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“We call Travis Mr. Big Ears. He knows we're only teasing, that we don't mean anything by it.”

“Speaking of vomiting, Renee, do you remember that time at the zoo when you threw up?”

“Carly has a crush on this nice boy in her algebra class. He's your new heartthrob, isn't he, honey?”

“Mom!”

Often as part of our loving relationship with our teenaged children we engage in gentle teasing.

It's part of the fun that parents have with their kids.

The problem is that our children don't like it.

This is what we believe they think of our loving teasing: “I don't mind when they call me Mr. Big Ears. I like it. I know they don't mean anything by it. It's a way of us having fun together.”

This is what they actually think: “No, it's not funny. I don't like it. Yeah, I know I have big ears. I wish I didn't. I'm embarrassed by my ears. They know that. I don't know why they think it's funny teasing me about something I'm so uncomfortable with.”

The only thing that Travis gets out of the teasing is that he is embarrassed and has an unpleasant feeling.

“Ha, ha, ha,” he says good-naturedly. “Screw you,” he thinks.

Part of adolescence is that your children now care desperately about how others – especially their peers – see them. They become very self-conscious.

“He's our Elbow Boy,” teases Clement's father. And for the next year Clement wears only long-sleeved shirts.

Over time, if the teasing continues, they may get used to it so that it does not bother them quite so much. But they never like it.

A good rule in regard to teasing one's teenaged children is this: Don't – ever.

But the biggest problem with loving, I-really-don't-think-it-hurts-her-feelings-she-just-pretends-she-hates-it teasing is not that it hurts their feelings – certainly with most kids it does them no great harm.

The serious issue is that it perpetuates a vicious cycle.

We ourselves actually never liked being teased as a kid. In fact, the great majority of teasing recipients don't find it funny at all. It's humiliating. Period.

But then we go ahead and do it to others. We do it to our children. And we think they like it. Then they do it to their kids.

It is part of that process where we tend to forget how we really felt as children.

“But I thought you hated it when it happened to you as a child?”

“No, I knew it was part of my loving relationship with my parents. I liked it.”

That is, kids grow away from their own experience. They come to assimilate, make as part of who they are, not their own experience, but what their parents thought was their experience. They come to be deaf to their own reality.

The serious problem is that it becomes part of an adult stance whereby you can believe that the suffering you inflict upon others is not causing any pain. It's good-natured. Or, it's for their own good. But it isn't. We like to think that teasing makes them tougher. But really it just makes them meaner.

“Allison, looks like you're developing a mustache, huh? That's funny, right?”

“Yeah, it's real funny.”

But doesn't occasional good-natured teasing allow children to better deal with teasing out in the world? Not really. That skill comes from a combination of their own self-confidence and verbal facility. (For example, children with language learning disorders have a particularly hard time dealing with teasing.) Teasing from a parent can and does harden children. It makes them believe that what is demeaning and hurtful is not.

It's normal and natural to want to tease your teenaged children. It's just not a good idea.

Clinical psychologist Anthony E. Wolf is the author of six parenting books, including Get Out of My Life, But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager.