Embarrassing situations are inevitable in life and sometimes they are completely out of your control, especially if it’s your kid. Whether they do or say something embarrassing, parents are the ones who take the fall because after all, “they’re just kids!” Parents share the most embarrassing thing their kids have done in public. This content has been edited for clarity.
Table of contents
1. Home Depot
“We were at Home Depot once. I was carrying my then three-week-old daughter and tightly holding to my four-year-old’s hand so he wouldn’t run off or climb something. He loved the riding mowers. My husband had a hold of our three-year-old daughter’s hand. He happened to run into someone he knew and was chatting away when our three-year-old said, ‘Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom.’
You don’t wait with a three-year-old, but I was chasing the loosed four-year-old and trying to soothe the now cranky newborn. She said it again and I said to my husband, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, would you mind taking her, please? My hands are very full right now.’
He brushed me off, turned to our three-year-old, said, ‘Just a minute,’ and resumed his conversation. Our four-year-old took off again, I caught up and grabbed him, but when I went back, our three-year-old was out of sight. I said, ‘Um, where is she?’
Both men started looking around when our three-year-old suddenly appeared and said, ‘Daddy, I went potty!’
I said, ‘Oh? Where sweety?’
‘In the potty!’ she said.
‘What potty? Show me,’ I replied.
We were less than two aisles away from the toilet displays and she had noticed them as we passed by.
‘Oh no! Okay, honey, we need to get this cleaned up,’ I said.
‘No flush,’ she said.
I wanted to kill my husband. His friend, who was also employed there, shrugged and said, ‘We’ll take care of it. Happens more than you’d guess.’
2. Emergency
“Years ago, before my health started to decline, I drove a Special Needs school bus for the county we live in. At first, the job was purely out of necessity. The pay was good and my son was able to ride with me, so not only did I save money on daycare, but I also got to hang out with my little guy all day. Turned out that I fell in love with it! Special needs children are the sweetest kids I’ve ever encountered, with such innocence about them. I loved those kids, but I digress.
In between routes, I was able to stop at stores or gas stations for potty breaks or much-needed coffee. With a three-year-old in tow, those stops were quite frequent. Our favorite spot was a cute little gas station called The Whistle Stop. Not only did it have big clean bathrooms and a hot bar, but bus drivers got free coffee! Each morning, we’d stop in for the usual potty breaks and whatnot and before long we were regulars, on a first-name basis with not only the employees but other regular customers as well.
One particular morning, my stomach was in a foul mood. Getting through my first route was really rough, but when The Whistle Stop came into view, I could not have been more relieved. As any parent knows, getting a three-year-old unbuckled, out of a vehicle, and across a parking lot can sometimes be a slow ordeal. That morning my son was seemingly stuck in slow motion.
While trekking across the parking lot, the urgency was heightened by the sight of the finish line, and yet my kiddo decided he must stop and strike up a conversation with every bug he saw. With my patience wearing thin, I leaned down and whispered, ‘C’mon honey, Mommy has got to poop!’ which instantly got his legs going.
Upon reaching the doors, he ran up to them, slammed them open, and cried, ‘WATCH OUT! MY MOMMY GOTTA POOP!’ and all I could see were the faces that had become so familiar to us and ours to them. Silence ensued until we entered the restroom, then I could hear the laughter commence. Needless to say, we found a new spot for a month or so.”
3. Proper Names
“My wife, five-year-old daughter, and I were on vacation in Arizona and were in the process of getting ready to go to dinner. We were in our hotel room and I was in the shower while my wife used the mirror and sink to get ready as well. While rinsing the shampoo out of my hair I must have felt a draft or something because I opened my eyes and looked down to see my daughter with the shower curtain pulled back just staring at me all wide-eyed.
I quickly freaked out and yelled for my wife to grab our kid and get her out of the bathroom. The rest of my shower was uneventful and we finished getting ready and left for dinner. Now, at that time, my daughter had recently begun attending school and my wife thought it would be a good time to give her an anatomy lesson and teach her what each of her body parts were called.
She wanted her to know the proper names like vagina, anus, and stuff like that. I wasn’t involved in that because, well, I’m a little uncomfortable talking about ‘girl stuff’ with my daughter.
Anyways, we went to dinner at a pretty nice place that was fairly quiet. My daughter had always done well in restaurants and there was no reason for us to think that evening would be any different. However, as our waitress was walking away after taking our order, my daughter decided to yell out to her across the room, ‘MY DADDY HAS A BIG ‘GINA!’ I thought I was going to die as my wife laughed uncontrollably.”
4. Belly Button
“When my daughter was small, she had the habit of walking around sucking her thumb with her hand under her dress and her finger in her belly button. The problem was during her excavations, she scratched her belly button until it started bleeding. We tried to put a band-aid over it to stop her digging in there, but she always managed to scratch it off.
The wound just kept getting worse and worse. Eventually, I sat her down and said, ‘We need to have a serious talk. Do you know what a serious talk is? It’s when we talk about something really, really important. It’s something grownups do, but this is something especially important, and I need to talk to you about this, okay?’
She put on her serious face and nodded slowly.
‘You know how that sore in your belly button seems to be getting all swollen? Well, if you keep on sticking your finger in there, it will make it worse, and your tummy will swell up like a balloon, and keep on getting bigger and bigger until it bursts, and all your insides will fall out. You don’t want that to happen do you?’ I said.
Okay, okay, I was desperate, you can stone me later.
A couple of days later, we were at the supermarket and there was a hugely pregnant lady there doing her shopping. My daughter kept on staring at her. The lady saw her, smiled, and rubbed her tummy.
My daughter yelled at her, ‘I know what you’ve been doing!'”
5. Play Place
“My eldest was going stir crazy while we were living in a short-term rental waiting for military base housing to open. It was a miserable winter and finally, we had enough money to eat out. We went to Mcdonald’s for the play place and as soon as her feet hit the ground, she made a beeline for the play place and didn’t even come out to eat. My husband and I sat down and were enjoying eating in relative peace when we noticed a group of parents starting to gather around the ball pit, laughing.
We ignored it for a bit, but finally, my husband got up to see what all the commotion was about. He came back immediately and said, ‘Get your coat on, we’re leaving.’ He grabbed my daughter’s coat, crawled into the ball pit, wrapped her in it, and then came back. She was stark naked. She had peed her pants and not wanting to stop playing for such a boring occupation as going potty, and because it was uncomfortable, she just stripped and played happily.
We took off, red-faced and mortified, and didn’t go back to that McDonald’s for four years, and that was on our way out of the state as we moved. That was our first child.
Another embarrassing kid moment was when we bought an English Cocker spaniel, just like my husband grew up with. We all loved the dog and we had considered breeding her as she was such an outstanding example of the breed, and so very sweet. But when we moved, our neighbors had an unneutered beagle male, and other neighbors had an unneutered Redbone Hound and an unneutered Bloodhound.
Neither of our neighbors would even attempt to keep their dogs on their property. We had many issues with that but the biggest thing we were worried about was our dog getting pregnant with mutts. So, to our daughter’s disappointment, we decided to get her fixed right away. I was explaining things to my youngest child, and ended the explanation with, ‘And, besides, getting her spayed will calm her down.’ She fell quiet, frowning thoughtfully as I picked her up and carried her into the bank with me.
As we stood in the lobby, which echoed loudly with every rustle, she looked up at me, and in her most piercing child voice announced, ‘But we got you and grandma spayed and it didn’t calm you down!’ The teller that was waiting for us to approach disappeared behind her desk and several people who were signing papers burst into uncontrollable laughter while I pondered what to do next.”
6. Potty Training
“For a time, my son was that kid in church. You know the one the congregation watches for comic relief and who the other parents are relieved isn’t theirs. This is probably the day he got that title.
When he was a toddler, we were trying hard to toilet-train William. The offer we made him was this: the first time he managed to ‘poop in the potty like a big boy’ he could have any toy he wanted. He worked hard at learning.
Success finally came early one Saturday evening, and true to our word, off we went to Walmart where William selected a cowboy hat, boots, a sheriff’s star, handcuffs, and a six-shooter. He was extremely proud of this outfit and the next morning asked if he could wear it to church so he could show it off to the pastor. We agreed since he hadn’t really had time to play with his toys before bedtime the night before.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to church, the minister had already stepped inside to begin the service. It wasn’t until we went up to the rail for communion that William got his chance. The organist quietly played soothing hymns and everyone bowed their heads in prayer as the pastor distributed the wafers. But when he placed his hand on William’s head to offer a blessing, my little cowboy proudly announced, loudly enough so that the whole church could hear,
‘PASTOR MILLER, LAST NIGHT I POOPED IN THE POTTY!’
You don’t recover from a show-stopper like that, you just say the benediction and end the service.
William’s little sister never quite got to be ‘that kid’ (another child eventually earned the title, thank God) but she did have her moments, especially when part of the cowboy outfit made a second church appearance a few years later. Katie was sitting with us in the pew one morning dressed in as pretty and dainty a dress as any little girl ever wore. She wore patent leather shoes and lace socks and bows in her hair: the very picture of sweet innocence.
When the sermon started, she began taking items from the tiny purse she had carried that day: a flower, a princess tiara, a little hairbrush, some pink ribbons, and a pair of handcuffs. We thought the couple watching from the pew behind us were going to burst trying to stifle their laughter.”
7. Humiliated
“My brother was not quite three years old and this happened way back in the late 50s. My mother would treat us to a trip downtown a couple of times a year. We would go into the city on a bus. We sat on either side of my Mom on one of the long benches on the side. Sitting across from us was a snappy dressed man of a darker complexion with a big bright smile. My brother just stared at him and clung to my mother.
Suddenly, he tried to whisper to my mother. but he failed miserably at a whisper. He looked up at her and said, ‘Mommy, why is that man toasted?’ My mother immediately offered her desperate sincere apologies to the man, but he was so gracious and just laughed. He smiled big at my brother and said, ‘It’s okay, little man. God just wanted me well done,’ and my brother smiled back. I’m sure my mom wanted the seats to open beneath us and drop us out of the bus. I’ll never forget that sweet man’s beautiful smile.
The second incident was my sister-in-law with my not-even-one-year-old niece. She went into Mcdonald’s for lunch and held her fussy baby while waiting in line. She finally got to the counter and sat the baby on the counter as she placed her order. Suddenly, the baby lifted her one leg and let loose diarrhea! It oozed out of the side of her diaper all over the counter!
Horrified, my SIL grabbed another diaper trying to clean the mess and ended up just smearing it. Humiliated, she grabbed the baby and proceeded to run out of the restaurant. As the people behind her saw the mess, they all turned their heels to leave quickly. She and her mom never went back to that Mcdonald’s!”
8. Disney World
“I have to admit that I am significantly responsible for the architecture of my own public mortification and demise at my son’s hand, but it is still a great story. For the six years following our son’s birth, my wife and I went on vacation to Disney World about once per year.
All of our prior trips to Disney were just me, my wife, and my son, but on this particular trip, we invited my mother to come along. I am still not sure why having Grandma come along on my son’s fourth Disney trip was such an adversely received development for him, but he was sour, acted out a lot, and was moderately hostile toward her for most of the trip.
I suspected it might have something to do with the fact that our son had come to associate Disney trips as just a core family experience, and simply having the dynamic of a grandparent along for the ride changed the experience enough for him that he wasn’t pleased. Nonetheless, manners, kindness, and good behavior are still traits that my wife and I strive to instill in him, and we did our best throughout the first four days of the vacation to manage our son and his bipolar attitude.
The fifth day of the trip rolled around and my patience was starting to wear thin. My son decided to have one more ‘me, me, me, I want, I don’t like, I don’t care’ hissy fit in the thick of the magic kingdom theme park. It was just him and me at that particular moment. My wife and mother were walking together and chatting about a hundred yards up the path. I finally had reached my breaking point and I sidestepped to the edge of the path tugging him with me.
I had previously never sworn at my son before. He’d heard me curse before, but never directly at him, and I decided that making my point with a curse word pointed directly at him would be the most emphatic thing I could get away with in the moment that might impress upon him just how displeased and serious I was about his behavior. I lowered myself to a squat so that I was at eye level with him, grabbed him firmly by the bicep, and aired my grievances.
I sternly yet quietly told him that for the first four days of this trip, he had been acting like a spoiled bitchy princess, and he needed to knock it off. I told him that we didn’t owe him a damn thing, that his behavior and attitude were unacceptable. I said if he insisted on carrying about with his current soured attitude, I was happy to retire him to the hotel room for the remaining two days of the trip and use the rest of the time for my and my wife’s personal leisure.
With remarkable steely resolve, my four-year-old wrenched his arm from my slightly slackened grip, turned around to survey the situation, and spotted my wife about 50 yards away in a sea of parents and children. He took off running and then proceeded to scream the following at the top of his lungs,
‘MOM! DADDY CALLED ME A BITCHY PRINCESS! BUT I’m NOT a BITCHY PRINCESS. We DON’T say BITCHY PRINCESS!’
I was walking about 10 feet behind him through the aisle of people like a condemned convict shuffling his way down death row toward the execution chamber. My embarrassed wife in disbelief was doing her best to quell and silence our son saying, ‘Daddy didn’t say that,’ all the while shooting me a questioning look that said all too clearly, ‘What the hell is this about, Matt?’
As I approached my wife, the seething judgmental eyes of every other parent and child watched me purse my lips together and nod my admission of guilt to my wife and all the other members of the jury around. I’ll be the first to admit that my son’s countermove was a work of art. It was a masterful play. He turned me into a real-life Disney villain.
Nothing really came of the situation. The vacation ran it’s course and I didn’t have to make good on my threat to imprison my son. We saw marginal improvements following the situation, but to this day, ‘bitchy princess’ is still a tactically reserved part of my parenting lexicon shared between my son and me.”
9. James Bond
“Life was an embarrassing moment, never dull. The one incident that I recall is when the eighth graders were on stage introducing themselves so that the audience could recognize members of the class who had contributed to the varying projects. Each student walked on stage, paused, stated their name, and exited on the opposite end of the stage. When the time came for my son to say his name, he exclaimed, ‘BOND! JAMES BOND!’
The roar of laughter filled the room. By the time people stopped laughing and were trying to figure it out, he had exited the stage and was gone. It was hilarious! In disbelief, I asked my friend sitting next to me, ‘Did he say what I thought he said?’ She shot me a look that said ‘Oh, yeah!’ as she moved her head tilting front and back in the affirmative. I said, ‘I can’t believe he did that.’ It wasn’t bad but totally unexpected and rip-roaring funny.”
10. Complimentary Blankets
“I am originally from a developing country and now work and live in a developed country. Every year, I travel with my daughter to my hometown to spend my vacation and her school holidays there and catch up with family and friends. Although I have never been poor in my life, I have seen poverty from close quarters. My family has been just sufficient enough to keep us comfortable and happy.
My family would still always cut corners so we could help those not as fortunate as us. That was ingrained in me since I was a child and although I earn a lot more than my parents, I still live the same lifestyle and try to save and give away as much as I can so someone doesn’t have to compromise their education or go to bed hungry. As such, I do not leave any opportunity to grab free stuff which may be useful to people in need.
Now, once when I was flying home with my daughter who was about five at the time, she got chatty and extremely friendly with a couple sitting next to us on the flight. I was busy reading the magazines and leaflets in the front seat pocket. Our flight had new blankets for passengers that were neatly folded and put in drawstring bags. The leaflet describing these new blankets said that the bags were free to take away.
Thanks to my then-poor English skills, I misread it to mean that the blankets AND the bags were free to take away. I knew a few people who would benefit from those blankets and decided to pack them away in my cabin bag when I left. When it was time to leave the flight, I gathered the blankets and started to put them in my bag.
In the seven hours of the flight, my daughter had become super friendly with the couple and soon I heard her tell them, ‘Look! My mom is taking away those blankets with her and putting them in her bag!’ My eyes met those of the lady and I could clearly see she was horrified at witnessing daylight robbery! I felt extremely embarrassed and packed my bags and left.
Once I reached home, I gave the blankets away to the people I took them for. Then I spent the rest of my vacation reading up on the internet on the airline’s website to see if the blankets were meant to be taken away. It took me a while to realize I should not have taken them. It was embarrassing, but I apologized to the people who I handed the blankets, took them back, and on my way home discretely left them on the flight belonging to the same airline.
It was an extremely embarrassing experience, but I am glad at the end of it that I did not steal the blankets.”
