Up until now I've been able to get away with dad jokes, bad car singing, ridiculous nicknames for them - many of the pleasures of fatherhood. I've suffered very little eye-rolling or cringing.

But to an eight-year-old girl, having Dad wearing a rubber horse head in public was just. not. on.

"So it's a neigh to the horse head?" I asked. But I don't think she could make out my muffled gag. Even if she could, it wouldn't have cracked her Easter Island-statuesque scowl. I was a little taken aback.

Walking on towards our seats, excusing myself as I bumped into fellow supporters (comedy horse heads are very vision-limiting ... Brumby Jack you have my respect), Miss Mortified put more and more distance between us. When we found our seats, she jumped at the chance to go sit a few rows in front with some family friends where she could pretend not to be related to me. The coconut shells I was clopping together like Patsy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail probably didn't help. There was no debating with her which type of swallow brought the coconut to our temperate zone.

I'm sure making the whole thing even more embarrassing to her was that Brumbies crowds are not Raiders crowds. Novelty headwear is pretty common in the inner bowl when the Green Machine is on, leaving aside the myth viking helmets had horns. But Brumbies crowds, much as I love them, they're pretty straighty-180 these days.

Happily Miss Mortified's brother, though a bit older, is still able to cope with dad antics. He put aside his trepidation to don the family's second rubber mask and make it a father-and-son activity.

Thanks to those mighty Brumbies, we left the stadium happy. But, walking through the bush from the stadium to the car (one of the few traditions I would miss about a stadium in the CBD), I started to wonder if I'd reached a fork in the parenting road.

From here on, should I try to behave in a way that minimises embarrassment to my kids? Or do I embrace this new opportunity?

In years to come do I become the "cool" parent who drops their teenager a house or so away from the party so they can walk in like some kind of awesomely independent orphan? Or do I be the dad who pulls right up in the driveway, calls out a curfew time and then whispers really loudly "I love you" as they walk in red-faced and scowling back at the car?

Naturally, I want to do the right thing by my kids. So I went online for answers. But like any topic, you can pretty much research your way to an answer that suits either side of an argument. There's reports and articles about how lovingly embarrassing your kids is good for them. It helps develop perspective and, above all, a sense of humour. There's countless articles advising the best ways to do it.

But there's others that warn that, even when it's done in the spirit of fun, it's potentially damaging and you should be ashamed of yourself, idiot dad. The nature of this column lets me bypass serious evaluation. Instead I'll use the tools of the personal and the anecdotal.

For a start, plenty of my schoolmates had parents who loved nothing more than embarrassing their kids and their friends whenever they came over for a visit. One friend's dad took great pleasure (still does in fact) in calling me "two dads" because of my double-barreled first name. I never quite understood that one, but a lesson for life is never try and argue your way out of a nickname. You just guarantee it sticks.

These friends have all turned out well adjusted, good-humoured and on solid terms with their parents. So that's encouraging.

My parents weren't the deliberately embarrassing kind. They never paraded around in public in costume - unless I've blocked that memory with the help of a therapist I can't remember seeing. There was that time they photographed me asleep with a Cabbage Patch doll under my arm, a crime I'm absolutely certain I was framed for by older siblings. But weirdly the most enduring sense of being embarrassed by Mum and Dad was on a family holiday when we pulled over for a picnic by the side of the road. I don't know why, but to me this was the worst thing imaginable. You know, to have all those people flying by at 100kmh seeing us eating sandwiches beside our car! The shame of it.

I know, right. It's pretty hard to shield a kid from embarrassment when snacking in public requires a trigger warning. And, anyway, I don't think that event scarred me. On the contrary, when we've had the chance to get around in a campervan on holiday, I love pulling up by the side of the road to chow down.

Before filing this piece I asked the kids if they were ok with me mentioning them. Surprisingly enough, my daughter was completely supportive of her old dad putting himself in the newspaper dressed like a horse. Not only that, she was hoping I'd put a photo of her in.

It seems not all public embarrassment is created equal. Maybe I have a few more years left in me.