“My Dad Took [Us] To Be Vaccinated In Secret”: 79 Dads Who Let Their Kids Do Things They’d Never Admit To Mom

Haven't done this with my kids yet but I remember one from my childhood: My mom did not allow us to have video game consoles in the house. (Yes, we were deprived children.) My brother and I shared a room. He won a TV at a school party and one day I bought an N64 and several games at a garage sale. We then snuck these items into our house, and set them up in our closet. We'd been playing Mariokart, Goldeneye, and Super Smash Bros. For a couple days when my Dad walked in our room and we weren't fast enough to dump the pile of clothes over things to keep them hidden.

There was an awkward silence then the following conversation happened.

Dad: Is that a Nintendo?

Us: Yes.

Dad: Does your Mom know you have this?

Us: Probably not.

Dad: Do you have another controller?

He played with us for a while, told us not to tell mom and to this day we've all kept our secret.

Went with my teen girls to a feminist protest march behind my ex-wife's back, she is really an old-fashioned male chauvinist. I’m supporting my daughters on their fight against gender inequalities.

My Dad took my twin sister and me to be vaccinated in secret. Eventually my anti-vax Mom found out, and she wasn’t in the best of moods.

My mum put my family on a diet and my dad hated it.

I was catching the bus home from school and saw him at the corner dairy. I quickly got off the bus and ran into the store so I could get a ride, expecting to see him getting a loaf of bread or some milk.

But instead I see him at the takeaways counter with the worker saying "the usual? One chicken and chip lunch box?" He sees me staring and we lock eyes and he knows he's been caught. Then just turns to the worker and says "make it 2 please."

We ate in the car and brought gum so she couldn't smell it on our breath.

My dad gave in and let me rent South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Told me not to tell my mom.

Then my mom let me rent it again a few weeks later and told me not to tell my dad.

I never told either of them I had already seen it in the theater 😁.

Oh I got this.

My daughter and I are on a 10-day road trip through the American South, an AirBNB here, a campground there and one state park right outside of Jackson, Mississippi.

We’d just come from New Orleans where, among other things, we had taken a “Swamp Tour” where we were within spitting distance of some massive alligators. After 6 or so hours of driving, we decided to pitch a tent for the night by a river. At the time, my daughter was 8 years-old and couldn’t get enough swimming. The park ranger was making his rounds so we asked him if it was cool to go swimming in the river and he recommends a spot only a few minutes walk from where we were camped.

So we do just that. A couple of hours of splashing around and having fun and such and we go roast our hotdogs and retire—at which point we are treated to the most glorious lightning storm I’ve ever seen.

The next morning, we wake up and while we’re packing up camp, two local ladies start chatting us up and they happen to mention the family of alligators they had seen swimming in the river.

Horrified, I asked where. They pointed right to where we were swimming. I asked if they had seen them the day before and they said yes, same spot.

I literally looked at my daughter and said “Mommy is never to hear of this.”

That was such a great trip for so many other reasons, but that story sticks out.

Yesterday I gave my kid an oreo before dinner. he ate it. i told him don't tell mom.

mom gets home. what did you do today? "dad gave me a cookie!"

Yeah last cookie you ever get.

My mother is terrified of animals. However, she allowed us to have an outside farm dog. We built him the coziest dog house in our shed, insulated inside and out, complete with a giant heat lamp but we only had straw we could put in it for his bedding.
My Dad came home one day and motions to my little brother and I to follow him. We go to the shed where the dog house is. He's bought a $200 huge dog bed. We climbed in (my dad was too big to fit in the dog house) and pulled out all the straw and dragged the bed in and made it all cozy for him.
My Dad made us swear we wouldn't tell our Mom because she would flip!!!

I guess it is more a series of moments, but starting around the age of 11 my dad would sometimes take me out to the back country roads in rural CO and let me drive/ give me driving lessons. We agreed to not really share this with my mom, especially the time when I was 14 and he taught me how to merge onto the highway.

Come age 15-16 and I'm the least nervous kid in driver's ed. Thanks, Dad!

I was in the car with my dad one winter when he pulls into an empty car park and starts pulling mad skids on the ice.

When I questioned wth he was doing, the look on his face made it pretty clear he forgot I was in the back of the car. It made me wonder what other random stuff he gets up to when he’s on his own.

I'm not a dad but this is a story about what my dad did for me.

It was the night the movie Eight Below was released. Y'know the one with Paul Walker and all those huskies? I was in my "I love princesses, ponies and puppies" stage of life and really wanted to watch it but the only show was at midnight. I begged my mom and dad but mom was a firm no because it would be way past my bedtime.

So, I went to bed sulking and crying. Then about half an hour before the movie, I hear my bedroom door creak open and see my dad sneak in. He walks over to me in bed and says "Go get ready we've got to leave in 5 minutes if we want to make it in time." We then snuck out of the house and got to the cinema so fast that we managed to watch the trailers too. I remeber buying a large popcorn and being mad at my dad for finishing it before the movie even began - but I look back on it now and laugh at how apologetic he was.

On the drive home, he said we had to make sure we didn't make any noise so as to not wake mom up. Made me promise and everything. But when we got home, we found mom waiting on the couch with her arms crossed (and pissed off). She was too tired to get mad and just told us to take her with us next time.

I've got a few more stories about my dad doing stuff like this with me but this is probably my favourite. My old man passed away a few years after this 'secret movie night' and I miss him terribly - but I like to remember all the good times we had.

Not a dad but I'm talking about my dad. I recently got myself into a bad place in life. Had to leave my apartment, my relationship with my soon to be wife ended, and my job just ended. I was pretty much rock bottom and had no money. My dad spotted me large amount of money even though he isn't doing well financially at the moment. His words to me were "Use it, get back on your feet and don't tell your mother anything about this".

Am the child in this situation BUT what happened is a “we’re taking this one to the grave” kinda thing.

So my mom is IRRATIONALLY afraid of snakes. She gets the creeps even seeing them on tv and she’s been this way my whole life.

My parents have this condo and for at least two years she kept laying into my dad about getting a better weather strip for the front door because there was a gap and she kept telling him one of these days we were gonna get a snake in the house. And if that were to ever happen they’d HAVE to move. Which she’s always said with 100% seriousness.

Mom is out of town for the weekend and dad is at work. I come home from a friends house to get ready for work. I close my bedroom door and what do I find but a medium sized black racer curled up behind the door. I start panicking because I have to be at work in ten minutes and what am I supposed to do about this snake? So I call them and let them know it’ll be... idk how long, but I’ll most likely be late. Now I’m not a believer but instances like this definitely make me question the possibility of divine intervention because maybe 20 minutes later my dad gets home from an overnight shift and he gets the lil guy outside.

But to this day my dad and I have an understanding that this secret goes to the grave because if mom were to ever know she wouldn’t be able to live in that house anymore. It’s been 3 years and I laugh to myself about it a lot.

During my wife's second pregnancy she couldn't stand the smell of cooking meat. Or cooked meat. Or just the sight of knowledge that meat was in the house. It got pretty rough for my oldest son and me for about a month. I am an avid meat eater. Like with every meal. 3 times a day. But my lady didn't like it so I was doing my best.

It got to the point where I would bring home cheese burgers and leave them in my car. I would come in and get my then 6 yo son and sneak outside. We were standing on the back porch during winter sneaking a quick burger giggling our butts off.

"Don't tell your mom"

Not because she would be angry but just the thought that I had eaten meat would have made her nauseous.

When I was around 16 I went to gamestop with my dad to trade in my Xbox 360 for the Xbox One. They had a deal where'd you'd get like $250 off if you traded in the 360 for the Xbone. So I saved up just enough from the weekend job I had at a chess store to be able to afford it with the deal. So we get there and it turns out I'm like a week late to the sale. I'm devastated but, my dad just covered the rest of the cost himself (I also sold a bunch of games I probably wouldn't use after which helped but he still shelled out a good $100 dollars). I got the whole "Don't tell mom" on the way home.

I accidentally locked me and my son out of the house. I pulled a set of lock picks out of my wallet, and unlocked the door. My son stared at me wide-eyed and impressed, but ... “your mother *never* hears about this.”

My wife is a little sensitive to my misspent youth.

We have a very strict eat at the table policy. If it is a meal, eat at the table, a snack? Eat at the table. My wife is a big driver on this and is the creator of the policy. When she is away on trips, the child and I plop down in front of the computer, throw on Netflix and eat our meals away from the table, as a family.

When I was growing up, my dad was a private pilot (but former military pilot with many thousands of hours) and would sometimes take me along. One day, mid-flight, the engine just quit and we found ourselves at 5,000 feet and steadily descending in a glide over some pretty forested land.

Turns out he had forgotten to switch fuel tanks mid-flight (there were three in the plane and you're supposed to switch between them as you fly to ensure a constant supply of fuel and proper balancing). Luckily he diagnosed the issue and re-started the engine with a couple thousand feet to spare, and we were fine.

After he got sorted and chilled out a bit, he clicked on the intercom and said, "you're not gonna tell your mom about that, are you?"

I was about 13 years old (I'm in my 40s now), and she still doesn't know. She was paranoid about us kids flying with him and that would have been the end of it. He's in his 70s and still flying. Swears that's the only time he's ever had a brain fart like that while flying. I don't know if I believe him.

First daughter of three, her first words were "daddy". Her mom would absolutely lose [it] if she found out. I'd work the night shift, come home to a kid that's desperately trying to stay awake to see me. I'd toss her in the warm f150, and take her out shopping for groceries or something. One night I hear voices, someone's talking. Radios off. Wth? "Mooooon!" "Mooooon! Daddy, it's the Moon!" She could see the moon. She'd been trying to get my attention. The moon is a big deal in her favorite book. She had the game, stuffed animals, cdrom, the DVD for Stella Luna, the fruit bat that gets lost and lives with birds for a while. The cdrom and DVD read the book to you, and she watched it a million times. So yeah, I never snitched. She's 21 now.

Me and my dad were at nycc I think it was around 3 or 4 years ago now so I was 14 or 15 ish. I had brought 300 dollars I had saved to spend on comics. It was around the end of the show and I had spent 100 so far. At this point I was looking for a beat up copy of a specific comic because it was the first appearance of my favorite character. I saw a couple for around 100 but they were really low quality. I then saw one for 650 that was graded 9.2 and signed by the cover artist. It was so cool and I said to my dad how amazing it was. So long story short he told me if I could negotiate it down to 500 dollars he would cover the difference over what I had. I negotiated it down to 500 and we bought it. My dad told me to tell my mom we spent 100 on it. She still dosnt know that we spent 500 bucks on a comic book and would probably flip out if she did.