A broken Bronze Age jug in the hands of a child embarrasses the parents – but you still have to laugh | Isabelle Oderberg

“D“Will there ever be a moment when you are not embarrassed by your children's behavior?” I asked my friends whose children are older than mine. “No,” was the unanimous answer from the assembled parents. My shoulders sagged.

“Let me tell you what my 18-year-old did the other day…” began one of the stories.

When I heard the story this week about a child who knocked over a Bronze Age vessel in a museum in Israel, I felt pain in my body and heart for his poor parents. I think if I had been like that, I would have dug myself into the earth with my bare hands to live as a mole woman, alone with my shame, never to be seen again until my last breath.

Don't get me wrong, my kids have had enough of their parents harass them. One time my son pointed at every single person on our crowded streetcar and shouted, “HE SHITS, SHE SHITS, WE SHIT, EVERYONE SHITS!” Or the other time we decided to encourage his love of gangsta rap music and he went to school and used some cutesy language towards his classmates and teachers, which resulted in a phone call from a confused high school principal and a long conversation with our son about how we shouldn't use words we don't know the meaning of.

Every time something like this happens, my parents take immense pleasure in my humiliation. They see it as retribution for the years of torment they had to endure during their active parenting years.

For my 18th birthday, they took the whole family, including my 11-year-old brother, to one of Melbourne's most famous – and classy – Chinese restaurants. My brother was so excited that he thanked them by stuffing so much Peking duck into his mouth that he actually turned green; that's not just a saying, it can actually happen. My mother screamed, my father picked him up and ran down the ostentatiously wallpapered hallway to the toilets. They didn't make it.

Or one time my expatriate parents got a call from my boarding school in Melbourne telling them that I and some of my friends had stolen the headmistress's keys. We had them copied, returned them and weeks later let a group of our (male) friends from the corresponding boys' school down the road into the 19th century “drawing room” for a big dance party. Believe me, it was the most fun that room had ever seen. Needless to say, my parents were utterly appalled, both by the reports that came in and by my subsequent suspension.

I think part of a parent's humiliation when their child misbehaves stems from the fear of being labeled a “bad parent.” But what constitutes a bad parent varies from family to family.

I find that if you love your children, support them, give them positive reinforcement, and give them a firm hand when they need it (plus feed them, etc.), then almost everything else falls by the wayside.

As I've written before, I'm not concerned about swearing as long as it's not based on hate, gender inequality, a person's identity, or their appearance. That's why we were so shocked by the rap-inspired language my son displayed on the playground a few months ago; it made more sense when we realized he had no idea what the words in question meant.

We all know that today's parents have very different problems than previous generations. Screens, violence on those screens, misinformation and radicalization, easy access to drugs… and so many more potential pitfalls. So I think we need to give ourselves a break and find a way to laugh about the fact that no one is dying at the hands of our four-year-olds.

As a student of history and languages, I would be lying if I said it broke my heart when a child accidentally breaks a Bronze Age pottery – a piece that lasted 3,500 years before succumbing to the curiosity of an unsupervised child – into, well, as many pieces as a Bronze Age pottery succumbing to the curiosity of an unsupervised child.

Who is to blame? The parents for not paying attention? The museum for not keeping the object in a display case or something similar? I am not a museum curator and have absolutely no idea.

I breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn't one of my children. But at five and eight years old, there's still time.