Instructor Tells Kids To Clap Hands As Spectators Focus On Small Boy In Blue Shirt

Feb 25, 2021

Everyone knows that laughter is the world’s best medicine. Taking some time out of your day to enjoy one of your favorite humorous things is important for your overall happiness. Enjoying a fun sitcom, hanging out with your friends or watching a funny movie are all ways to get yourself to laugh throughout the day.

Laughter is also contagious, and thanks to the help of one viral video, we now know one little giggling boy who is making viewers around the world crack up with delight!

While one young boy attended music lessons at Musical Minds in Levittown, New York, back in 2016, he had the time of his life. Thankfully, someone took a video of the class and posted it online so we can all share in the adorable joy of this precious child. Children are some of the biggest blessings on earth, but one of the most precious things they do is giggle!

The toddler is enjoying himself listening to the upbeat music that the instructor is playing. But when the toddler asks his teacher to play the music faster, his laughter only increases when she obliges.

Although the students around him don’t appear to be appreciating the lesson quite as much as him at first, soon the boy has the entire room laughing and smiling along with him! After watching this video, we're not sure that there’s ever been a happier student!

His adorable childlike giggles and claps are so contagious, his friend next to him even reaches over to give him a loving hug to show his appreciation for his enthusiasm. 

The class claps and enjoys the music as their lesson goes on. The adorable boy dressed in all blue is surely making an impression on viewers of the video since it’s amassed millions of views since it was posted by various YouTube channels!

The video also has numerous likes from others who enjoyed the priceless scene. Who knows, maybe this little boy’s connection to music will stick with him for life! Either way, his reaction to music class is too precious for words. The innocent joy that this child displays while enjoying the music in the room is heartwarming to watch.

But why, you might ask, do humans laugh at all? And how do babies and young kids know how to laugh shortly after they are born? It turns out that the answers to these questions and the science behind laughter are both fascinating.

Philosophers, scientists and thinkers have speculated about laughter and humor for thousands of years. According to Scientific America, one of the oldest theories of laughter comes from Plato and other Greek philosophers. The Greeks, Scientific America explains, thought that humor and laughter were the result of feeling superior due to others’ misfortunes and due to earlier versions of oneself.

More than 2,000 years later, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud popularized another explanation — the theory of release. Freud and earlier thinkers from the 18th century reasoned that people laughed in order to let off steam, according to Scientific America’s research. Freud would say, for example, that that’s why vulgar humor is so funny to some people.

Making a toilet joke allows us to release pent-up energy, which we express through laughter.

Finally, the magazine proposes the notion of incongruity. When two things seem out of place or don’t match up, then they are humorous to us. One take on this theory of laughter is that laughing occurs when the person has found a solution to this discrepancy.

But what is lacking from many of these explanations is why babies and young kids, like the children in the video below, laugh. This is especially baffling since it’s hard to imagine them giggling after solving some discrepancy, or laughing at earlier versions of themselves, as some of the above explanations claim. After all, they haven’t even been around that long!

Getting to the bottom of some of these fascinating questions is precisely what Caspar Addyman from Goldsmiths, University of London does in his research. 

“I’m fascinated by babies’ laughter because it gives us a glimpse into what they’re thinking and what they understand about their world,” Addyman told the BBC.

Addyman, who is a leader in child development and laughter research, speaks to parents from across the globe about their babies’ habits in order to explore this intriguing phenomenon.

For example, Addyman discovered with his team that a baby begins smiling at six weeks, while their first laugh usually comes after three and a half months. Addyman argues that a baby’s laugh is largely social. A tickling sensation and a sudden disappearance (e.g. Peekaboo) aren’t funny in and of themselves (imagine tickling yourself, for instance).

Rather, they are only funny when babies realize that “an adult makes these things happen” for them, according to the BBC article on the topic.

“Obviously, we mustn’t overlook the fact that laughing is a highly social experience,” Addyman explains in an interview with RedOrbit.“Research on adult laughter finds that the majority of our laughter is provoked by social interaction rather than events that are inherently funny or amusing. Laughter acts like social glue. Babies can smile and laugh long before they can talk and this is clearly important to their bonding with their caregivers.”

As the BBC article points out, Addyman’s research seems to disprove Freud’s theory of laughter. At the end of the day, laughter is social, he would argue, and not necessarily a way to make fun of others’ misfortunes or to blow off steam. 

Addyman’s argument seems in line with the video below. After all, what’s a more social setting than a classroom full of young children? Using Addyman’s social explanation of laughter, we might understand this young boy’s delight as related to his relationship with his teacher. Like a game of Peekaboo, which allows babies to recognize that another individual is interacting with them, the teacher’s guitar playing is funny insofar as the young boy realizes that it is a social interaction between two individuals, two different people. Or maybe we’re overanalyzing this, and it’s just as simple as the song's silliness! In any case, the video is likely to make you smile and laugh regardless of whether we understand why, though the explanations remain fascinating.

Were you able to watch without smiling along with him? Let us know — and pass this along to your friends and family to brighten their day!