As a parent, there are things I have kept from my children because I thought it was in their best interest. That’s exactly what these 19 parents did to their kiddos. Take a look at some of the most life-changing secrets mothers and fathers decided to keep to themselves. Makes me wonder…what did my parents hide from me?

1. Bio mom

Something I will never tell them is that their biological mom told me that she had the second kid because she “didn’t get enough child support with only one kid”. Nor will I let them know that she hated them so much that she refused to see the kids for over 2 years. They where 1,5 and 2,5 y/o when she left. (At this point, she has been seeing them once every 2 weeks, things are going.. well.. OK-ish. They still call me mommy and call her by her name.)

2. RIP

I once killed my daughter’s hamster…she was at her grandma’s house overnight and I decided to air out her room while she was gone. I opened her window, but forgot to close it, unfortunately, this was during a Canadian winter…I replaced the hamster just in time, she never noticed, but I still feel bad about it years later.

3. hehe

My aunt accidentally filmed one of her sons continually rub his crotch and gooch area and smell it followed by digging for nose berries and feasting on them.

This was all while filming her youngest son trying to master Rich Girl on the new Just Dance game complete with lyrics

4. Love is love

My youngest daughter probably isn’t mine. I love her just the same.

5. Good plan

My son has a ciliary condition that might affect his ability to have children. That’ll be bad for him when he’s old enough to want a family. I don’t dare tell him too soon (he’s only 4 now), because I don’t want him going through high school/college thinking he can’t get a girl pregnant.

6. Ha!

I know his online username, it could ruin his social life if I told it to his facebook friends.

7. Surgery is an option, if he really wants

My child was born with breasts that lactated. His is big now and always had extra fat cells there. He is really self conscious about it and I have always kept that piece of information from him. Unfortunately we live in such an appearance important culture. I try to teach him what being a quality human being is and his value is more than the superficial.

8. Some secrets are best kept secrets…

My nephews are like my own boys, and they’re my sisters kids. She married (and divorced) their father, a psychopathic abusive man. If the boys knew just what kind of abuse their father did to them… it would kill them. They both have broken noses because of him… and it happened when they were both under 4 years old.

9. Such a kind heart

So, this is the other way around, but during my freshman year of high school, my parents were experiencing financial difficulty (piles of medical bills for my mom’s cancer, slowing business for my dad). In an attempt to save them money, I decided to use as little lunch money as possible. So, I essentially stopped eating breakfast, ate only pretzels and water for lunch, and had minimal servings for dinner. My parents clearly noticed the change in my appearance but assumed it was because of puberty. I feel like if I ever told my parents, especially my mom, it would absolutely break their hearts.

10. Explore away

My teenage football star son will occasionally put on my wife’s dresses and hang around the house. He acts like he is being funny but he does it for hours. We noticed recently that he also does it sometimes when no one is home (dresses re-arranged, not put on hangers perfectly). So he’s a masculine, studly, cross dressing football star in HS. This would destroy him if it got out. We think it’s OK and are happy to let him explore.

11. …how did you find out?

I found out my friend was a black market purchase and the woman who raised her wasn’t the original parent on her paperwork. Her relative was married to someone with dual citizenship. The woman who raised her gave 10,000 dollars USD for the man with dual citizenship to go to his home country, buy a baby, forge the paperwork and bring her home as a child from a former relationship. He then adopted her out to the woman who raised my friend. She knows she’s adopted but not that she was purchased.

12. Poor cat…and sister

I’m not a parent, but I have dirt on my youngest sister (6y) that would ruin her.

A year ago, she tied a skipping rope to our cat so she could walk around the neighbourhood with it. The cat didn’t mind, it was a fat lazy character who tolerated most of what she did to it. But after the walk she forgot to untie it. She went inside, and the cat stayed outside. It jumped over the fence and the rope got caught by the branches of a tree. It suffocated to death. It took us a day to find it.

We never told my sister that it was her fault that the cat died, obviously. She was already devastated by the loss of our cat, as were we all. I don’t know what story we told her, but my mom probably told her that it just died. The life lesson is already there, no need to add to it.

13. This one is funny

My mother decided to wait till I was 20 years old to tell me about the time I cooked my pet goldfish in my easy bake oven because I wanted to make them seafood.. 🙁 We were in a store and I noticed they were selling easy bake ovens and I commented about how those things were still around and how I kinda remembered having one when I was a kid… And she proceeded to tell me the reason why they took it.

14. Don’t tell his friends that!

One time a friend’s mom let it slip in front of us kids that she took him to the doctor a few times because his penis was so small. We never forgot that. Ever. He ended up with some anger issues later on.

15. Mom should have kept her mouth shut

When I was 9 years old I was in the hospital and my parents got me a teddy bear to make me feel better. I named him Jarry (pronounced Jerry) and he’s still with me today at 30 years old. My dad passed away 9 years ago. Just recently my mom told me that it wasn’t my dad and her that gave me Jarry, it was my stepdad and her. She told me that my dad never went to the hospital with us when I was sick.

That broke my heart and completely ruined my memories of Jarry. The biggest reason why he’s been so special was because I thought I had a connection with my dad with him. I could’ve gone without knowing the truth.

16. No family heirlooms?

My friend bought his dad’s old truck from his grandma for $500. When he got home his mom said “oh hey that’s the truck you were conceived in!”. Didn’t ruin his life but he no longer owns a truck.

17. Holy shit.

One of my close friends and his wife opted to have an abortion, a few months later she realized she was pregnant. Turns out she initially had twins and the abortion seemingly missed one. I can’t imagine finding out that my parents aborted my twin and accidentally missed me.

18. A day at a time

My nine year old son doesn’t just understand the implications of his cystic fibrosis – that his life will be shorter and he’ll never father children.

One day I have to explain this to him.

And his younger sister.

Honestly that sometimes it’s harder for me to cope with than everything else – that my daughter probably won’t have her big brother around when she’s older.

19. Mental health

When I was in seventh grade, I think, I was becoming increasingly suspicious that I might have some sort of mental issue, as I’ve always had severe problems when it comes to socializing and I was realizing that a lot of the things I did as a small kid were kind of weird. One day, my sister told me that my mom accidentally mentioned something about me being autistic. Now, this wouldn’t have meant much to me, but at that age all I knew was that it was basically a mental disorder and that scared the piss out of me. I asked my mom and she denied it, but the pieces started coming together and I realized what all the counseling was about when I was little. One day, I was given a form to take to my parents. I decided to take a peak, and unsurprisingly saw that autism was checked in the list of conditions.

Five years later, and as far as I know, my parents still think that I just accepted my mom’s answer and don’t know that I know. I have never brought it up since, and though I’ve gotten far better and am now actually a pretty social guy, I was a bit messed up for a while. I had really know perception of what was okay and what was not, and the idea that I was simply insane or something caused me to not care. I only started showering regularly a couple years ago, and I have absolutely rotten teeth due to lack of dental hygiene for years that still really isn’t that great.

Weird thing is, I never even really noticed how strange I was a few years ago. Typing this up has revealed just how severe it was considering it’s actually a very mild case of Aspergers or something like that. I’m way better off now and everything turned out alright, but I was near falling into severe depression several times and I have no clue how bad things might have been. I wish my parents would have just explained it early on.