“I Hope They Never Find Out”: 50 Secrets That Parents Swear They’ll Never Tell Their Kids

We hit the lottery for 12.5 million dollars and nobody in our family - including our children has any idea.
Besides us and the government, the only other people who know is an attorney we hired to keep our identities private as well as an accountant. We have kept our lives pretty normal… We both work so there looks like there’s an income coming in… we both enjoy what we do and didn’t want to have anything change drastically. We just didn’t want to ruin our relationships with everyone or spoil our kids… We have it safely invested for their futures… But not until they establish themselves on their own without any idea that there is a safety net. We support numerous charities. It’s a blessing to win but a bigger blessing not to be destroyed by money. Obviously this isn’t my real name which would defeat the whole purpose.

I never actually took his nose, it stayed on his face the whole time. In fact, it has never once left his face, even though I have told him that I took it countless times. I even showed him the tip of my thumb as "evidence" of the theft.

My dad cheated on my mother while she was going through cancer treatments. My mother asked for a divorce, he said go and take the kids. Every Valentine’s Day I would receive flowers from my dad and get so happy. My mom would smile and nod and get excited with me. I would call him and thank him. He never sent me flowers. It was my mom all the years. Same thing with birthday cards and Christmas gifts from him. They were never from him, my mom just put his name on them in similar handwriting. Went as far as writing return addresses on mail too. My mom was a superhero of a single parent.

One of my teachers told our class a story that absolutely blew everyone's mind.

Growing up he had an older sister, and two parents, pretty standard family situation. One thing that he said confused him as a kid was how much older his sister was (I think it was like 16+ years older than him) so when he was in high school, he straight up asked his parents if he was a mistake. If im remembering the story right, his parents told him he wasn't meant to happen and that was that. Didn't really effect him at all considering he was old enough to understand and knew his parents loved him anyway.

Fast forward to his adult life (about 35-40 at this point) both of his parents passed away and his sister lived across the country. One year his sister came to visit him and his wife for a week. They went around doing various things that were representative of where he lived, landmarks, well known towns, restaurants, etc. He said they had a great time. Near the end of his sister's trip, she told my teacher and his wife that she needed to tell them something important. He said she seemed pretty distraught in saying this and as a result he thought she was going to tell them she had some serious illness or something along those lines. It was tense for a few minutes, the sister couldn't get out what she was trying to say.

This just made my teacher and his wife more concerned. Finally she told them: "I'm not actually your sister, I'm your mother." Turns out his "parents" were actually his grandparents and his sister had him very young (16-17) with some guy she met. In order to give him and his mother ("sister") a normal life, his grandparents ("parents") just treated him as their son and raised him themselves. He mentioned being very grateful that they did this for him as he did have a normal childhood and his mother was able to live without having the stress of being a young mother.

To this day, him and his mother have a very positive relationship and this reveal to him didn't change anything. Not really a "f****d up secret" but I thought it was a cool story that fit this theme :).

That my 8 year old daughter is not mine. I met her mother, my wife, when she was 3 months pregnant. Neither of us knew until about a month or two into dating. What I did know was that this girl was the one. When she found out she told me and gave me a free pass to leave. She did not just want me sticking around just for the benefits of dating a pregnant chick then skipping out.

I made the choice then to take the leap. Best decision i ever made and never looked back. Now we have my daughter and a 3 year old son. I don't plan on ever volunteering the information to her but will tell her if she asks when she is older.

The father skipped out to CO and cut off ties when he found out. Fine by me though. As far as everyone, including the government knows, I am her father. On the birth certificate and everything. But the way i see it, i am. I was there the entire pregnancy, the birth, and every day since. I was 22 at the time.

I'm not a parent, nor is this my story. It's my friend's, she found out without the parents knowing.

She's not vaccinated. At all. I have no clue how this was hidden from her, or how she got into school, but her parents didn't vaccinate her. Not just that, while she's sleeping, they use their hecking holistic medicine on her (she mentioned crystals). They even refused her HPV thing, so she's not even resistant to cervical cancer, because her parents are uneducated and thing you can develop autism after birth (even though she IS autistic, but her parent won't accept it).

Don't throw your kid's life away. Vaccinate them.

That I've been changing every clock in the house on New Years eve to 3 hours early. At 9pm we celebrate the new year, then hang out for a hour. He thinks he breaking every rule and has a great time. Now that he's turning 11 this will never happen again. With phones and being somewhat smarter. Lol.

My daughter knows that her grandparents are getting a divorce. She doesn’t know that it’s because grandpa (72) decided to knock up a 23 year old. We will talk about it once she’s older, but I don’t want to normalize that relationship for a preadolescent.

Edit: This is my father-in-law, he’s definitely not rich, in fairly impressive shape for a dude pulling social security, and I am happily ignorant as to the status of his erections. It’s a small town story with a f****d up single mom and a old man that hasn’t experienced much emotional growth since being drafted for service in Vietnam. These people would never end up together if they were emotionally healthy and didn’t have control issues.

I am definitely going to do my best to explain to my daughter, but she’s nine and emotionally overwhelmed by the very idea of the divorce. When she comes to me to talk about it (having processed the idea), then I will explain the situation more fully. My husband has already told his dad that our family and his new family won’t be getting together for a barbecue anytime in the foreseeable future.

Edit 2: A lot of you dudes are assuming a lot about “23”. I would remind you that we are talking about small-town, single mama, daddy issues, rural Deep South, grandpa-f*****g 23. Y’all are a bunch of optimists.

I'm the child (48 f), but my father told me my mother was dead all throughout my childhood and everyone in the family - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, stepmother - supported the lie. Not because my mother was on d***s or abusive, or a criminal, or even a bad person. Just because they had a huge argument one night and she went to stay with a friend, without me, so he decided she would never be allowed to be in my life again. Ever. He wrote her off.
On my 18th birthday, she called our house and asked to speak with me. So, I found out the truth.

My son's older half sister m*lested him and that's why we don't see them anymore. Waiting until we can get into a psych for support before we break it to him.

Edit: he was 3 when it happened so was able to tell us, quite graphically, what was happening. The sister also admitted it and said she did it because it was funny and she liked to hurt him. DCP (child protective services) became involved and investigated both families but couldn't find anything suspicious.
We are telling him because we very strongly believe it is the right thing to do. We don't know what/how much he remembers and would much prefer to give him the coping skills now instead of possibly letting him disintegrate into a non functioning adult with massive problems.
Thank you so much for all the support, it is a horrible thing to deal with but we are going to do everything in our power to love and support him. I am so sorry that so many of you had to go through similar situations. I am proud of every one of you for surviving and fighting ❤.

I’m the child of a parent that hid something horrible until I was 27:
One day when my parents has a domestic dispute, my dad called me just to “get back at my mom”
He said, “do you want to know something about your wh*re mother? She slept with over 30 guys during our first two years of marriage!”
I just sat down and started stuttering.
He said “you know how people have always said you looked different than the rest of the kids?”
I said, “yeah...”
“That’s because I’m not your dad. Your mom slept with my best friend and you were conceived. Another thing! Your brother (the one just younger than me—I’m the oldest) belongs to my brother!”
My mom just bawled in the background without denying it.
I just laughed.
And then I went into two years of therapy.

Not ours but some friends of ours. The husband died late last year of kidney failure. The mother told her 4 year old son that his father went overseas to work until he is 18. There is no outcome that is good for this kid.

That I don't actually enjoy watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. My 2 year old would be devastated because that's our show.

I don’t want my son to know that he was an unwanted accident. Even during my pregnancy, I didn’t want a child. I was still so young and had my whole career ahead of me. I wanted to travel the world, finish school, and advance myself in life to the fullest.

After he was born, I had a hard time adjusting and it took me a long time to fall in love with motherhood. I didn’t feel a connection to my son and felt like the worst mother in the world.

Now, I can’t stop looking at him or hugging him or crying over him. I’m finishing school and I got promoted at my job. I can have my life and still be a mother too. I only regret my feeling of not wanting my son, because he means so much to me and there are no words to describe the deep love that I feel for him.

Edit; thank you everyone for your words of support and sharing your stories. I am crying as I read them and I am truly appreciative. I love my son very much that I can’t wait to get home and hug him. I love watching him grow and I want to provide him the best life possible. It’s hard to manage work and family home life, and I’m not perfect by any means, but I’m doing my best! Thank you again everyone.

If any other parents want to talk, please don’t hesitate to contact me

As to why I didn’t choose abortion -

Before he was born or conceived I was diagnosed with PCOS and had a slim chance of getting pregnant due to the state of my ovaries. I WANTED a child but I didn’t want one at that moment. We were NOT mentally (at least I felt that I wasn’t) ready for a child - I wanted a child later in my life. When we found out i was pregnant we considered abortion. I was scared of everything - carrying the baby, giving birth, having the abortion, the guilt, the regret - a lot of emotions and thought went into this pregnancy.

I decided to go through with the pregnancy. So it was my own “fault” for keeping him but I don’t regret my decision.

I had support and friends and family all around me during and after. I even had a friend who admitted she had felt the same way I did, after giving birth.


Edit again: I grew up knowing my mother didn’t want me. I was reminded of it almost every day and it seriously messed me up. I do not want the same for my son. He IS WANTED.

My mom passed 15 years ago. My family had a bunch of stuff that they didn't go through, and that they just kinda left for me. About 10 years ago when I was trying to downsize and get rid of stuff, i found medical documents that she had kept.

Apparently, i was not an only child. She was pregnant with twins. I was the one that made it....

My daughter was conceived at work, on airport property, in the back of a f*****g Ford Focus, while we were waiting for a medflight to land.

She knows nothing about this but tells me she wants to be a pilot when she grows up.

Wife's parents are really abusive, awful people. She was emancipated from them at age 11, and they try to butt their way into our lives once in a while. Most recently, MIL was telling people we were in a horrible car accident- we weren't. Our kids think they are dead.

When my wife was breastfeeding my son she stood up to walk to another room and walked through a doorway, his head was hanging over her arm and she walked right into the door frame.


Few weeks later we are in the hospital because his head was a little big and we felt uncomfortable, ended up getting an MRI and he had a brain bleed. We got locked down and accused of child abuse etc, more tests proved it wasn't. Nobody could pinpoint what happened and it was dianogized at benign external hydrosephalis (or some s**t like that) and the brain bleed was attributed to that. His head is pretty big, he will be teased for it as he gets older, he has a big forehead.


My wife has no idea it was her fault, neither do the doctors. Only i remember what happened and i will go to the grave with it because she don't need that on her mind.

The baby brother she keeps asking for has caused so much heart break. I had a miscarriage and every time she asks when she's getting a baby brother I feel like I've been kicked in the gut.

My parents told me my sister is adopted. They didn't tell her. She's 34.