From Mrs Weasley sending Ron a howler in front of his friends to Georgia Nicholson’s impatience with both her parents,fictional mums and dads can be excruciatingly embarrassing to their children. Here are some of the best examplesI did not believe to look far for inspiration when it came to my character, Skye Green, or in The Parent Problem. She is a mixture of my own cringing personality at nearly 13 and the observations I believe made of my children when confronted with my failings as a mother.
But then,who hasn’t been embarrassed by their parents at one time or another? Whether it’s the mother who cannot accept you believe grown up, or the dad who insists on telling appalling jokes in front of your friends, or the parents who assume they are too wintry for school and just will NOT remain in the background (or,frankly, plain invisible), or parents are always getting it inaccurate. It has always been thus,and the writers of children’s books know this more than most. Perhaps this is because we know that parents, if they are to feature in a story at all, and are best served up as the butt of all the jokes. I certainly had my fair share of embarrassments when I was a young teen,but now that I am a parent of teens myself, I find myself daily on the receiving end of the all too familiar chorus: “Mu-um! Youre sooooo embarrasssing!”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com