Why Kids Laugh When Someone Gets Embarrassed at School — A Parent’s Story
The question that stays with me isn’t about my favorite teacher or my best grade. It’s about the worst thing that happened at my school. You’d think it would be a bad grade or a fight. It’s not. The worst thing is the time I laughed at a girl who dropped her lunch tray.
We were in seventh grade, the week before spring break. The cafeteria was loud in that restless way it gets when the weather turns warm. I sat at a long table with my friends, eating a rubbery slice of pizza. A quiet girl from math class, named Abby, walked past with her tray. Maybe her foot caught on a backpack strap. Maybe someone stuck out a leg. I never saw, and it doesn’t matter. The tray tilted. Time moved in a slow blink. Then everything went down: milk carton skidding under a table, applesauce spreading across the linoleum.
What happened next has become a permanent memory of who I was at 13. The cafeteria broke into laughter. Not the warm, funny kind. The kind that spreads because it’s contagious. Kids pointed. Someone whistled. The boys nearest the spill laughed hardest. And I laughed too. A pure reflex. The sound of everyone around me doing the same thing.
Abby did what kids do when they’re at the center of an unwanted event. She tried to smile. Then she bit her lip, knelt down, and started picking up her pizza from the floor. The moment moved on. I don’t remember anyone helping her.
That was decades ago. I didn’t think about her for years. Then I became a parent, and you start to revisit the person you were. The memory came back suddenly: me with my mouth open, mid-laugh; Abby on the floor in that half-crouched posture. And I felt something that didn’t arrive at the time: shame. Not guilt exactly. Guilt is when you’ve broken a rule. Shame is when you’ve shown other people who you are.
That memory has reshaped how I talk to my kids about school. What surprises me is that no adult pulled any of us aside that day. No one said, “That’s not funny.” The worst thing wasn’t being caught or punished. It was watching myself laugh at a small act of unkindness and then continuing to eat my lunch like nothing had happened.
That’s the world schools don’t always talk about. Teachers watch for big, obvious bullying. They catch names being called, shoves, slams. But the everyday moments of humiliation—the lunch spill, the tripped step, the kid who can’t find a seat—those fill the corners. They teach their own lesson. They teach kids that if you laugh with the crowd, you’re safe. They teach the rest that the crowd decides who matters.
Now, when my daughter comes home and says, “Everyone laughed at Sam today,” I try not to jump in with a lecture. I wait until she finishes talking. Then I ask one small thing: “And what did you do after?” I’m not looking for a confession. I’m looking to see if she knows the next part matters. Did Sam look okay? Did she ask him? Or did everyone drift away?
That question is worth holding onto. The laugh is a reaction. The after is a choice. You don’t have to be the hero who risks looking weird. You can be the one who asks a small question later. “Hey, that was a rough one yesterday. Are you okay?” It’s not a fancy form of kindness. But it’s the difference between riding the wave and helping someone stand back up.
When my daughter was younger, she told me at the bus stop that she’d laughed at a boy who tripped and spilled his water bottle. She didn’t feel good about it. My first instinct was to say, “You shouldn’t laugh. How would you feel?” Instead, I told her that laughter is a reflex, and even adults laugh at the wrong moments. What matters is what you do in the next 30 seconds. You don’t need to correct an entire crowd. You just need to not need another laugh. The boy didn’t want an audience. He wanted a napkin.
I sometimes wonder about Abby. I don’t know her last name. I don’t know if she remembers that day. Maybe it slipped away before lunch ended. The memories we carry from school are strange that way. Sometimes the kids we laughed at have no idea we still think about them. But the worst thing that happened at my school didn’t happen to me. It happened to her. And its real weight landed on me anyway, thirty years later.
I’m not going to tell kids to be kind. They’ve heard it a thousand times. I’m not going to tell parents to have big conversations, either. What I can do is watch for the ordinary moments. The lunchroom laughs. The thirty seconds after someone’s embarrassment. That’s where real learning happens. We don’t need interventions. We need to be present for the follow-up question. Because that’s what was missing that day. Nobody asked Abby if she was okay. And nobody asked me why I laughed.
These days, if my daughter laughs at something she knows she shouldn’t, I wait a beat. Then I ask, “So did you do anything afterward?” It’s not a perfect answer. But it’s a start. I’m not sure it’s the right one, honestly. I just know a thirty-year-old memory can change the way you see the seats at a lunch table. I want to be someone who, at least sometimes, looks at the table and doesn’t laugh.
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