As someone who grew up in Minneapolis proper, it took me a while to become comfortable with the idea of myself as a suburban mom. I’d been a Minneapolitan all my life! But, at a certain point, I realized I had all the classic trappings: kids, home in the suburbs, minivan, Costco membership. It was soon after that when I accepted my fate and sealed the deal by using my Costco membership card as photo ID at the pharmacy.
I was recently in Costco, celebrating the return of the two-pound block of cheddar, when I heard a kid yell across multiple aisles, “Mom! Can we get the good toilet paper?” She yelled back, “No! You aren’t an efficient enough wiper for me to buy the good stuff!” Several people laughed before returning to their shopping and I heard her say, “It’s my job to embarrass them!”
I remember times when I was a kid, adults laughed at me. It was uncomfortable and sometimes even heartbreaking. I now know that adults sometimes laugh when they find kids cute, but children don’t usually know or understand that.
As young as 18 months, children start to demonstrate embarrassment and shame as part of their emotional development. Even at very young ages, kids want to have their dignity preserved.
Sometimes, this can be a difficult thing to maintain. A toddler’s desire for independence can conflict with an adult’s need to keep them safe and healthy. A pre-teen’s eagerness to stay home by themselves might not match their ability to anticipate and mitigate risks. A teenager’s need for privacy can conflict with a parent’s desire to know who they are spending time with and where they are. And it seems that it’s only easy to tell what’s appropriate when there are egregious violations.
This is one part of parenting where I had the good fortune of observing something I considered out of the realm of okay before my own children were born, and to proactively consider how I would like to act when I saw photos posted on social media of a toddler in the bathtub. I knew the parent intended to share cute photos of their child, but I also realized that the picture could be problematic if the child were embarrassed by it when they were older. Once it’s posted, there’s very little control over where it goes and what happens to it.
Judaism considers embarrassing someone to be a serious offense. The Talmud compares it to shedding someone’s blood. In Bava Metzia (58b), it says, ‘A disciple taught before Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak: “Anyone who publicly mortifies his companion is comparable to a shedder of blood.” He replied: “Your statement is correct, for the red color of the face disappears, and it becomes white.”’
Based on this teaching, I try to take the long view regarding what I share with others about my children. I ask for their permission before taking pictures and I don’t share their pictures online. I try to remember to ask them if it’s okay to share information about them before I tell someone else. To sum it up, I try to treat them with dignity and consider how I would want to be treated in a similar situation. It’s not always possible to fully respect their wishes, and when that’s the case, I do my best to explain why that is in an age-appropriate manner. It might not help them feel less frustrated in the moment, but I hope it helps them feel like I respect them and have a rationale beyond “because I said so” for my actions. While they are children now, they won’t always be, and I hope they know I’ve taken their thoughts and wishes into account.
