My daughter recently had an embarrassing episode in summer music camp. Her tears and negative self-talk at seven were heartbreaking to watch. 

How do you handle these setbacks as parents?

Many of our responses in such situations are automatic. We empathize as humans and lean on our learned experiences from our childhood to provide some measure of comfort to our distraught children. Hopefully, we hug a lot.

Most decent people know how to calm a kid down, how to comfort them, and how to help our children move on from embarrassment. Is there any reason to try to get better at handling them?

When we talk about showing up better, what the hell are we really trying to do here? Our kids aren’t going to turn out perfect, but they are going to be okay. We turned out okay, right? For the most part?

Parents’ behaviors impact how kids process feelings of embarrassment – how much shame they may feel and how quickly they turn such events into a coherent narrative that allows them to move on.

We can’t protect our kids from life. But we can influence their skill in navigating life’s shit moments. Most of us probably think we’re pretty good at this. Some of us actually are skillful, but it never hurts as a reminder of what we’re trying to do.

Secure Attachment Helps Everyone

I believe that learning as a parent involves much of the same self-reflection and healing as getting better at any human relationship, with the added element that we are here to caretake and help our children navigate the world until they can do so on their own.

Focusing on the relationship reminds me that there are two needs to be met, my daughter’s needs and my own. When I understand that relationships exist somewhere between her identity and mine, I can lean in, attune to her, and hold space for her grief, her embarrassment, and her other uncomfortable emotions, while also stepping back and gaining the proper perspective by modeling the detachment and wisdom I have gained as an adult. I am essentially trying to work towards a secure attachment.

And that’s where things get cool when it comes to focusing on and improving the relationship and working towards secure attachment. We can utilize what we know now and how we want to behave towards our children to reparent ourselves.

When we can be authentic with our children while offering attuned comfort, we can demonstrate this behavior to the parts of ourselves that still remain embarrassed from our grade school missteps and accidents. As an adult now, what would I want to tell my seven-year-old inner child about being scolded in front of the class for forgetting homework, or accidentally wandering into the wrong locker room at the rec center?

If we can recognize that our child’s adversity often brings up our own long-standing feelings from adversities we faced as children, then we can create a virtuous cycle of parenting and reparenting.

When we validate our child’s embarrassment, we can validate our own. We may even find some old shame start to lift. That’s what I’m trying to do here, especially on these hard days.