There are good reasons for keeping secrets from kids…but there are also a lot of suspect reasons to lie to kids, too, if we’re being honest. Kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit to, so I think that most of the time, we just don’t want to deal with the fallout of coming clean.
These 15 families managed to keep secrets all the way until their kids were adults, and when the truth came out, the kids had to deal with rearranging everything they’d always thought was true.
15. True love?
My parents got divorced a few years before I was born, got back together but never remarried. They had no plans to ever tell us (my younger sister and I), but it came out when I was looking at my citizenship options.
It’s likely we never would have found out otherwise.
14. There’s a whole other story there.
Yes. That I had a half brother that was adopted soon after his birth. I met him when I was 13.
My mom kind of had to tell me as he had become a policeman and was at our house to arrest my dad. He didn’t keep in touch, I don’t blame him.
13. All the insane stories.
When I turned 18 my dad told me how he’d spent the better part of 10 years as a drug smuggler. Mostly cocaine and weed that they would get in South America, put on small planes to land somewhere in the Caribbean and then move to Florida on super fast boats they’d only run at night.
He didn’t tell me all the insane stories I’m sure he had but he did tell me about being stuck in a bar in Colombia for an entire day during an attempted coup and how more than once they traded guns they stole to the FARC for cocaine.
This was all especially crazy since to me he was pretty much the most straight laced dude alive.
12. Poor dad.
That my father was married before he met my mother and had a daughter.
I do not and may never know the full story. My mother knows parts of it, but won’t tell me much and just refers me to my father when I ask more about it. My father gets damn hysterical about it, I just don’t know how much is true or embellished.
Basically, my father moved away from his dysfunctional poor family in Florida to Texas where he had a job lined up. He was out on his own and finally making money, thought not much.
I don’t know how he met this woman, but they did get together and got married within a short time. She was quick to move in and share everything with him.
She got pregnant and my presumed sister was born. My father loved her. In fact, I recently I found pictures of the two of them together, and he was definitely happy.
Then “something” happened. From his rantings, she took almost everything he earned, ran up a lot of credit, etc. When he called attention to it, her family started threatening him. To quote him, “they were the type of people, who would show up to your work causing trouble, and destroy your car as they left, just because they didn’t like you.”
Now, by this time his daughter was almost three years old, and besides these supposed events, they had been living happily the entire time.
Surprisingly, it was the woman who started the divorce. Her family had money, and my father- who was alone -did not, and they went hard on him in false accusations. My father was still fighting though, but when it looked like he might “win”, they claimed that his daughter was not his and how the woman had always been sleeping with some other man. It was apparently convincing enough, that my father believes that to be true to this day. I don’t think there was ever a paternity test, but he apparently signed away any claim to be her father. . . and he wasn’t ordered to pay any child support.
According to my mother, his supposed daughter would show up at our house/apartment alone occasionally, trying to talk with my father. . . even once on my 9th birthday- though I don’t remember her. However, that strikes me as a little odd, as she couldn’t be more than than 12 years old at the time. . .someone would’ve had to known where we lived and driven her there.
The first time I heard about any of this was when I was 24 years old, and had just gone with my father to have our wills and other important documents updated. That is when he told me that if he died, “someone” may come claiming to be his daughter, but that it wasn’t true and instructed me on how to properly defend his estate from such an event. He wouldn’t give me any details though, and I just dropped it.
Then, about a year ago, the supposed daughter found and contacted me on Facebook. . .I didn’t respond at first, because I thought it was some junk friend request, but they also contacted my mother, who verified that it was who they said they were. So, yeah, I had a short conversation with her through Messenger. She sounded honest enough, but I was cautious/skeptical.
That is when I brought it up to my father, who got hysterical and told me the rest of what I’ve relayed here.
We are still friends on Facebook, but we kind of have an understanding that we may or may not be brother and sister. The only way we would know for sure is to have a sibling paternity test, which could let us know within a reasonable probability, but not for certain, unless my father participated too. And we pretty much decided that we couldn’t put him through that as he seems to be very traumatized by whatever happened back then.
She is a mother and has a caring family now though. Supposedly, her mother remarried, then something happened to her mother and is no longer in her life. Her step-father took her in, and she hasn’t had any contact with her biological family. I suppose that is part of the reason why she wanted to get to know my father, he is the only one she knows that could be her biological father.
11. A little secret.
Not as impressive, but before weed got legalized in nearby states, my dad started a little weed farm in our basement (parents bought our house specifically for a part of the basement which my dad closed off before we moved in). Only sold to his brothers but it was going for a lot then (like $75 for an gram* I think?) my parents paid for their honeymoon with that money.
Best part: his brothers thought he was getting it from someone else – oh, and my bedroom was right next to it. My walls were very thick.
I put ounce and that’s not right lol. It’s now $10 a gram
10. Busted.
When I was 18 my mom told me how my dad cheated on her with this woman named Kathy. I actually remembered Kathy when I was kid because my dad would take my brother and I to her house. She would buy us computer games and stuff so we loved her at the time.
I never understood why my mom hated her until I was older.
Kathy ended up marrying my dad’s best friend. As an adult I was never nice to her and my dad would give me crap about it.
I finally told him that I knew about her and that mom had told me everything. He just said “Oh, alright then.”
He never gave me crap again.
9. How sad.
My mom died giving birth to me, but I just found out a few months ago that I had a twin sister that died during childbirth to. She wasn’t really strong enough to survive.
I think I stole all the good stuff inside.
It would be cool having a mom and a twin sister but the world had different plans i guess.
8. Quite a tale.
My mom met my dad in the military. I learned she joined the military to escape her town. Her best friend had killed himself and she dropped out of school. She started hanging out with his dad a lot and he convinced her to go back to high school and graduate. They became really close and his wife learned about it.
At her graduation the wife finally met my mom and told her she was going to kill her for ‘messing around’ with her husband. So my mom joined the military and didn’t tell anyone until a couple years later after she had met my dad and had me. I learned all this when I was like 25.
I don’t even know if my dad knew the whole story as they had never brought it up.
7. Heartbreaking for sure.
That my mum didn’t accidentally take too many sleeping pills, but actually tried to kill herself multiple times before succeeding
6. Not the father.
My sister decided to take a DNA test to get some insight into her ancestry.
She got her results back and had zero percent Italian, while our dad is 100% Italian.
She didn’t confront them right away and instead decided to wait until I took the test and get my results. Four weeks later I got my results back and sure enough, I also had zero percent Italian, and it actually identified my biological father, who isn’t my dad.
They revealed the secret when my sister intentionally let it slip that she was and I were waiting for our DNA results. I’m 38 and it never once came up.
It wasn’t even really for a bad reason, they had fertility issues and went to a sperm bank. I’m honestly not sure they ever would have said anything
5. That’s what people do.
Background: My mom’s grandparents divorced not long before I was born, then two years later my grandfather remarried. My biological grandmother died when I was young, so growing my Grandfather’s new wife was basically my grandmother. We’ll call her Patty.
Patty is weird – she means well, but tends to put her foot in her mouth and ask people weirdly personal questions (about their sex lives especially). Still, she’s family so whatever.
Except, growing up, my Mom and her two siblings hated Patty. When I was younger it was kind of minor, just occasional snide comments behind her back, but as I got older it became increasingly clear that they couldn’t stand the woman. It was always so odd to me – yeah she was a goof, but whatever, lots of people in our family had quirks.
Then, when I was in my 20s, my grandfather died. As I was sitting down with my Mom, going over some old photos of my grandad, there was a picture of Patty that my Mom immediatley made a rude comment about. I finally asked “why do you guys hate her so much?”
My mom looked at me, confused, then realization appeared on her face. “Oh, we never told you did we?”
Turns out the reason my biological grandparents got divorced was because my Grandfather had been cheating on my Grandmother with Patty, going back more than a decade before the divorce. They didn’t hate her because she was weird, they hated her because she was a home wrecker.
It seemed kind of unfair to me that they directed all their hate at Patty, since my grandfather was just as, if not more, guilty, but I guess that’s what people do. The funeral I think actually kind of gave my Mom and her siblings a chance to put those bad feelings to rest, because after it they all started being a lot nicer and more civil towards Patty.
4. The horrible truth.
When I was 7, my dad died while we were staying at his place (in a different country). We were supposed to stay 2 weeks, but I recall not staying over a week. He died at his office while we were at his place.
Other people from my family came to get us late at night, and after a day or two, we flew back home. But my brother (8) and I didn’t know anything that has happened and we didn’t know why we were taken away from my dad. Once we arrived home, my mom and a lady from the school sat us down at the kitchen table, and announced that our father died.
My mom has told us that he died due to some medical reasons or whatever, but it’s only years later (when I was 21 or 22), that a step-brother (son of my father) that I’ve only seen as a kid and then suddenly came back briefly in my life, told me that my dad actually died from gunshots while he was at work in his office.
So my mom didn’t actually tell me herself, and when I told her that I knew, she was upset at my stepbrother for telling me the truth about my father’s death.
3. More to it.
We are from a more traditional culture where people tend to have a large amount of kids. Having 4-5 kids is not common but no one will bat an eyelash. I have multiple relatives with 5 kids. Myself, I’m an only child.
I would often ask my parents about siblings but, while they are usually very engaging, they’d essentially tell me to put a cork in it. It was weird.
I found out fairly recently that, when we came to America, my mom got pregnant. It was later in life so she would have been late 30s/early 40s. Apparently the pregnancy went quite far but sh lost the baby. It made a bunch of stuff click – how their fighting ramped up significantly around that time, how my dad went back to our home country for a while, etc.
I think there’s more to it but they refuse to talk about it.
2. A massive shock.
Around when I was 14, my dad sat me and my brother down and revealed that we had an older half sister, I thought he was joking at first but essentially before him and my mum got together he had a relationship and when he broke up with her she moved away and blocked all contact.
This wasn’t waiting until we were old enough though, my half sister messaged him through Facebook and revealed she was his child, so just conveniently timed and a massive shock for him, even more so, he had a grandchild aged 2 from her.
1. A brave man.
Found out that my Dad was one the loudest student leaders that fought the Marcos dictatorship, he led a propaganda movement, captured and tortured by the PC, and was desaparecido for a few years , the horrors he experienced I cant even–
I’m not a fan of the lying, parents!
Did you learn something wild after you were an adult? Share it with us in the comments!