Hey Disney Dads, Turns Out Our Jokes Actually Help Our Kids

If you watch the Lion King, you’ll notice lots of Simba-lism.

Where does Captain Hook go to get his hook replaced? The second-hand store.

Why did Mickey Mouse become an astronaut? He wanted to visit Pluto.

Dad jokes are as classic as Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. We all remember going to the Magic Kingdom for the first time, and our dads would bust out one of the classic dad jokes. We would roll our eyes and promise ourselves that we would be “cool” when we finally became Disney dads.

Fast forward to the first time, you walked into the Magic Kingdom holding your kid’s hand, and you just couldn’t help yourself. Without warning and being unable to stop yourself, the classic dad joke just came out. Instinct kicked in, and who are you to fight it?

And just like you did decades before, your kids rolled their eyes at your jokes and promised themselves that they weren’t going to be like you when they grew up. And the cycle continues.

As it turns out, though, besides being hilariously funny (and they are), dad jokes are good for your kids. Marc Hye-Knudsen, a humor and lab management researcher at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Laboratory, writes that dad jokes help kids deal with embarrassment and that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to be embarrassed. However, I don’t know why kids would be embarrassed by dad jokes.

Hye-Knudson wrote for the British Psychological Society:

When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humor and joke-telling work but also about fathers’ psychology and their relationships with their children. By continually telling their children jokes that are so bad that they’re embarrassing, fathers may push their children’s limits for how much embarrassment they can handle. They show their children that embarrassment isn’t fatal.

The study also encouraged dads to keep telling their kids dad jokes. It’s not just that they are funny, but it’s helping them develop as human beings. So, the next time you’re standing in line for Peter’s Pan Flight, just turn to your kids and ask: “Why is Peter Pan flying all the time? Because he Neverlands.”

In doing so, you’re helping with their development, and you may even help out some of the kids standing near you in line. It’s just a public service that we dads do. You’re welcome.

Oh and one more question. Why shouldn’t you give Elsa a balloon? She’ll just let it go.

Keep that one in your back pocket so you can embarrass your kids the next time you head to Walt Disney World.