Parents embarrassing their kids

Like most soon-to-be-high-schoolers, Hannah and Ben Cohen (pictured here with mom Dorene) are pretty easily embarrassed by their parents, especially, it seems, when they are shopping in public. (Photo:www.lawellphoto.com)

For three years, I did exactly what I was not supposed to do as the parent of a middle-schooler. Every morning in carpool line, when my older daughter would leave the car and head down the walkway into school, already encumbered by a colossal pink backpack and the daily providence of middle school, my younger daughter would roll down the back-seat car window. Then she’d stick her head out of the window and yell at the top of her lungs, “BYE SISTER! I LOVE YOU! HAVE A GREAT DAY!” And with a giant satisfied smile, she’d quietly roll the window back up, and we’d be on our way.

I did not stop this. Actually, I must admit to encouraging it just a tiny bit by intentionally not locking the passenger windows. But it was worse than that. For the entire first year of this routine, temperature be damned, my younger daughter wore a bright blue, Cookie Monster knit hat with earflaps and googly eyes on top of her head. This is what was hanging out of the window yelling at her sister, earflap pompoms blowing in the breeze.

It was perversely pleasurable, this turn of events, my daughter being the one embarrassed, I having the perspective (and age) to enjoy it. I grew up embarrassed. Pretending like my mother didn’t actually sing to my fifth grade class. (I still cringe.) Like my dad didn’t drive my friends and me to Madonna and Phil Collins concerts in a van emblazoned with “The Eye Clinic of Texas” along the sides. (Consolation: He bought the seats, and they were good.) What is it they say about becoming your parents? My poor children.

Recently I surveyed a few teenaged kids to get their thoughts on embarrassing parents. (Many declined to talk to me. Too embarrassing.) Ben Feldman, 18 and about to go off to the University of Washington in Seattle, has us summed up. “In my mind my dad doesn’t accidentally embarrass me,” Ben says. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.

“For instance, during my bar mitzvah party he put a naked baby photo in the slide show that everyone saw. I refuse to believe he just didn’t know he was embarrassing me! But on the off chance that he’s just oblivious to the things he says around my friends, basically he should just think before he talks. Dirty jokes are funny, but they’re weird coming from parents.”

When I called Hannah Cohen to ask what her mom does that’s embarrassing, she said, “She’s not that bad at embarrassing me. But my brother is looking at me saying otherwise.”

Hannah and her twin brother Ben, both entering ninth grade at St. John’s School, say it’s hard just to shop with their parents. “It’s probably worst when she’s picking out extremely ugly clothes in stores and yelling, ‘Hannah, come try this on!’ Everyone looks over at her and I try to look the other way and ignore it a little bit. But I’ve never walked away and been like, ‘I don’t know who this lady is.’ That would just be mean. I just feel like it’s awkward and everyone’s looking at me.”

Her brother Ben says his mom doesn’t embarrass him as much as she does his sister. But pretty quickly he comes up with his own stories about shopping with his dad. He recalls being at a shoe store “where they sell shoes with pink sequins and the sort of shoes that are basketball shoes of many colors, not the sort of shoes I’d wear.” He was mortified just to be there. That his father would suggest finding shoes in that particular locale – even worse.

Alec Gibson, entering ninth grade at The Kinkaid School, says it’s mostly his parents’ dealings with his younger siblings that set him off. “Like if we’re in line at Pappas Burger, and my brother [who is 10] refuses to order, my parents try to make him [to teach him how]. But other people are waiting behind us. It’s just unnecessary, wasting other people’s time like that.”

Ben, Hannah, Ben and Alec are relatively lucky. Their parents aren’t the mom we saw on Facebook who had posted a picture of her teenaged son holding a frozen (nonalcoholic) drink with the line below reading, “This is a virgin.”

But they’re teenagers. And just about everything is an embarrassment. I’m pretty sure I’m mortifying someone just writing this. So if whatever we do, however benign, is going to elicit eye-rolls, why not have a little fun?