “change my life.” I grilled, roasted, and diced. I minced the dill, considered whether to peel the cucumber. (I split the difference, peeling it in strips.) I set the table, our cloth napkins over our placemats, the food all on the table to serve family style (Ellyn Satter insists!!!), and my family sat down. And of course, nobody ate. My husband muscled out a “Thanks for dinner” as my son slid down in his chair, horrified at the very sight of cooked vegetables. My daughter declared she didn’t eat meat. (She does.)

I did not flip the kitchen table, but only because our dog, Larry, would have immediately made off with the chicken bones, but I did suddenly understand Teresa Giudice in a way I never had before. What was I doing with my one wild and precious life? I loved cooking because it brought people together. And yet my cooking for my family was doing anything but that. We were miserable.

So, I decided I was done. I would no longer cook for my family.

Over the next few days, I came up with my new rule: I would prepare food for my family, but I would not cook. The fine details are such: There are no recipes allowed, whether from a cookbook or online (Bye, NYTimes Recipes! See ya, Smitten Kitchen!!) and food should be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Practically, it means a lot of quesadillas, frozen food (Trader Joe’s frozen aisle is our meal plan for weeks), and pizza. We eat the most basic of tacos (ground turkey, spice packet, pre-shredded cheese). Baked potatoes and bagged salads are go-tos. There are lots of repeat meals.

This doesn’t mean I don’t cook ever; I just no longer cook for my family. I save my cooking for other adults. In fact, the space this no-cooking thing opened up for me inspired me to institute something we call Sunday suppers: a regular time to cook for friends we invite over. At which, of course, my kids eat food that they would normally reject — maybe it’s because they’re surrounded by friends’ children who compliment my pulled pork?

But beyond that, our dinners have now become pleasant. No tables are flipped; no tears are shed onto the scrambled eggs and pancakes we are eating. (Breakfast for dinner is about as fancy as we get now.) My son makes jokes as my daughter tells us the “cuckoo banana pants” thing that happened at school each day. To be clear, we aren’t all eating the same thing. My husband often works late, and I batch cook a big soup or salad for me or us to eat all week alongside the kids. The mealtimes I dreamed of are happening, just over different kinds of food than the fantasy includes.

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The mealtimes I dreamed of are happening, just over different kinds of food than the fantasy includes.

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When wildfire smoke is in the air, doctors urge people to stay indoors to avoid breathing in harmful particles and gases. But what happens to trees and other plants that can’t escape from the smoke?

They respond a bit like us, it turns out: Some trees essentially shut their windows and doors and hold their breath.

As atmospheric and chemical scientists, we study the air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants. In a study that started quite by accident when smoke overwhelmed our research site in Colorado, we were able to watch in real time how the leaves of living pine trees responded.

How plants breathe

Plants have pores on the surface of their leaves called stomata. These pores are much like our mouths, except that while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.

Both humans and plants inhale other chemicals in the air around them and exhale chemicals produced inside them – coffee breath for some people, pine scents for some trees.

Unlike humans, however, leaves breathe in and out at the same time, constantly taking in and releasing atmospheric gases.

Clues from over a century of research

In the early 1900s, scientists studying trees in heavily polluted areas discovered that those chronically exposed to pollution from coal-burning had black granules clogging the leaf pores through which plants breathe. They suspected that the substance in these granules was partly created by the trees, but due to the lack of available instruments at the time, the chemistry of those granules was never explored, nor were the effects on the plants’ photosynthesis.

Most modern research into wildfire smoke’s effects has focused on crops, and the results have been conflicting.

For example, a study of multiple crop and wetland sites in California showed that smoke scatters light in a way that made plants more efficient at photosynthesis and growth. However, a lab study in which plants were exposed to artificial smoke found that plant productivity dropped during and after smoke exposure – though those plants did recover after a few hours.

There are other clues that wildfire smoke can impact plants in negative ways. You may have even tasted one: When grapes are exposed to smoke, their wine can be tainted.

What makes smoke toxic, even far from the fire

When wildfire smoke travels long distances, the smoke cooks in sunlight and chemically changes.

Mixing volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and sunlight will make ground-level ozone, which can cause breathing problems in humans. It can also damage plants by degrading the leaf surface, oxidizing plant tissue, and slowing photosynthesis.

While scientists usually think about urban regions as being large sources of ozone that effect crops downwind, wildfire smoke is an emerging concern. Other compounds, including nitrogen oxides, can also harm plants and reduce photosynthesis.

Taken together, studies suggest that wildfire smoke interacts with plants, but in poorly understood ways. This lack of research is driven by the fact that studying smoke effects on the leaves of living plants in the wild is hard: Wildfires are hard to predict, and it can be unsafe to be in smoky conditions.

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Organize with other parents

Being the only parent refusing to give your child a smartphone can be isolating for both you and your kid, Rausch said.

“Before you act on your own, find a couple of your kid’s friends, three to five of them. Talk with their parents, and if you all together decide to delay smartphones till high school, then it’s going to be much easier because then you can say ’Well, Johnny is also not getting his smartphone till 14,” he said, adding that this will make the conversation “much more digestible” for the child.

Pike also advised working with other parents. She shared an anecdote about a parent whose child’s fifth grade class formed a parent-teacher association.

“The class parents, as a collective, agreed that they would postpone giving their kids cell phones until they entered middle school. So when nobody else in the classroom has a cell phone, it makes it a whole lot easier for your child not to have a cellphone,” Pike said.

“If your child is the only one without a smartphone, that may present a whole additional set of stressors for your child,” she added.

Phone-based childhood versus play-based childhood

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Sharks swimming off the cost of Brazil have something a little startling coursing through their systems: cocaine.

The drug had never previously been found in wild sharks. But that doesn’t mean these fish are unique; scientists just hadn’t previously tested any shark for coke. The effort was a slam dunk, with the 13 sharks that were examined all testing positive for the drug in their muscles and liver, according to a new study in Science of the Total Environment.

What this means for the sharks is an open question, say the study co-authors Enrico Mendes Saggioro and Rachel Ann Hauser-Davis, an ecotoxicologist and a biologist, respectively, at Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. No one has ever studied the behavioral or physiological impacts of cocaine in sharks, Hauser-Davis says, but her ongoing research on environmental contamination in these apex predators suggests the notorious drug is only one of the animals’ worries.

“We detected high levels of metals and also detected ‘forever chemicals’ [perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs], pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PCBs, and PBDEs in over 30 shark and ray species,” Hauser-Davis says. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are carcinogenic chemicals banned by the U.S. in 1976 and by signatories of the United Nations’ Stockholm Convention in 2001. PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are flame retardants that can disrupt brain development and hormones.

The researchers became interested in drug testing sharks after Mendes Saggioro detected cocaine while researching river water contaminants in Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has an estimated 1.5 million cocaine users, according to the World Drug Report 2020 And many areas in the country lack sewage treatment, meaning drug-contaminated urine goes right into waterways. Drug runners may also sometimes dump loads of cocaine into the ocean to avoid a bust. A Discovery Channel Shark Week special in 2023 explored the notion that sharks might take bites of floating cocaine bales, and it found that sharks did investigate dummy packages dropped near the Florida Keys. But researchers don’t think that’s the main way drugs enter sharks’ system. A 2007 study in Florida found that bull sharks have been contaminated with prescription medications via failed sewage systems. Other fish, which are a very common prey for sharks, have also been shown to be contaminated—so sharks may be exposed directly in the water or take on these compounds from their diet. Given the ubiquity of legal pharmaceuticals showing up in aquatic animals, “to think that you wouldn’t find cocaine or other illegal drugs in sharks is kind of crazy,” says Chris Lowe, a marine biologist and director of the Shark Lab at California State University,, Long Beach, who was not involved in the new study.

The researchers in this study tested Brazilian sharpnose sharks (Rhizoprionodon lalandii), a small species that lives near coastlines, from the waters off Rio de Janeiro. They found an average cocaine concentration of 23 micrograms per kilogram in the sharks’ tissue, as well as an average concentration of seven micrograms per kilogram of benzoylecgonine (the compound that cocaine breaks down into as it is metabolized). This is a fairly low level: studies on the impact of cocaine in humans tend to use doses of around 0.4 milligram per kilogram of body weight (one milligram equals 1,000 micrograms). Female sharks had higher concentrations of cocaine than males, however, and half of the females that were caught were pregnant. Previous research on stingrays, which are relatives of sharks, suggests they can pass on environmental contamination to developing fetuses.

“Adults may have better developed immune systems or enzyme systems to metabolize some of those things, but a developing fetus may not,” Lowe says. “We really don’t know what the developmental impacts could be.”

Mendes Saggioro plans to continue drug testing sharks in the area and to expand this to rays that live in the nearby estuary to see how far the contamination extends. He and his team also want to look at cocaine concentrations in migratory fish that spend less of their life near coastlines.

While researchers unravel the consequences of cocaine-contaminated sharks, there are two major takeaways. One comes from Mendes Saggioro and Hauser-Davis: don’t eat sharks because the animals are both overfished and full of compounds you don’t want in your body.

David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist at Arizona State University, notes the other takeaway, which focuses on the health of the sharks themselves: “Please don’t dump your trash, including illegal drugs, into the water,” he says.

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A large clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda has shown that a twice-yearly injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug gives young women total protection from HIV infection.

The trial tested whether the six-month injection of lenacapavir would provide better protection against HIV infection than two other drugs, both daily pills. All three medications are pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) drugs.

Physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, principal investigator for the South African part of the study, tells Nadine Dreyer what makes this breakthrough so significant and what to expect next.

Tell us about the trial and what it set out to achieve

The Purpose 1 trial with 5,000 participants took place at three sites in Uganda and 25 sites in South Africa to test the efficacy of lenacapavir and two other drugs.

Lenacapavir (Len LA) is a fusion capside inhibitor. It interferes with the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects HIV’s genetic material and enzymes needed for replication. It is administered just under the skin, once every six months.

The randomized controlled trial, sponsored by the drug developers Gilead Sciences, tested several things.

The first was whether a six-monthly injection of lenacapavir was safe and would provide better protection against HIV infection as PrEP for women between the ages of 16 and 25 years than Truvada F/TDF, a daily PrEP pill in wide use that has been available for more than a decade.

Secondly, the trial also tested whether Descovy F/TAF, a newer daily pill, was as effective as F/TDF. The newer F/TAF has superior pharmacokinetic properties to F/TDF. Pharmacokinetic refers to the movement of a drug into, through, and out of the body. F/TAF is a smaller pill and is in use among men and transgender women in high-income countries.

The trial had three arms. Young women were randomly assigned to one of the arms in a 2:2:1 ratio (Len LA: F/TAF oral: F/TDF oral) in a double blinded fashion. This means neither the participants nor the researchers knew which treatment participants were receiving until the clinical trial was over.

In eastern and southern Africa, young women are the population who bear the brunt of new HIV infections. They also find a daily PrEP regimen challenging to maintain, for a number of social and structural reasons.

During the randomized phase of the trial, none of the 2,134 women who received lenacapavir contracted HIV. There was 100 percent efficiency.

By comparison, 16 of the 1,068 women (or 1.5%) who took Truvada (F/TDF) and 39 of 2,136 (1.8%) who received Descovy (F/TAF) contracted the HIV virus.

The results at a recent independent data safety monitoring board review led to the recommendation that the trial’s “blinded” phase should be stopped, and all participants should be offered a choice of PrEP.

This board is an independent committee of experts who are put in place at the start of a clinical trial. They see the unblinded data at stipulated times during the trial to monitor progress and safety. They ensure that a trial does not continue if there is harm or a clear benefit in one arm over others.

What is the significance of these trials?

This breakthrough gives great hope that we have a proven, highly effective
prevention tool to protect people from HIV.

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Most people probably don’t think of mathematics when they hear “busy beavers.” But these eager little animals symbolize one of the most amazing concepts of the knotty field: not everything can be calculated, no matter how hard you try (or how busy of a beaver you are). The busy beaver function is the first example of a noncalculable mathematical expression. The function itself is easy to explain: it refers to the largest number of steps a computer program can take before stopping if the program has n states, where states refer to the complexity of the problem. But its values, called BB(n), will never be known for all quantities of n. Mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists have long pondered at which n mathematical tools fail: Where exactly is the limit of what can be calculated?

For more than 40 years, many experts assumed that BB(5) could lie beyond this limit of computability and would therefore be unattainable. But now an international collaborative project called the Busy Beaver Challenge has succeeded in determining the value of BB(5), and its calculation was formally verified by a computer-aided proof assistant. According to the new research, the magic number for BB(5) is 47,176,870, meaning that a program with five states can take a maximum of 47,176,870 steps before halting—or it will never halt at all. The last big “busy beaver” achievement occurred in 1983, when the late computer scientist Allen Brady proved that BB(4) equals 107.

Busy beavers are deeply rooted in the foundations of mathematics. In the 20th century, many experts dreamed of finding a foundation on which all mathematical truths could be proven. But in 1931 logician Kurt Gödel, aged just 25 at the time, dashed their hopes. He proved that there are inevitably unprovable statements in mathematics—statements that can neither be proven nor disproven. Initially, experts hoped this was an abstract result with no significant applications. But they were wrong.

Mathematicians now know of many unprovable problems. One of the first examples is the halting problem, which deals with the execution of algorithms. In the 1930s Alan Turing figured out that there is no algorithm that can predict whether a computer program with certain inputs will run forever or will stop at some point. At the time, Turing was working on the theoretical model of such a computer, now called the Turing machine. This theoretical machine consists of an infinitely long tape labeled with 1’s and 0’s and a head that reads the tape, describes it, and shifts it to the right or left. Such a machine can theoretically perform any kind of calculation—just like a computer.

Suppose you want to program a Turing machine to multiply two numbers. The 1’s and 0’s on the tape then correspond to the two numbers. Before the calculation, you define a certain number of states, or rules, for the machine, such as A, B, C, and D, as well as HALT. These states determine how the Turing machine acts with each input. For example: If the five-state machine reads a 1 on the tape in state A, it overwrites this with a 0, moves the tape to the left, and switches to state C. Two instructions are therefore required for each of the states A to D, depending on whether the machine finds a 1 or a 0 on the tape. Under certain circumstances (for example, state B when reading a 1), the machine can switch to the HALT state. In this case, the Turing machine stops, and the calculation is complete. The result would then be the numbers on the tape at that point.

As Turing proved, there is no Turing machine that can determine, for all possible configurations of Turing machines, meaning all algorithms, whether they will stop at some point. And this is where the industrious beavers come into play.

The Halting Problem

In the “busy beaver game,” developed in 1962, Hungarian mathematician Tibor Radó searched for the most diligent Turing machine of a certain size: What is the maximum number of calculation steps that a Turing machine with n states, which comes to a halt at some point, can perform?

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Your kids might hate your corny jokes, but those same bad jokes might be the key to making them love you forever.

OK, that might be a slight exaggeration. But a fascinating new study recently published in the journal PLOS One indicates that using humor in our parenting might have a bigger impact than we realize.

The authors of the pilot study found that while there was a lot of existing research on how parents can use play in their child-rearing efforts, there was very little information about humor, specifically.

So, they asked a selection of adult respondents about if and how their own parents used humor at home and how those people viewed those childhood experiences years later.

The results were decisive. Funny parents were viewed more positively, had stronger relationships with their adult kids, and were perceived as better and more effective parents.

Before you go draining your life savings to enroll in clown college, it’s worth noting that the study is only a starting point. It didn’t feature a large or diverse group of respondents (a majority were white males) and it relied on self-reporting many years after the fact.

Still, the findings offer a really reassuring and optimistic view of parenting. Along with cooking, cleaning, and doing endless laundry—plus those little things like being a good person and role model—taking time to make your kids laugh is always a worthwhile task.

Why Humor Is an Important Parenting Tool

Laughing together as a family is obviously fun, but the researchers were particularly interested in humor as a tool and how it can be used in everyday parenting situations.

“Notably, humor can induce frameshifts (i.e., changes in perspective) that alter how we interpret an event or response, and thereby open new possibilities for children and parents alike,” the study says.1

In other words, joking around can change the dynamic of situations that are headed for conflict in a way that few other parenting techniques can.

One example in the study notes how, when all efforts to soothe a toddler tantrum fail, a parent might try playfully throwing a tantrum of their own. It may get their child laughing and feeling better, with the added bonus of helping to prevent the parent from growing overly frustrated.1

I absolutely love this idea. I’m naturally extremely silly and goofy with my kids, especially in high-pressure moments. I can tell when I’m getting nowhere with a lesson or admonishment and it’s time to break the tension with a joke or a game. But I had never considered using humor as an opportunity to reframe my own reaction to a situation when I feel myself losing patience or getting frustrated.

It may also have lasting effects too. Reena Patel, LEP, BCBA, positive psychologist and parenting expert, says that learning how to joke around in stressful scenarios from watching you is a highly beneficial lifelong skill for kids to pick up. “It can really help kids’ perspective and help with seeing things in a positive light,” says Patel.

Easy Tips To Add Humor To Parenting

But what if being silly or goofy with the kids doesn’t come as easy to you? What if you’re…not funny?

Patel says that playing is often close enough, if you’re a total beginner to the comedy game. “Get on your child’s level and just purely enjoy time with them,” she says. “The laughs will come when you are playing and enjoying time together.”

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