How do sarcasm and irony affect your relationship with your child?

How often do you use irony and sarcasm in your everyday conversations with children?

Here's an example of harsh sarcasm:

- My car door broke off.

- Wait for the other one too! Maybe you hoped that breaking this would keep them healthy?

Irony is usually a bit "softer", like an innocent joke told in response to something a child says.

Although irony sounds better than sarcasm, neither is a good way to communicate with a child.

Firstly, children cannot process your creative flight of ideas until they are about 10-11 years old because of their developing brains. In this way, we put children in an awkward, shameful situation.

Sometimes they laugh with us when we're being ironic, because they repeat our facial expressions. But more often they are left confused - what was that?

They may also seriously consider options you may have proposed that you only thought of as a joke, because concrete thinking prevails.

Secondly, if every time a child comes to you and shares an experience, you respond with irony or sarcasm, the child does not feel listened to or emotionally supported.

In time, your child will start to choose what he comes to you with and what he tells you. Most likely, he will only tell stories where he can stand the banter.

He will not share his experiences because it will be too difficult and painful to have an additional emotional burden to process, such as sarcasm.

When your child is facing serious difficulties, he or she will not turn to you.

It is good if someone close to the child does not do this and the child has someone to confide in.

It's too bad if there is no one in the family or nearby.

There are these stories about situations where parents realise that their child has had some difficulties that they have been trying to deal with on their own and have not told them. And the sacred question comes up, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Two questions:

1. If you think about the way you communicate, how much do you talk to your child through irony and sarcasm in everyday life?

2. Do you want to know what to say when you can't use irony or sarcasm?

P.s. We devote one week each to the topics of communication and cognitive development in the Emotional Education of the Child course.