You tell your kids a lot—they’re your tiny best friends, after all! But of course, there are some things that the little ones just simply don’t need to know. In a recent Reddit thread, parents shared the top secrets that they’ve kept from their children. Some of these are pretty juicy!

1. Bedtime

   “That we don’t go to bed the same time as they do… Daughter: Books? Me: No more books, time for night night. Daughter: Books? Me: No more books, time for night night. Daughter: Mama? Me: Mama went night night, time for night night. Daughter: Daddy? Me: Yes, I’m going night night too. It’s 6:45 of course I’m not going night night.”

2. New Years is Earlier Than Usual

   “That I’ve been changing every clock in the house on New Year’s Eve to 3 hours early. At 9 p.m. we celebrate the new year, then hang out for an hour. He thinks he’s breaking every rule and has a great time. Now that he’s turning 11 this will never happen again. With phones and being somewhat smarter.”

3. The Past

   “I used to be a stripper for 10 years, growing up in an abusive house, I partied hard and used to be part of NYC & Montreal club scene, that I was kidnapped and taken to another country. There’s a lot of things… Now I’m just a boring accountant mom to everyone. No one has any clue what I’ve been through. Crazy what your kids don’t know about you.”

4. Disappearing Candy

   “I eat most of their Halloween/Easter/parade candy when they are at school.”

5. Conceiving Stories

   “My daughter was conceived at work, on airport property, in the back of a fucking Ford Focus, while we were waiting for a medflight to land. She knows nothing about this but tells me she wants to be a pilot when she grows up.”

6. The Truth Behind the Falls

   “My dad told me my mom had vertigo which is why she fell down a lot. It only took me until I was 6 that i found out she was an alcoholic.”

7. A Tragic Family Death

   “My mom kept it a secret that the woman I was named after (her mom, my grandma) was stabbed to death by my uncle when my mom was 18. I always suspected my grandma had a tragic death because of how my mom would avoid talking about it, but I didn’t know it was that tragic.”

8. Winning the Lottery

   “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…”

9. Not Their Real Parents

   “My father found out when he was in his 40s that his father was not his biological father. His mother (my grandmother) literally cheated on her husband with the milk man.”

10. Or That They’re the Real Parents, but Not Biological

    “My wife is not the biological mother of our twins. We did IVF and their biological mother was an egg donor from a country in South America. My wife carried them and gave birth to them but has no biological connection. We’ll tell them some day when they’re older.”

11. Where Food Comes From

    “I’m working out how to explain that the chicken we eat is the same as the kind of chickens that live on a farm.”

12. More Siblings

    “This last Christmas I found out that not only was my mom had already been previously married and divorced but my dad had a kid before he married my mom. So I have a half brother or sister that I have never met. The real kicker was I found it out from my new sister in law who had someone did some digging, found out, assumed that I must already know and brought it up out of the blue on Christmas Eve while we were baking cookies.”

13. The Reason Behind Divorce

    “My daughter knows that her grandparents are getting a divorce. She doesn’t know that it’s because grandpa (72) decided to knock up a 23 year old. We will talk about it once she’s older, but I don’t want to normalize that relationship for a preadolescent.”

14. Old Thoughts

    “My son was planned, but after separating from his father when my son was 8 months old and having basically nowhere to go/no way to actually take care of us on our own, many, many times I thought about the possibility of dropping him off at the hospital and skipping town. I never did, and he is eight now and we are very happy.”

15. Bad TV

    “That I don’t actually enjoy watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. My 2-year-old would be devastated because that’s our show.”

Have you ever kept a secret from your kids?