A book can help with
For the child mortified by a slip-up they’re sure everyone will remember forever.
Embarrassment can floor a child completely. A wrong answer, a trip in the corridor, calling the teacher ‘mum’ in front of everyone, and a small person can decide, with total conviction, that they can never show their face again. The feeling is fierce, and to them entirely reasonable.
A book helps by showing them two comforting truths: that everyone gets mortified sometimes, and that the moment passes and is forgotten far sooner than they fear. Watching a character survive their own worst-ever moment and find the world still turning gives a child a bit of the perspective they can’t yet reach. And the funny ones let them laugh, which takes most of the sting out.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
The worst moment ever
At this age a slip-up can feel like the end of the world. These follow a child through their most mortifying moment and land them gently, and funnily, back on their feet.
A little boy accidentally calls his teacher ‘Mommy’ in front of the whole class, and is so mortified he decides he’ll simply have to drop out of school forever. It follows his spiralling, catastrophising thoughts with great warmth and humour, and brings him gently back to earth when he sees a friend have a wobble of their own. Perfect for the child sure they’ll never live something down.
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Camilla is so worried about what everyone else will think of her that she breaks out in stripes, then spots, then whatever the crowd suggests, until she learns to stop performing for others and just be herself. It’s a vivid, slightly wild story about the trap of caring too much about other people’s opinions. Good for the self-conscious child who’s forever reading the room.
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Everyone feels it
Older children replay their mistakes and cringe at night. These reassure them that everyone does, and let them laugh at the very thing that’s tying them in knots.
A funny, friendly guide that dives straight into embarrassment, why we feel it, what’s happening in our bodies, and how to get through the toe-curling moments, all with jokes and real compassion. It reassures an older child that everyone, absolutely everyone, has cringe moments. A steadying read for the child who replays their mistakes at night.
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Nikki’s diary of school life is one mortifying moment after another, told with such comic relish that the whole subject of embarrassment starts to feel survivable, even funny. Hugely popular the world over, it’s the sort of book a self-conscious older child devours and feels less alone for. Good for turning cringe into comedy.
or on Bookshop.org
Wanting the floor to open
Eleven and twelve is the age when embarrassment stops being an occasional event and turns into a background hum. These are funny about it, which is more or less the only useful way in.
Peppi’s first day at a new school ends with her humiliating a boy who was only trying to help her up, and then spending weeks unable to apologise for it. Very good on the way a small mortification grows if you leave it alone. A graphic novel, quick to get through, and the first of a series.
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Greg’s life is one humiliation after another, most of them entirely self-inflicted, and he never learns a thing from any of it. That is exactly the comfort of it for a child who has just died inside at school. Cartoons on every page.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A light-hearted page for a child to write down the awful thing, then guess how long anyone else will remember it (usually about a day). I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
The thing a mortified child can’t yet believe is that nobody else will remember their slip-up for nearly as long as they will, usually by tomorrow it’s gone. These books say it for you, and let a child laugh at the very thing that’s tying them in knots.
So resist the urge to make too much of it, share a cringe moment of your own to prove you survived, and let a bit of laughter in. A child who learns that embarrassment passes, and that everyone feels it, carries far less of it around.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.