Parenting can get trickier the older your children get – they’re semi-adults, with their own lives and right to privacy, but they’re still living under your roof and you know, stashing your spoons under their bed instead of in the kitchen drawers where they belong.

There are any number of legitimate reasons for a parent to be in a teenger’s room (and some that aren’t as nice), so the chances of parents finding something a kid would rather keep to themselves is pretty good.

For these 16 parents, though, what they uncovered was definitely best kept to themselves.

16. Definitely leave those.

Condoms.

Never ever take the condoms.

15. Nineteen is definitely old enough to tell mom to mind her own business.

I was living at home at 19.

My mom was in my room looking for something, what she found was my fleshlight and a bottle of lube.

She did bring it up, i came home from work and she said “do you want to know what I found in your bedside table today?” in a moment of genius (very rare for me) I said “a reason to respect my privacy?”

That was the end of it. She also finally started to knock before walking in to my room so that was a nice bonus.

14. I love kids.

When I was 10 my brother was 12 we were staying the weekend at our grandpas house way out in the country. I found a c*ck ring in the bathroom and being 10 I obviously had no clue what it was so I showed it to my brother.

He told me what it was and we ran outside in the middle of the night and chucked it into the woods because we panicked. Thankfully grandpa never asked about his missing c*ck ring.

13. That’s basically a diary.

Some weird erotic friend fan-fic my 15 year old wrote.

Never breathed a word of it to anyone.

12. That changes a person.

My best friend and I would wait until my parents left to turn the house upside down looking for change to go to McDonalds.

We called ourselves the “dollar menu millionaires” well, you can guess that we went into my parents drawers and jewelry boxes and to our horror discovered very EXPLICIT spread eagle Polaroids my dad must have took of my step-mom. I can still see them now. We no longer went in their room for change.

Didn’t say a word. Could never look at her the same.

11. It’s his now.

My dad found my porn stash… he took all the regular porn mags away……. but left all my hentai stuff there…

I don’t know what to make of that…

10. Never stifle talent.

My son is a very talented artist. While cleaning his room, we found a drawing that he’d done as sort of a 3-part comic strip.

1st panel: There was a pretty girl wearing bib overalls (the kind with the straps over the shoulder).

2nd panel: One of the strap buttons popped loose and the strap was flying back over her shoulder as the overalls started to fold down.

3rd panel: The girl, breast exposed, had a perfect look of surprised embarrassment on her face.

The reason we didn’t say anything was because he was a pretty shy eleven-year-old and we didn’t want him to stop drawing by embarrassing him.

I regret not taking a picture of it, though, because it was really impressive artwork for a kid.

9. Lesson learned.

Reverse order, I was in my moms room looking for something. She had quite a bit of clutter piled on top of her dresser, so I start examining the contents to see if it’s there.

After a few seconds I realize there’s a beaded buttplug just sitting right out in the open.

I immediately left her room and decided to just ask her if she’d seen what I was looking for.

8. That can’t be good.

Not a parent but found a note in my brothers room talking about killing my cat.

Note : he never has

7. He’d never beat the dog.

My dad is a dog trainer. He doesn’t any more but from the 1980-2010ish he trained K9s and drug dogs for different police departments. He used to do raids on my room.

Every so often I would come home from school and my stash of weed or pipes would be on my bed with a note that says “find a better spot, I need more of a challenge.”

6. It’s always the five year old.

Was looking for my vibrator that mysteriously disappeared from my drawer. Looked in the teenagers room, not there. Went to my 5 year olds room and there it was sitting on top of his dresser, in all its glory.

I was too scared to ask anyone how my “lightsaber” got there so just took it back and hid it in my room.

5. The only thing to do, really.

We had to move our kid out of a bad living situation. She wasn’t in any condition to help. So wife and I go in and just start grabbing her stuff. We come across her adult baby fetish gear. Like two duffel bags of it, giant onesies, binkis, diapers etc.

Wife looked at me, I looked at her, we shut each bag and have never spoken of it again.

4. “Just let her have it.”

When I was 9ish my mom got me a light-up handheld back massager. I was obsessed with it, it looked like something space age and did wonders on my neck and back. My older teenage sister stole it from my room one day and I noticed it on her nightstand.

She wouldn’t give it back and I told my mom she stole it, but mom just said “just let her have it”

20 years later and I finally understand.

3. I…don’t know what to say.

A pair of Spongebob boxer shorts with the a$scheeks cut out, to make them into a thong.

2. Y’all my heart.

I’m the child in this story.

I was about 10 or 11 and feeling really guilty for being a horrible person (silly kid stuff). I don’t remember exactly what, maybe it was as simple as not saying I love you enough. I felt I had to atone somehow so I started writing “I love you Dad, love you Mum, love you Sister 1, love you Sister 2” and did it over and over almost like the lines you’d get as punishment in school. I did a full page and then completely forgot about them.

My room was VERY messy and my parents didn’t enforce me to clean it (silly of them). In my defence I most likely have undiagnosed ADHD but that’s besides the point. What is the point is that it may have been months later or even years later but I found that piece of paper again and I was cringing for having written it. But at the bottom in my Dad’s handwriting was one final line

“We love you too”

1. At least he saved it.

Not a parent but my dad moved to a new apartment after I shipped to boot camp.

When I got back home on boot leave he was showing me around his new apartment and he just casually mentioned “your pocket pu*sy is in that drawer by the way”

Man, I am not looking forward to these parenting moments.

If you’ve got something to add to this list, drop it in the comments!