Hey guys!
So I'm deciding to be pretty random. I'm not going to ask your opinion about books we've been reading in class or really anything we've talked about in class. There is something I have always wondered because it happened so many times with my friends growing up, particularly with my best friend, a girl named Stephanie. Stephanie's dad always made the funniest jokes and the rest of her friends and I thought he was hilarious. However, when he made one of his hilarious jokes steph always got really embarassed and was like "dad, god!" This happened with a lot of my friends parents or other family members.
So my questions for you are do we get embarassed by family members simply because they are related to us? Or did you never experience this because all your friends think their parents are really cool? I would also love to hear some of the crazy things members of your family do because lets face it, we all have someone who we think does particularly strange stuff.
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The reason we are so easily embarassed by our relatives is because we share a certain bond. When we see them do something silly or crazy, even if it's no where near as crazy as what we do in our free time, we feel like their insanity is going to spread to us like a disease.
The reason parents have figured out that this works so well is because, when we were younger, we would act like fools in public, they would get embarassed because they were afraid people would judge them, and they did what they could to hide it. Now they want us to know how they felt. But they can't very well act like fools in public, neither of us know these masses, we as children can act like we don't know them, something parents can't do. So they choose something even better, people who are our friends, or worse, people who are their friends.
You see, if they act silly in front of your friends, you can say "sorry my mom is acting this way, she's just trying to embarass me, let's never hang out here again!" If it's their friends, one, they are older and we think that they'll find the anecdote or action more childish, two, they probably don't know you as well and this is now their perception of you, and three, you can't say, "sorry my mom is acting like this, she doesn't usually," they know your mother, and probably also know worse things that she's done, and then they'll tell you about it, and you'll feel even more embarassed.
My parents and brother embarassed me for the first 15 years of my life. Then I took drama, had no self-respect (not literally, I was just doing stupider things because they were fun), and now I'm not embarassed, I'm just embarassing.
I like that idea, I never thought about why parents like to show embarrassing baby pictures and things like that. You are absolutely right, its from us as children crying and running around in public and embarrassing our parents. I however, luckily, don't have the mom who loves to pull out the naked baby bath pictures whenever a friend comes over, but she does love to tell funny stories. I think thats the extent of it, but the most embarrassing thing about having people over is my 15 year old brothers. They really just love to run around and make complete fools of themselves, especially when I have people over. What is it with boys and loving to punch eachother until the other one can't move his arm/leg?
I never really thought that my parents would purposely embarass me, but now thinking about it, I am feeling a bit suspicious about why they always seem to want to tell embarassing stories about me. I think your point is really interesting, almost like our parents are out for revenge...ha ha just kidding :P.
Personally, I don't think our parents are that conscious of the fact that they are embarassing us. I believe that when my parents tell stories that I think are embarassing, they are just telling a story that they remember and cherish. I mean, no one is going to remember a really boring story. When I recall stories of my childhood, I most vivdly remember either the really embarassing/funny or sad moments. Half the time, I don't think my parents realize they are embarassing me.
Also, my family can tell embarassing stories and such since we are so close. We always joke around with each other, so I guess embarassing me is just kind of teasing. I get embarassed, but I usually get over it pretty quickly. Being related makes it really easy to be embarassed by one another, since family spends so much time together that everyone's quirky, slightly embarassing things all come out
and run risk of being shared with the rest of the world.
I think that it's an interesting theory that our parents are just getting back at us, but I don't think it's true, at least not in my family. My mom doesn't really tell embarrassing stories about me to my friends. Every once in awhile she'll bring them up, but that's only to make fun of me, and usually there's nobody around but family, so it doesn't really matter. My grandma, however, is always bragging about me, or reminiscing on the "good old days." That's always somewhat embarrassing because she tells everyone she knows everything about me, but I've realized that it's because she likes to talk and that she loves me.
So I would say yes, family members are usually better at embarrassing me because they know more about me and are able to get under my skin much easier. I think also that family members are embarrassing because there is such a strong bond and people are bound to associate you with your family, especially when they're being weird.
I don't think I've ever really been embarrassed by my parents or by my family before. As a matter of fact, neither have my friends. I think it has to do with that we all grew up together in a small town. Not to sound cliche but everyone literally knows you, your parents, your grandparents, or any other relatives that you have. Most of my friends parents grew up with my parents so there's so many stories of what they did when they were our age and believe me some of them are pretty crazy. Since everyone is "related" to each other by some means in our little town, I think that's one of the reasons why none of us are really embarrassed of our families.
My family and my friends families have acted pretty crazy before but we always know they're just joking. Plus it's always fun to poke fun at them about it after. :p
As far as telling embarrassing stories about each other, there's just as many family stories as there are friend stories. Since everyone laughs about it in the end, the embarrassing factors don't last very long if they were even there to begin.
I used to be embarrassed by my parents on a near-daily basis... but that was when I was a pre-teen, and ludicrously sensitive to that sort of thing. As I've gotten older, they embarrass me less and less. At this point in my life, I'm very proud of them more often than not.
I'm pretty sure I was never embarrassed by them just because they were related to me, though. I was embarrassed by them because they did things that I found, well, embarrassing at the time.
I don't really buy the theory that parents try to embarrass their kids as revenge. That doesn't mean that they never do. I think that the reason that parents seem to do that sort of thing deliberately is because they are ignorant of the social rules their kids follow. A story that may seem perfectly normal, cute, fun, etc. to adults can make either the kid or the parents look totally uncool/insane/childish in the eyes of young kids.
So to sum up, the generational divide is what makes parents inherently embarrassing to children.
I do not think that I have ever been really embarrassed by my parents (or at least from what I remember). My mom has always said and done weird things in front of my friends, but I have always been able to laugh about it and it has never really bothered me.
I think that when kids think their parents are being embarrassing is when they are being overyly proud of them. For example, the baby pictures and childhood stories. Parents are just extremely proud of the children that they have raised and want to tell the world about where they came from, how much they have grown up and what they are accomplishing now. For instance, I work at the same place as my mom and somehow all of my coworkers know everything that I have done, am doing and what I'm planning to do without me telling them. Everyone tells me that my mom's favorite topic to talk about is my brother and I. Parents are just proud and that's all.
I think that the reason our parents embarrass us is because we try to empress our peers by filtering how much we let them know about us, and our parents simply know too much about us. Everyone likes to feel accepted. We tend to try to market ourselves to other people to try and seem "cooler," and if this means neglecting to inform our friends of silly things we did as toddlers (or still do) or choosing not to show the baby pictures, so be it. The problem is that parents don't seem to have the same filter as their children. What may seem a mortifying story about your younger self may seem to a parent as a cute story about their baby. I don't think that parents purposely punish us for any embarrassment we may have caused them when we were toddlers.
Personally, the times I've felt most embarrassed by my family was in middle school/ beginning of high school or the adolescent awkward stage. My mom was just one of those proud parents who didn't quite understand that I didn't want her bragging about me, and my dad just talked a lot. I know now that they were not trying to intentionally harm me, and all that embarrassment was in my head.
I've never been too embarassed by my parents. I just laughed or gave wierd looks at all the lame jokes and stories. When I went to lobo orientation, they had the parent student lunch thing where they raffled off prizes, and they wanted people to run up screaming when the won like they were on the price is right. My mom's number was called and she of course was sitting in like the furthest seat from the stage. Every other parent who won gave a slight yell and walked to the stage, but my mom, ooooh no. She ran up screaming the entire way and stopped only to grab my head, kiss it, and scream "my baby, my baby!" After getting her lobo blanket she continued to run and scream all the way back to her chair.
In this case, I know my mom was completely trying to embarass me. She told me afterwards how mad she thought I'd be. However, the people at loborientation wanted people to run and scream.... so they thought my mom was awesome and I was like yup, my mom's crazy. Even by this I really wasn't embarassed.
I think embarassment all depends on the situation. My parents embarassed me sometimes while I grew up, but not very often. My dad embarassed me whenever he tried to be witty with one of his puns. I usually ended up saying, "daaa-aad."
My mom really only embarassed me during volleyball games through high school. She got pretty dang excited and yelled a really high pitched, "whooooo!!" that was usually during a partially silent time in the game, or at least that's how I always saw it. Otherwise, my parents are just proud parents who love their baby girl and try not to embarass me. I think they know how sensitive I am and try to respect that.
I would have to agree with Ruth, that I believe the embarrassment from our parents is not a form of revenge but an unconscious way of them taking pride in us. I don't think they do it on purpose. And for the most part, at least in my experience, I'm the only one that finds their words or actions embarrassing... my friends or other family always just think it's awesome how much my parents care.
For example, recently I've been getting slightly embarrassed that my parents come to every football game now that I'm in the marching band. They wave at me from the stands and yell my name... and I find it a bit embarrassing because not very many parents even come to the games much less wave and yell.. But then I have to remember that this is the way my parents are showing their love and support for me and when I put it in that perspective it's pretty awesome. :)
In this situation, it makes it simple to parallel family with a business or a political party. If you owned a multi-million dollar organization, you would never want a member of your company to be part of scandal in any form as it brings scorn in your direction as well. In the same respects, parents are often judged on how well they raised their kids. It is this relation that lies between parents and children is the relation that causes embarrassment.
So embarrassment on purpose?
Maybe if your parents wanted some revenge.
I think embarrassment is something that comes entirely from the person being “embarrassed”’s self-confidence. Wow, that was interesting wording. What I’m getting at is that of course at some point in time we are all embarrassed by something. I flash back to middle school when my whole life was centered around what clothes I was wearing and who’s mom was driving us where.
My dad and brother particularly thrived off of embarrassing me because they knew it got to me. How dare they affect my 7th grade social standing! I just finally came to realize that the less I acted like I cared about what they were doing the less fun it was for them. I cured this by joining in on their “fun”. Since my brother is so much older than me, I always thought it was much cooler for him to drive me to and from my friend’s house then it was for my mom to. He tried EVERYTHING to get to me. He’d scream “goodbye” saying that he would “miss me” and “to be careful” to me as I walked towards a group of friend’s at Dion’s. It used to horrify me until my freshman year when I realized it was funnier to just yell right back.
Long story short, for me, my embarrassment had a lot to do with my maturity level. Instead of being embarrassed by my family I just embrace it and join in on their weirdness. :)
I suppose I'm pretty lucky I haven't had my parents or family embarrass me too much. My friends always thought my mom was cool because she listened to the music I played in the car and she drove us practically anywhere. One time my friend was talking behind my back and even went as far to say that I was spoiled. My mom was always with us so if anyone had the chance to be embarrassing it was her. One of the things I can think of her doing are being really obvious when she sees a boy she thinks would be cute for me. She elbows me repeatedly and stage whispers, "Psst! Megi! Megi look at him!" She has done this walking around shopping or even at restaurants, and it's bad because when she does it I can't help but laugh so these kids that see me probably think I'm a freak. Actually, she also gets really crazy when she's around her brothers and sisters; although I think it bothers my brother more than it bothers me. I can't really say anything because I act the exact same way with my friends as she does with her siblings, and I am aware we can get pretty obnoxious. Actually that's probably where I get it from. Don't be bothered guys, we are all allowed to be embarrassing sometimes. It's a privelage, and it's pretty fun.
I think, that in my family in particular, we embarrass each other only to tease one another and it's almost this back and forth thing we do. All of my friends loved my mom because she is so motherly and anyone that would walk into our house she would adopt as another one of her children. I mean, being embarrassed by your parents is one thing that never really bothered me up until a certain point. It only started bugging me when I'd bring my boyfriends over and my mom would bring out the old photo album and show embarrassing pictures and have wonderfully embarrassing stories to go along with them. But, even then, I know that my mom means well so in the end it's not a big deal to me.
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