What To Do When Your Child Says ‘I Embarrassed Myself In Class And I’m The Worst At Everything’
I was leaning against my dented minivan after school last week, scrolling through a grocery list on my phone, when my 12-year-old Lila rounded the corner of the school building. Her backpack slipped off one shoulder, her hood was pulled up even though it was 65 degrees out, and she didn’t wave like she usually does. She just climbed into the passenger seat, slammed the door harder than necessary, and stared out the side window until we hit the red light three blocks from school. That’s when she blurted it: “I embarrassed myself in class today. I’m just the worst at everything.”
I almost opened my mouth with the automatic response I’ve defaulted to a hundred times before: It’s not that big of a deal. No one even cares. You’re great at lots of things. But I stopped myself, because I can still remember standing in front of my 7th grade class giving a book report, forgetting every single word after the first sentence, and standing there while my ears burned so hot I thought I’d pass out. I didn’t tell anyone about that memory for 10 years, so I know it feels huge when it’s happening.
I turned off the low podcast I had playing, and said, “What happened? That sounds awful.” She told me: English class, they had to read their original poetry out loud. She’d stayed up two nights writing hers about our old cat that died last winter, she was really proud of it, but when she got to the front of the room, her throat went tight. She stuttered over the first line, then her mind went completely blank. A couple of boys in the back snickered. She mumbled “sorry” and walked out to the water fountain in the hall to catch her breath, and didn’t go back up to finish.
By the time she was done talking, she was picking at a loose thread on her jeans so hard it pulled a small hole. She started listing every other bad thing that’s happened to her in the last month: she got a C- on her algebra quiz, she spilled lemonade on her new jeans at the homecoming dance, she missed the easy shot that would’ve won her rec league soccer game the weekend before. All of it got dumped into this one big pile that added up to “I’m bad at everything.”
This is the part I’ve had to learn the hard way as a parent, especially with a middle schooler. One small embarrassing moment doesn’t stay small. Their brains pull every other uncorrected mistake, every awkward interaction, every tiny failure from the last six months and glue them all together into one big proof that they don’t measure up. I used to argue with her when she did this, pointing out all the things she’s good at, but that never works. She just thinks I’m saying it because I have to, not because it’s true.
We got home, and I didn’t push her to talk more right away. I told her I’d make hot cocoa, she could go sit in her room for as long as she wanted. Fifteen minutes later she wandered out into the kitchen, still glum, and leaned against the counter while I stirred the marshmallows. I grabbed a scrap of notebook paper and a pen from the junk drawer, and pushed them across the counter to her. “Write down every single thing that’s making you feel like garbage right now,” I said. “One thing per line.”
She rolled her eyes, but did it. When she was done, we had four lines: 1. Forgot my poem and embarrassed myself in front of everyone. 2. C- on algebra quiz. 3. Missed the winning goal at soccer. 4. Spilled lemonade on my new pants at the dance. Then I pulled the paper toward me, and said, “Let’s add another column: what happened after each of these things. Let’s go one by one.”
First line: forgot poem. “Did anyone say anything mean to you after class?” She thought for a minute. “Mia asked if I was okay when I came back. Mrs. Henderson said I could try again another day if I wanted. No one said anything.” That went in the second column: Only Mia asked if I was okay. No one was mean.
Second line: C- on quiz. “Why’d you get a C-?” She admitted she stayed up until 11 scrolling TikTok instead of studying the night before. “What’d you get on the homework after that?” B+, she said. So that went in: Messed up because I didn’t study, got a B on the next homework.
We went through the rest: after she missed the goal, her coach said it was a good try and her team bought her a Gatorade after the game. After she spilled lemonade, her friend lent her an extra sweatshirt to wear the rest of the night. Then I asked her to write down three small things that went right in the last week that she hadn’t mentioned. At first she complained, but she came up with: I helped the little first grader tie her shoe at the bus stop. I finished the drawing I’ve been working on for my friend’s birthday. Mrs. Henderson said she liked my poem even if I didn’t read it out loud.
I texted Mrs. Henderson that night to check in, just to let her know how upset Lila was, and she told me she didn’t push Lila to read it the next day, just asked if she wanted to put a copy up on the classroom poetry wall if she was comfortable. Lila said yes, actually. That’s the kind of small, thoughtful choice that works way better than forcing a kid to “get back on the horse” immediately when they’re still humiliated.
This whole process works a lot better than me jumping in to fix it, I’ve found. Most of the time, when kids say they’re the worst at everything after an embarrassing moment, they don’t need you to make the feeling go away right now. They just need you to help them untangle one bad moment from the rest of their whole life. A few small, concrete things I’ve learned that anyone can do: first, don’t dismiss the embarrassment. Instead of “it’s no big deal,” say “that sounds so humiliating” to validate it first. Second, if they’re lumping all their mistakes together, writing them down one by one makes them feel smaller, instead of one big scary blob. Third, don’t just list their big achievements to counter it—ask them to name small, recent good things they’ve done, because those feel more real than generic praise.
The next day, Lila went to school, and when I picked her up she said no one had mentioned the poem at all. We still have days where this happens. Last week, she messed up her serve at volleyball practice and came out saying the same thing: I’m just the worst at everything. Some days she doesn’t want to write anything down, she just wants to eat a cookie alone in her room for 20 minutes, and that’s fine too. It doesn’t go away overnight, this habit of turning one bad moment into proof that everything is wrong. But we’re getting better at sorting through the pile, one mistake at a time.
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