When does a joke become a dad joke?

When the punchline is a parent.

When does it become so much more than a joke? When it helps your child learn how to deal with embarrassment.

A Danish scientist wrote an op-ed published by the British Psychological Society on the value of dad jokes, which he likened to the tendency of fathers to play-wrestle with their children.

“By continually pushing and challenging their children, fathers’ style of rough-and-tumble play supports their children’s physical and cognitive development in important ways while teaching them to regulate their behaviours and emotions,” Marc Hye-Knudsen, a “humour researcher” and the lab manager at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Lab, wrote.

Likewise, dad jokes, by being embarrassingly bad, accustom or even inure children to mild embarrassment. “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,” he said.

With teenage anxiety on the rise, and social comparison plaguing every minute of many young people’s lives thanks to social media, some immunity to embarrassment could go a long way these days. In a tech-saturated culture that is less forgiving and less forgetting, these skills aren’t mere salves to temporary emotional distress, but could be crucial to happiness.

So the next time your daughter tells you she’s mortified, show her this article — or simply say, “Hi, Mortified. I’m Dad.”