What to Do When Your Kid Has a Truly Embarrassing Moment at School: A Teacher’s Real Story
The portable ramp at our elementary school has always been wobbly. It was October 2019, our annual fall fair, I was toting a tray of double-chocolate brownies a parent had dropped off that morning, wearing my brand-new cream cardigan I’d bought on sale the weekend before because the October air had turned crisp. I’d just chased a kid who’d stolen a lollipop from the snack table, and I was waving at my class’s parent volunteer holding down the bake sale booth, when my heel caught on the uneven edge of the ramp. Next thing I knew, I was on my back in the patch of wet mud next to the ramp, brownies flying everywhere, half of them sticking to my cardigan and my jeans.
The whole fair went quiet for half a second, then every head turned toward me. Before I could even push myself up, I heard Leo, my loud, fidgety third grader I’d sent to the office twice that month for talking during math, yell at the top of his lungs from 10 feet away: “MS. L, DID YOU FART?”
I pushed myself up, my face burning so bad I could feel the heat in my earlobes. The superintendent, who the principal had been giving a tour that day, was standing right there, and he covered his mouth but his shoulders were shaking. I mumbled something about the stupid ramp, grabbed my cracked plastic tray, and walked as fast as I could to the teacher’s lounge, where I hid in the bathroom for 20 minutes trying to scrub mud off my cardigan and replaying the moment over and over. I kept thinking every kid in the school was talking about me, that I’d ruined the fair, that the superintendent thought I was a mess. It was the most embarrassed I’d ever been in my life, no exceptions.
After the fair wrapped up, I went back to my classroom to pack my bag for the day, and there was a soft knock on the door. It was Leo, twisting the string of his dinosaur hoodie, scuffing his sneakers on the welcome mat. He said he was sorry. He said when I fell, everyone went quiet and he panicked, he didn’t know what to say, so that just came out. He said he didn’t mean to make it worse.
I sat him down on the reading rug, gave him a leftover granola bar from my desk, and thought about all the times that year Leo had had his own embarrassing moments. The time he accidentally called me “mom” in front of the whole class and ran out of the room crying. The time he knocked over the whole bin of mosaic tiles during art and tried to hide under his desk because he was sure everyone was laughing at him. The time he got a bloody nose during assembly and ran out before anyone could help him because he didn’t want everyone staring at his bloody shirt. Every time, I’d gone after him and said “it’s okay, it was just an accident, no one cares.” But standing there covered in mud a few hours earlier, I realized I had no idea what I was talking about. I cared. Everyone was looking, and it was the worst feeling in the world, and no amount of “it’s okay” was making it less embarrassing in that moment.
That’s when it clicked. Embarrassment isn’t something we need to fix or brush under the rug for kids. Most of the time, we make it worse by acting like it didn’t happen, or like it’s no big deal, when it’s the biggest deal in the world to them.
After that day, I changed a few small, concrete things in my classroom, and I share these tips with parents at every conference now. The first thing is, instead of leading with “it’s no big deal”, I name the feeling first. If a kid trips walking up to the front of the class, or spills their juice all over their homework, or has an accident in their pants, I just say “that was so embarrassing, right? I still remember when I fell in the mud at the fall fair and everyone thought I farted. Embarrassing moments are the worst.” Just saying it out loud takes the power away. No one has to pretend they’re not dying inside.
The second thing is, I don’t force kids to draw extra attention to themselves when they’re already embarrassed. Before, if a kid knocked over supplies or disrupted class by accident, I’d have them apologize to the whole group. Now, if it’s an accident, we just clean it up and move on. If they want to say sorry, they can, but they don’t have to stand in front of everyone while they’re already red-faced.
For parents, the biggest change I recommend is this: if your kid comes home crying about an embarrassing moment, don’t start by minimizing it. Don’t say “no one even noticed” or “it wasn’t that bad”. Instead, say “tell me what the worst part was. That sounds awful.” Let them be upset without trying to fix it right away. Last year, a mom told me she tried this when her fifth grader came home saying he’d thrown up in the lunch line and refused to go back to school. Instead of saying “everyone gets sick sometimes”, she said “that sounds like the absolute worst thing that could happen at school. I’d want to hide in the car forever too.” Her son cried for 12 minutes straight, then said “okay, can we get ice cream after school? I think I can go back tomorrow.”
It’s been four years since that fall fair. Kids who were in my class that year still bring it up sometimes. I have a silly note taped to my desk from the 2019 class that says “World Famous Brownie Mud Incident” and everyone signed it. I still cringe a little when I think about it, honestly. It was embarrassing. It still is, a little. But that day taught me more about how to support kids than any teaching workshop I’ve ever been to. We all still have embarrassing moments. The least we can do is let kids feel theirs, instead of making them pretend it doesn’t hurt.
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