There's nothing quite like embarrassing your kids!

It's good to have hobbies... they keep you out of mischief. However, I'm sure many of you will agree the best hobbies are those that involve a bit of impish behaviour.
When you really dont want a kiss off your mum any more...When you really dont want a kiss off your mum any more...
When you really dont want a kiss off your mum any more...

Hubby and I discovered a fabulous hobby while on our recent family holiday.which kept us highly entertained.

I say hobby, but you could even go as far as to describe it as a sport… it’s called embarrassing and winding up your children and it’s tremendous fun.

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From being these little people who adoringly thought everything we did was wonderful and regarded us as some sort of heroes, our twins have just turned into teenagers and along with the onslaught of hormones has come the realisation that their parents can be a bit of an embarrassment.

The most comical part is that it’s so easy to press their buttons and get a rise out of them and we had many a snigger to ourselves after baiting them in various ways.

For those of you who are starting to feel appalled and are muttering: “child cruelty” under your breath while googling the number for the NSPCC, there’s nothing barbaric about our immature behaviour –it’s called “payback”.

Call it recompense for all those times they left us red-faced and mortified such as pointing out overweight people and asking if they “have a baby in their tummy” or loudly saying things like: “It stinks of poo in here!”

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Now, it is their parents who they regard as a bad smell particularly when we do something which they consider to be parental humiliation – which can be something as innocuous as waving and smiling at them in front of their friends.

When on holiday and adults are buoyed up by sunshine and alcohol, the horror of young people tends to increase at the prospect of being “shown up” or disgraced by their parents’ uncool antics.

All we had to do is clap enthusiastically to the evening entertainment or threaten to go on stage and dance and our children would frantically pull at our arms and hiss at us to sit down and behave ourselves.

One night of our holiday, there was a family beach party in the evening and when Hubby and I started dancing along to the music, our children stood a considerable distance from us so people wouldn’t know we were with them.

And there was me thinking I was really busting some moves.

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Singing loudly in an out-of-tune voice also seems to go down like a lead balloon – as does using phrases such as “Cool” and “Wicked.”

Going shopping on holiday was also a real blast with many opportunities for winding up our offspring.

Our daughter spotted an outfit she wanted to buy which consisted of a crop-top hoody and teeny tiny shorts combo. After deciding she liked it so much, she wanted it in black and grey, I informed her I also liked it and thought I’d buy myself one or two as well.

She looked absolutely dismayed and tried to talk me out of getting one.

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In reality, I had no desire to buy it at all or wear the same outfit as my tall, slim daughter.

Still it was extremely amusing to let her think we were going to have matching mother and daughter outfits.

Thankfully, my actual dress sense doesn’t seem to cause our children too much chagrin..

But the great news is they’ve managed to cure Hubby of wearing socks with sandals (to avoid blisters) as they’ve told him that it’s “too embarrassing for words”

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Tormenting your children and making them squirm is part of the delicious joy of being a parent.

However, I’m starting to suspect our children think there are moments when their parents shouldn’t be seen or heard!

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