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Your Most Embarrassing Parenting Moment?
The Moser family had a rare opportunity to visit the White House and meet President Obama. In what must be every politically connected parent’s worst nightmare, their toddler chose that once-in-a-lifetime moment to fall on the floor and throw a tantrum.
The image began attracting attention when the girl’s uncle, a columnist for the New York Times, posted it to his Twitter account.
As the parent of two girls, I have suffered my share of public meltdowns and the dirty looks from strangers. The businessman loudly grumbling “oh, great” when I walked down an airplane aisle only to park my crying infant behind him. The mean girls at the college coffeehouse rolling their eyes as my toddler rolled on the floor between tables. The haughty Vacation Bible School parents scandalized that instead of singing “This Little Light of Mine,” my kid glared at the audience as she yawned and picked her nose.
Most parents of older kids are quick to give sympathetic looks to the family dealing with such embarrassments. We’ve all been there. I’m just thankful no White House photographers were present to capture my kids’ less than precious moments.
What mortified me more than kiddie tantrums were when my child innocently said something completely inappropriate. One December day, I had to bring my precocious four-year-old daughter to get her blood drawn. We walked into the overcrowded waiting room to find only one seat available, so she sat on my lap.
Being filled with the Christmas spirit, she marveled at the artificial tree and the cheap lights hanging hither and yon. Then she looked at the kindly man next to me, a Sikh sporting a magnificent beard and a traditional white turban. Her mouth dropped open and a huge smile appeared. In a voice so loud it hurt my ears she yelled, “Look, Daddy! A WISE MAN!”
As the Sikh gentleman and I stared at each other for a second of stunned silence, a nurse called our name and I grabbed my daughter’s hand. As we rushed to the lab room, my daughter yelled, “HE’S COOL!” To this day, I hope that guy realizes that was the greatest compliment she could have given him.
I want to know when your child utterly mortified you. Deliver your most embarrassing anecdotes, Ricochetti.
Published in Culture
With 3 young adults now, I’ve had my share of those moments. My first one was a 90s classic. My eldest, then a toddler was with me at the local market/deli. He had a favorite song at that time, which we played often because he would dance around and we would take movies like new parents do, and laugh.
His favorite song? “HammerTime” by MCHammer. (I did say the 90s)
We are grocery shopping in the produce section, next to the deli where local business people would come for sandwiches at lunchtime. I’m concentrating on my shopping list not noticing how excited he’s getting, sitting in the grocery cart seat. Suddenly it registers with me what he’s saying: “HammerTime, Mama, HammerTime”. I look at my little guy and he’s gesturing to a well dressed man standing several feet away, in a suit, with stylish aviator glasses on, and a nice fade hair cut. The gentleman also happens to be African-American and does sort of look like MC Hammer, had MC been an investment banker.
My little darling’s exclamations had not gone unnoticed, in fact it seemed I’d been the only one who had temporarily tuned it out.
I was mortified.
Fortunately, the gentleman in question found it quite humorous as he actually laughed and waved to my son. Which only encouraged his enthusiasm that this was “HammerTime” in the flesh. I waved and said a weak “sorry” with an embarrassed laugh and rolled the cart toward the dairy section as quickly as possible.
A bit later, rolling our bags out to the car, we saw MC again, enjoying his sandwich outside at the bistro tables. This time he beat my now sleepy one to it, and called out to me, “HammerTime” with a big smile.
Thank God for a sense of humor.
Standing in front of the whole church for child dedication with our five- and two-year-old boys. After the pastor charged us, as parents, to raise our boys with love, patience and grace, it was time to pray. Our pastor paused to gather his thoughts; we bowed our heads and closed our eyes; the church was breathlessly silent.
The five-year-old chose that moment to start noisily messing with the podium. I softly put my hand around his upper arm, to slowly and gently pull him away from the podium . . . and he pierced the hushed silence with a scream, at the top of his lungs, “Ow, Dad, you’re hurting me!!”
We found a new church a couple of years later.
Next week child #3 (aka son #2) will graduate from high school. Let us turn back the clock 15 years. He was three and we were at the local library. Hand in hand we walked among the books and videos.
Then he left out an almost imperceptible passage of gas. He looked up at me with his angelic face, smiled and at the top of his lungs yelled, “THAT CAME OUT MY BUTT!!”
Every head in the place was suddenly looking at me. Now he’s a teenager and it’s my turn to embarrass him.
Here’s one of many. A couple of years ago my youngest daughter, then age 4, was in a Christmas show at a local retirement community. She was wearing tights under her dress, and apparently they were too loose, because they kept sliding down. You couldn’t see the tights slip, but she kept hiking up her dress and pulling them up. While singing Christmas carols. Hilarious.
I see I have a lot to look forward to …
Unrelated to embarrassing moments, but why is Doug Stamper in this photo? I thought he was made up?
I’m not sure what is mine…but what comes to mind is the time we went to my bosses house, which was being built. It was just framed up, only plywood on the floors, no drywall. My son, in diapers, crapped himself with such intensity that it came out of the diaper all over the wood floors. I had no idea what to do.
Disney World, in the Star Wars gift shop passing time with my 4 year old son while the more adventurous went on the ride. We got in line to buy him a candy bar. Suddenly my son started waving his candy bar in the direction of the black clerk and yelling “Black guy! Black guy!” The clerk, the only African American in Disney, pretended not to hear, bless him. Everyone else within earshot gasped and stopped talking. I was utterly mystified and mortified at this apparent rude impatience and bizarre interest in the clerk’s race. “We have to wait our turn” I told him as I wished for the earth to swallow us up. They don’t warn you about having to endure this kind of public humiliation when you sign up for parenthood.
A little while later after we made our purchase, my son pointed to a shelf that had been behind the clerk when we were waiting in line. There were several Darth Vader masks there. “See Mom! Black guy!”
Many.
Now I have four kids, all within two years of each other, and the two boys are the oldest. And their blood is all Irish, so they fight. (My brother is a year older than me. We fought constantly. My dad and his older brother were a year apart. They fought.)
When they did it during mass, it limited my options. You can’t threaten to kill the child in the cathedral (which happened to be our parish in the first few years) during the gospel. It’s frowned upon, apparently.
My kids routinely started a fight during the homily. One kid would accuse the other of smacking him in the back of the head, or some other agitation, and they’d start fighting. So embarrassing. It would always require Dad to take the kids out of church to calm them down. Poor Dad would miss the homily. So embarrassing to always miss the homily.
Do you think they ever figured out who really started the agitating? Probably still don’t realize it to this day …
KC, sometimes you just have to grit your teeth. I think Southern Catholics refer to it as “homily grits.”
She must have just learned what is her share of the national debt.
I have sympathy for Claudia, that would probably be my reaction during a visit to the Obama White House.
Dadgum shame about missing those homilies.
Can’t think of any at the moment. I was pretty good at ‘frowning’ on stuff. I do recall the time my daughter, then seven, decided to teach her brother, five, to cook eggs. So she put an egg in the microwave and cooked it. Whole.
That failed, as you might expect. She figured ‘defective egg’ and tried it again. Twice. Finally something woke me up (I was on mids, mom was having coffee with the landlady who lived upstairs) and I went into the kitchen. In my rented house. In Germany. It was incredible. Did you know eggs will explode out of a microwave? And somehow manage to cover the textured ceiling. And everything else.
At least it smelled really, really bad.
During Mass and after a prayer referencing the Blessed Mother, older daughter, then 7 or 8, asks, “Mommy, what’s a virgin?” I pause and give an age appropriate answer. After a few moments as she thinks about the answer, “Mommy, am I a virgin?” “Yes and for many years to come.”
Probably the most personally embarrasing was the time my then 4 year-old daughter turned to a lady behind us in line at the store and said in complete deadpan, “My dad is hairier than Chewbacca.”
Sadly, I don’t have kids of my own, but I have a passel of nephews and nieces. In the spirit of #1 and #8: About 25 years ago, first nephew was 3 or 4. Dad took him to a store, where he encountered an African-American for the first time. Long pause, eyes open wide, top of his voice – “Dad! It’s Cosby!” Mortification on my brother-in-law’s side; good humor on “Cosby’s.”
When my second hit about 18 months, he started the terrible 2s with a vengeance. Whenever I went to the grocery store I just got used to the glares as I pushed a cart with a screaming child the whole time. He would also throw a fit whenever we left the park. It got to where I wouldn’t go anymore because I was sure it was only a matter of time before someone called the police to report that a child was being abducted.
I think the worst, tho, was when he was 3.5. We were celebrating Christmas Eve with a bunch of family and we discovered that he was having digestive issues when he pooped behind the host’s Christmas tree.
Any of you have a young’un in the family who, when encouraged to play by himself for a few minutes, goes off and cheerfully builds a full-scale Lego model of a genocide?
“Aunt Claire, look! All of those red pieces are blood! From where they got hacked to death! And now they’re going to steal the dead guys’ weapons and use them to invade the next city!”
“Um … wow. That’s really clever. Um … what’s that thing?” (Pointing.)
“It’s a weapon that can blow up the whole world! They’re going to get it next.”
That’s normal for boys that age, right?
Exactly. Saddled with obligations and handed a weakened nation: you would cry too if it happened to you.
Claire’s story about LEGO reminds me of the time we had mandatory diversity training at work, and were given LEGO pieces to assemble anyway we wanted. Just for fun! Just for a break. I built a building, and used the circular pieces for smokestacks – but to my horror realized that I had segregated the colors. The main building was blue, the wall was red, the wings were white, and so on. An aesthetic choice, but I felt compelled to tell the instructor this did not reflect my opinion on integrated neighborhoods.
She nodded and smiled and I’m sure she looked at the smokestacks and thought I had made a little Auschwitz.
Anyway: yes, it’s normal. I used LEGO pieces to build jet planes which I crashed into mountains (the sofa) with attendant shrieks of AAAIIEEEE from the crew.
But they found the airbrake and stopped right before they hit the ground right?
OP’s post reminds me of this gem:
My older son went through a phase at about 6 or 7 where he drew pictures of WWII battleships. Just a normal boy, right?
Except his always involved bleeding bodies of stick men being shot…
He moved from this into pictures of castles where they would throw dead animals over the walls to infect the people on the inside. Naturally, he pasted them all over our walls…naturally, I would forget to take them down..
This prompted questions from my crunchy-granola neighbors, psychology colleagues (both of whom felt it was a little too violent and “boy-ish”) and lastly, from the church friends with daughters, who didn’t understand how I could have pictures of bloody cows and men in my kitchen and dining room…
I also don’t have children, but many nieces & nephews. In the supermarket one day, the 5-year old was fussy and whiny and his dad was trying to hold him and calm him down. The boy was having none of it and kept hitting his father, crying “stop it! stop it!”
Not so embarrassing until you know that the boy had been raised in Israel. (They were visiting the US during this story.) Though the family spoke English at home, Hebrew was his native tongue. The Hebrew word for “stop it” sounds identical to “die”.
So all the shoppers saw this little kid hitting his dad and screaming “die! die!”. One person even said, “what a horrid child!”
We had five children in the late 70’s and early 80’s. We did so deliberately and with great joy. Occasionally, we got flack from people who thought we were: a) too young b) too poor c) thoughtless of the impact on Mother Gaia.
However, they’ve all grown up to be wonderful people, who support themselves and do good to others. There are so many wonderful stories…But here is just one.
We really wanted our children to grow up with facts, so we were careful to use the correct terminology for body parts. No “wee wees” or anything like that. Well, that found me at the Navy Hospital Orthopedic Clinic one morning, to check on our three year old’s pigeon toes. As we sat waiting our turn, we were the only pediatric patients. All the rest were young men in their late teens or early 20’s with a variety of fractured limbs as a result of, mostly, motorcycle accidents. The three year was quite gregarious, and began to wander around talking to guys. I realized that he was striking up conversations with each man he encountered.
He’d lean in and declare, “I have a penis. Do you have a penis?” …Just the facts, ma’am. It elicited reactions from acute embarrassment and a bright red face, to one fellow saying, “Yea! Dude! It’s the greatest, huh?” I quickly corralled him onto my lap, and smiled apologetically around at the other patients. Most of them just laughed and we all survived.
We were at the border crossing to Canada on a day when they were on the lookout for a young boy and girl who had been kidnapped. In those days it was recommended to bring birth certificates for kids, but I had forgotten.
I knew something was up after I apologized for forgetting the certificates for my baby boy and my daughter, almost 3. The suspicious border guard leaned into the window and asked my verbally precocious daughter a series of simple questions, then she said, “Is this your mum and dad?”
My daughter, in the first of many such instances, sensed an opportunity to make our vacation a little more exciting. She put her hands behind her head, and drawled with exaggerated casualness, “Oh, these people?…….. I just call them Melissa and Rick.”
What? I would think a NY Times columnist would expect people to prostrate themselves before Obama.
When we first bought our house it only had 1 bathroom. It the midst of potty training son #1 we had a BBQ. The bathroom was not only occupied but there was a line.
Time was of the essence, so I told him he could pee behind the garage.
Years later my favorite niece was staying with us for a week. She came in from the backyard, pale and shaken. I think she had the vapors. For son #1 had whipped it out and taken a leak behind the garage. And she’d seen it all … with only sisters, I’m fairly certain it was a first.
I grabbed son #1 and asked him what in the name of God he was thinking? He looked genuinely confused. “Remember, you told me I could.” So what I thought was a one off was to him a life-time carte blanche.
We’ve since added on two more bathrooms, but oddly still nothing grows behind the garage …
Proof that there are some places we should not take our children. I love my kids but realize they are not as cute and adorable to everyone else.
Some situations cannot be avoided however.
My oldest daughter, when 3 or 4 was previously admonished for decrying physical characteristics of random folks in public places. While in an elevator and in an attempt to prove she was on board with “not criticizing” people in public, she noted a morbidly obese woman. She remarked to her mother, “She’s not fat huh momma?”
We used to call these places “the land of too many rules.” That generally dampened our kids enthusiasm about going.
My older son was about 4 and attended a Christmas Eve service with friends of ours. I am a big believer in children not having to attend adult services given that it just distracts everyone, and most kids can’t sit still or quietly that long. However, my son was doing a fantastic job, but it was getting late, he’d eaten all his snacks and he was a little cranky. Then, they served Communion. At this point, I was ready to leave, but we were in the middle of a long crowded row in the back. So, we were stuck…
Now, this is a Baptist church, so the “bread” resembles what is left in your teeth after eating a dry, saltine cracker. It is generally not the sort of thing you ask for more of.
As the plate was passed, my 4 year old yelled out in the quiet, candlelit service…Hey! Why won’t anybody give me any bread?! I want some bread to eat!
At that point, it was over for me…I shook with laughter for the rest of the service, while making unkind judgments about those who didn’t view it with the amusement I and my husband did.