What To Do When Your Kid Says ‘I Embarrassed Myself In Class and I’m the Worst At Everything’
I was leaning against my minivan by the middle school bike rack last week, scrolling through a grocery list, when I spotted my 12-year-old Lila coming toward the parking lot. Her hood was pulled up over her curly hair, her backpack with the broken unicorn zipper hunched over one shoulder, and she wasn’t waving like she usually does when she sees me. She climbed into the back seat, slammed the door, and stared at her shoes while I pulled out of the lot.
“Rough day?” I asked.
That’s when she said it, mumbled into the sleeve of her sweatshirt: “I embarrassed myself in front of everyone. I’m just the worst at everything.”
She’d had her 5-minute oral science presentation that morning, on bee population decline. She’d stayed up two nights in a row practicing her note cards, even made little drawings of different bee species to tape to her slides. Halfway through, she got to the part about pesticides, and her mind went completely blank. She stood there for what felt like forever, she said, until a boy in the back row made a high-pitched static noise like a broken TV, and the whole class laughed. Her teacher just told her she could take her seat and called the next person up.
By the time we pulled into the driveway, she was wiping her eyes on her sleeve, and she stormed straight to her room and shut the door before I could say anything else.
A couple of years ago, I would have followed right behind her, ready to fix everything. I would have said “It’s not that big of a deal, no one cares” or “You’re not the worst at anything, you’re amazing at drawing and soccer” or even “I’ll email your teacher right now and ask if you can redo it tomorrow.” I’ve done all those things after past bad days, and every single time, it just made her shut down more. She’d say I didn’t get it, and I’d leave her room feeling frustrated, like why can’t she just see this isn’t the end of the world?
I talked to Lila’s school counselor about this pattern a few months back, when she came home after dropping her lunch tray in the cafeteria and announced she’d never eat in the cafeteria again because she was the worst at everything. The counselor gave me a few small, specific things to try that have actually worked better than any of my big fix-it attempts.
First, don’t lead with fixing. I knocked on Lila’s door that day, cut up a Honeycrisp apple (her favorite) and put it on a plate with her favorite herby crackers, and brought it in. I set it on her dresser next to her half-burned out fairy lights, and said “That sounds so awful. I’d want to hide too. I’ll be downstairs if you want to talk more.” Then I left. That’s it. I didn’t push her to cheer up, I didn’t contradict how she felt. 10 minutes later, she texted me from her room to come back up.
When you’re a kid or preteen, one embarrassing moment doesn’t just feel like a bad moment—it feels like the whole truth about who you are. That’s not overreacting, that’s just how their brains are working right now. They’re still learning to separate one bad experience from their whole identity, and they assume everyone around them is paying way more attention to their mistakes than they actually are. Contradicting that feeling right off the bat just tells them you don’t understand, so they stop talking.
When she’d finished crying and told me every last cringey detail, I didn’t jump in with pre-planned reassurance. I asked her one simple question: “Who was the last kid who messed up a presentation in your class?” She thought for a full 30 seconds, then frowned and said “Um… I think Mia did, two months ago? Wait no, maybe it was Jake.” I said “What did Mia do wrong again?” She shrugged and said “I don’t even remember. It wasn’t that big a deal.” That was all I needed. She paused, then said “Oh. So you think everyone’s already forgotten mine?” I told her most kids were too busy worrying about their own presentations to remember hers a day from now, and the ones who do remember won’t care.
For teachers who see this happen in the moment, there’s a small adjustment that makes a huge difference, too. Next time a kid freezes up or messes up in front of the class, don’t just rush them to sit down. You can say “It’s so hard to get up in front of everyone, isn’t it? Let’s take one breath together. Would you rather try again in a minute, or sit down and we’ll circle back to you after everyone else goes?” That gives the kid a choice, and it normalizes the mistake instead of making it feel like something to run from and hide.
We still aren’t perfect at this. Last week, three days after the presentation, Lila messed up three serves in a row during PE scrimmage, and came home saying the exact same line: I embarrassed myself, I’m the worst at everything. I did the same thing—named the feeling, asked her if she remembered the last time someone else messed up a serve, and by dinner she was laughing about it with my little brother. It doesn’t erase the embarrassment in the moment, and it doesn’t make these feelings go away forever. Some days she still leaves school convinced one bad moment defines her, and some days I still forget the counselor’s advice and jump in to fix things too fast.
Last I checked, no one’s still talking about Lila’s blank moment during the bee presentation. She’s already moved on to worrying about her next book report, and I’m still learning to sit with the bad feelings instead of running from them with empty reassurance. It’s a work in progress, for both of us.
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