Recently, we asked the Buzzy-Feed Community* to tell us secrets they've discovered their kids have kept from them, and some of the answers were shocking. Here's what they had to say.
1. "My daughter is 15 and is already very sexually active. We took her to the hospital, and we found out she had genital herpes. She said she probably got it from dirty toilet paper from her camping trip that happened last month. I didn't believe in that, but I told her I did. So, a few days ago, I took her phone (she was in detention for something else). ... I read some of her messages between her and some friend. They were talking about body counts. I didn't know what that meant, so I googled it. So, my daughter slept with seven scrampy boys and got HERPES from one of them."
2. "One year, my husband and I were having a really hard time getting up in time for work for, like, two months straight. Years later, we found out our daughter was drugging us so she could sneak out. Either of us could have died, and she thinks it's funny she used to do that. Needless to say, she no longer lives with us and will not be allowed back if ever she falls on hard times."
3. "[My daughter's secret is] the absolutely atrocious way her father and stepmother treat her. Small stories come to surface, but she's sworn to secrecy, and I can't actually prove anything. She's 11 and asks about very specific mental conditions she's 'heard of in movies.' She overeats constantly and sleeps with all her lights on here... If you think I haven't tried everything in my power to protect her, you underestimate how good some people are at putting the fear of God in their children when it comes to hiding the fact that they torture their children emotionally."
"We try to be her sanctuary. We don't judge, and she knows she's safe here. Legally, I'm unable to restrict his access to her because I have no concrete proof, and she won't talk to an unbiased source because she's afraid they'll find out. It's absolutely heartbreaking to watch my daughter suffer, but I can only imagine what she's actually living through."
4. "I'm not really a parent, but I suppose the easiest classification here would be stepmom. When wandering around my boyfriend's ex's mom's property to visit his daughter (she has custody and lives with her mom), we found a noose strung up in a tree back in his daughter's play area of the forest (she was 12 at the time). About a week or two later (or before, I don't remember), her mom (the ex) found a suicide note back there. It was written in Crayola marker and filled with I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It was absolutely heartbreaking to read. We've all tried to rally around her — we're definitely not a 'normal' family, and it's been hard on his daughter. She's doing better now and has a ton of great friends, but it was about the worst thing to find."
"Since that time, there has been a lot of talk about being open about feelings, she's talked to school counselors, and her mom is trying to pay more attention to her. When my bf and I are able to have her with us, we play DnD with her...and she's HOOKED on it (seriously, other than homework, she spends all her time making modules and writing character backstory). It was a chilling discovery, that day in the forest, but it could have been far worse...and now, we're all a lot closer."
5. "[My son] (15) and his childhood bestie (15M) are doing drugs together. Yesterday, he asked me if bestie could come over this week and play GTA, a game in which, up to now, he’s never shown interest. I said I’d think about [it]. This morning, I picked up his phone and spied on him. Sure enough, there is a message to bestie asking if he can come over this week because son has 'kush and pills, and my mom is working 9–6 every day.' Haven’t confronted him yet. This isn’t our first rodeo with weed, but pills are pretty fucking concerning. Pretty stressed today and trying to figure out how to deal with this."
6. "My son is very honest with me, so I've never felt the desire to snoop on him. Over the summer, I was looking for my tape measure, and remembered that I'd asked him to measure the space above his desk for shelving. I went into his room (he was away at camp for a couple of weeks) and looked high and low before spotting the tape measure under his desk. I couldn't comfortably reach it because of how the desk was constructed, so I pulled the desk away from the wall. While doing so, I heard a soft thud. After I'd created enough of a clearance to shimmy between the wall to the back of the desk, I saw the gift box that we'd wrapped his birthday present in, splayed on the floor with what appeared to be an assortment of fabrics. Upon closer inspection, I saw what the 'fabrics' really were — a box of washed and unwashed women's underwear."
"I put the desk back, but couldn't recreate how the box was situated before. After thinking about what to do, I decided to broach this with him when he returned. More than anything else, I wanted to be sure he wasn't doing anything dangerous (so many thoughts ran through my mind, the strongest being that he was somehow buying them from or bartering with girls at school...).
When he came home, I told him that I needed to talk to him. He seemed nervous, and as soon as I mentioned the tape measure, he started to cry. He knew I'd found the box and was crying not because of that, but because he thought that I'd found out that he was stealing his best friend's mother's underwear, from his best friend's mother. I'm not sure why he arrived at that conclusion, but such is the mind of my 13-year-old.
It turned out that over about a 20-month period, he'd taken to swiping my wife's coworker's (mother of his best friend) underwear from her laundry basket, hamper, and even her bedroom drawer whenever he had a chance. There was a total of eleven pairs of underwear.
It took me a few days to have a heart-to-heart with him, and it was one of the most difficult conversations I'd ever had to have with him. Maybe I stopped him from engaging in progressively more perverted behavior, maybe not. I just hope that he doesn't go down a path like that again, and that his sexual proclivities manifest themselves in more natural and non-illicit ways."
7. "I found drug paraphernalia in my 16-year-old's bedroom yesterday while making her bed. My heart is broken, and I'm not sure how to approach situation. ... I'm pretty sure it's meth. We've had this issue throughout my family history."
8. "My wife was emptying the trash in the downstairs bathroom the other day and noticed that it smelled a little off. So, I cleaned out the can and sprayed it down with a lovely citrusy disinfectant. The next week, I noticed the same smell the moment I entered the bathroom. However, when I turned the can over to empty the contents, there was a generous amount of foul smelling amber liquid in addition to the usual tissues and empty toilet paper rolls."
"It didn't take long to identify this mystery liquid. It was old urine. The only suspect was my son, as the wife and I both use the bathroom in the master bedroom exclusively. We set up a sting operation. We both sat quietly in the living room pretending to watch the TV when the boy arrived home after school. After the usual greeting, he slipped past us as he usually does and went straight to the scene of the crime. Since we were listening this time, we could hear him locking the door as carefully as he could. That was the moment we both knew for sure that our son was up to something...odd.
The bathroom door is easily unlocked with a toothpick. In one quick motion, I picked the lock, turned the knob, and swung open the door to reveal the boy responsible for carrying on my family name, my one and only child, and the fruit of my loins, with his ass fully exposed and his pants around his ankles, pissing right into the trash can.
My wife took one look and left the room. I stood there with a blank expression as he turned around in shock and scrambled to pull up his pants. He sat on the toilet and put his head in his hand, refusing to acknowledge my existence.
'Son,' was all I could say.
It wouldn't be until the next day that he finally spoke to me. He said that it made him feel good for some reason he couldn't explain. ... I told him that he could piss outside all he wanted, but that he wasn't allowed to piss on anything inside the house besides the toilet."