Even though I feel like I know pretty much everything about my parents and my siblings, there have to be some dark things that I was just never told for one reason or another.

I think most families probably work this way and some instances just aren’t talked about so people can be protected from awful things.

Are you ready to hear some dark secrets that parents are keeping from their kids?

Let’s see what AskReddit users had to say.

1. Not your grandpa.

“Grandpa’s not their grandpa. I didn’t find out until I was 30 that my dad adopted me and my mom was married to someone else when I was born.

My 15-year-old was looking at those DNA kits in the store. “I wonder what surprises it would find!” Oh, more than you think, sweetie.

I’ll tell them some day. Just not where what the right time is. Then again, that’s what my parents told me when i asked why they never told me about bio-dad until he reached out to me and blew their secret.”

2. Wow!

“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.”

3. Don’t tell them that.

“Money is tighter than I’d like it to be.

My daughter’s Easter gift this year is a brand new expensive hair straightener that somebody else gave me as payback for doing them a favor. My son’s Easter gift this year is a Lego set from my childhood.

My mom kept most of our stuff in good shape in original boxes.”

4. IVF.

“Our daughters are both from IVF.

“Older” daughter was conceived 2 years after youngest.

“Younger” daughter frozen for a number of years as embryo making the “older” one biologically younger then the “younger” one.”

5. Poverty.

“We are so poor. They’re little so they don’t notice. But we struggle a lot to pay the rent and buy groceries.

We had our kids kind of young. We were both in grad school. So we’re in a weird spot because we both have fancy sounding degrees that your average person would assume turned into a well paying job.

I am now a postdoc, and we are notoriously underpaid. Sometimes I think “wow, I have a PhD, you’d think I’d be smart enough to work out how to get more money…” but I moved the family internationally for this job, which is another thing that would make you think we had everything sorted out.”

6. Hoping for a quick recovery.

“My bad health. She is two and she just wants mommy to play.

How do you explain cancer to a two year old?”

7. Divorced.

“That we’re divorced.

Years before they came along, spouse and I decided it wasn’t working out and got divorced. Years later, things still weren’t working out fantastically for both of us, so we got back together.

Never did get around to getting remarried though.”

8. Awful.

“That my dad killed himself and I found the body.

They have an amazing life and I don’t want them to dwell on the fact that something so dark could happen to someone so close to them. They’re 8 and 11, and I have no plans to tell them until maybe their 20’s. When they ask, I just say he was very sick.

When they press for details, which they have, I come right out and say “I’d rather not talk about it. Maybe when you’re older.””

9. That’s really sad.

“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.”

10. Not my child.

“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.”

11. An accident.

“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.”

12. Bad people.

“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.”

13. Hopefully, they don’t go snooping around.

“The sheer volume of BDSM related toys hidden in our bedroom.

There’s also a 50/50 chance our eldest was conceived in a fetish club.’

14. Abusive.

“Just how abusive their biological father was to me and how neglectful he was of our eldest yet dependant on her emotionally. Also, that he never wanted a son and that he never had any interest in anything to do with our second born.

My biggest fear is them seeing exactly what he did to me though…they don’t notice the way my heart wants to leap out of my chest when there’s a knock on the door. They think I won’t let them play alone in the front yard because of cars going past, not because I’m scared their bio father may find them and snatch them.

Same as how they believe I just hate big crowds and rude people pushing and shoving, not because I’m constantly on edge looking for that one face. They’ll never know I broke down to their school principal about our past after seeing one of the exs Facebook posts. They’ll never know the carefree person I used to be though and that sucks.

My eldest (just shy of 8 now) has started asking questions and being that one of her earliest memories is of coming home to me in a police car because, “daddy was too sick to take car of me so the police brought me home.” I’m going to have to explain a little more soon enough. Its been 3.5 years since my kids have had any contact with him.

Explaining the past terrifies me.”

What about you?

Do you know of some deep, dark secrets that some people in your family don’t know about?

If so, share them with us in the comments if you’re comfortable.