Teasing can actually strengthen relationships, experts say. But sometimes things go too far.
This past summer, Mia Smith-Bynum took a cruise to the Caribbean with her extended family, some of whom she was meeting for the first time. But for the first day and a half, she couldn’t find her mother, who hadn’t yet purchased Wi-Fi, on the massive ship.
“So I’m texting on this giant family feed, like, ‘Has anybody seen my mom?’” Dr. Smith-Bynum told me. She’d get a tip — “I saw her by the pool!” — and head over, only to miss her mom once again.
This soon became a running joke with relatives who, weeks later, were still asking her, deadpan, if she ever found her mother.
Dr. Smith-Bynum, chair of family science at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she felt in on the joke. “This huge, friendly, Southern Black family said, ‘You’re in the family because we’re teasing you,’” she said.
Affectionate ribbing, like this, can strengthen connections, she said, because it’s “coming from a place of warmth and celebration of the person’s quirkiness.”
Then there’s the harmful kind of teasing can make you feel shame and anger, and can erode your sense of safety and trust. So I asked experts how to know when someone has gone too far — and how to shut them down.