Surefire Ways to Embarrass Your Kids –

Because parenting can be so hard, sometimes it helps lift my spirits to picture how I’ll get back at my kids in their teenage years for all those early morning wake up calls, the embarrassing public tantrums, and for that one time my toddler pulled down my skirt in the middle of church while my baby simultaneously yanked down my shirt neckline because he wanted to eat. Parents endure some embarrassing stuff at the hands of their kids, so here’s how to get back at them (in a playful way, of course) with surefire ways to embarrass your kids:

Dance
Be any amounts of undressed
Combine those first two
Tell a heavily “punny” or dad joke. It’s even worse (better?) to do it in front of their friends.
Now, keep telling the same old jokes every time you see their friends with the same enthusiasm you had the first time
Call them by their childhood nickname

Give a perfectly timed “I LOVE YOU, HONEY!!”
Share baby photos or any photos from their awkward pre-teen years on social media
Dress the part while picking them up from school or any event with friends: socks with sandals, bathrobe, mom jeans, coffee stains, you name it!
Show PDA towards them or their father
Over share, especially when no one asked for a story (i.e. their birth story, bad habits they had like wetting the bed until age 7, and that weird ER trip to pull all the wax from their ear canal)
Mention the sex talk in any way
Mention/hint/imply/reveal that you and their father have had sex at some point in life
Borrow your teenage daughter’s shirt or shoes and then proudly let everyone know you two wear the same size
Turn any mundane moment into a Broadway musical moment (practice your creativity)
Chaperone their school dance
Force them into a slow song with you at said dance
Be the overly aggressive parent at all their sporting events

Some lesser commonly known ways to embarrass your kids include, but are not limited to:

Showing interest in test scores or social life
Introducing yourself to their friends
Offering advice
Walking into the room your kid is having a party in and being seen
Being confused by the latest technology (i.e. Asking if you can just put your document on a disk drive instead of the Cloud)
Starting texts with “Dear” and ending them with a salutation like, “Love, Mom”

But if you play your cards right, and take the gig far enough, what started as “embarrassing” can morph into “awesome:”