Children embarrassed by their parents

“Park around the corner, mum,” my youngest daughter told me as I set off back to school after her dental appointment.

“You WILL park around the corner, won’t you?” she added a few seconds later.

Then, as we approached the school, she blurted out, her voice tinged with terror: “WHERE are you parking? You WON’T stop right outside school, will you?”

I glanced in the rear view mirror and was relieved to see that I hadn’t grown an extra head or got a wart the size of a walnut on the end of my nose and a haystack of nasal hair sprouting underneath.

Where school, or any other place where young people congregate, is concerned, I’m deemed sufficiently hideous to be kept under wraps.

I’m not alone. Friends say their children are the same, and would be mortified if they were dropped off in front of their schoolmates.

What’s strange is that it happens more or less overnight, with the change from primary to secondary school.

At primary school my children were happy not only for me to park outside school, but to come inside and up to the classroom itself. They even gave me a little smile and a wave if they saw me waiting.

Were I to do the same at secondary school, they probably wouldn’t speak to me for years.

I used to think it was because of my car, which looked like it was salvaged from a scrap yard. But since changing it to a newer model, my school cred hasn’t gone up.

I don’t remember behaving in such a way with my own parents, although I recall being embarrassed when my dad collected me and my friends from a disco wearing his pyjamas.

He had a coat on top, but you could still see the unmistakable stripes. Thankfully, he remained in the car.

Neither do I remember trying to change my parents’ image. “Mum, you’d suit that top,” I was told the other day while out shopping. “You never wear anything like that and you should.”

I leapt to my own defence and stated quite firmly that I wouldn’t suit a toga-style WAG thing with sequinned cherries on the front, and, more to the point, it wasn’t my taste.

They’d change my entire wardrobe if they could – my eldest daughter would stick in floaty, floral dresses, and her sister would have me looking like a downtown Los Angeles call girl. My hair comes under intense scrutiny too.

I’ve told them if they don’t shut up I’ll apply for a job in the school canteen and tell them to tuck in their shirts in front of everyone.