Have you ever wondered if your child keeps secrets from you? If you do have these thoughts, don’t feel shy because you are not alone. Many parents around the world have often wondered if their kids are keeping things away from them and it’s normal to have such thoughts.

Also, you need to know as a parent that children will sometimes keep things away from you from some personal reasons. When such happens, never be in a haste to attack them or pressure them into telling you.

There are some things that children may not tell you that can be overlooked. Things like their “secret crush”, “secret desires” and favorite “hideouts”. These things can be overlooked as it mostly is a phase that gets to pass away.

On the other hand, there are some things you shouldn’t overlook and these are the things you need to watch out for in your kids. These are three things your kids will never tell you when they begin to get involved in them:

1. Drinking/smoking: This is one secret a child never gets to tell their parents. When children begin to attend school parties and start drinking and smoking, they try to do everything in order to hide it from their parents. So what do you do when you suspect your child is drinking or smoking? Confront or challenge them? No! This is never the ideal approach as you will only make them deny and be defensive. Instead, have a frank decision with them and give them words of advice. This will help them in more ways than you can imagine.
2. Fighting: No child likes to be involved in a school fight and come home to tell his/her parents. Children will do almost anything to hide the truth from their parents when they get involved in a school fight. So if the school doesn’t call in to report a fight incident, the likelihood of you getting to know is very low. One way you can find things for yourself is to keep an open eye for details like unusual stains on your child’s uniform. This way, you can know the right questions to ask and conclusions to draw when you get to notice a stain looking like blood on your child’s uniform.
3. Serious injuries: When children suffer serious injuries, they try their best to hide it from their parents. This many do as they are always in fear that their parents will scold them. As a parent, you need to create an environment at home that allows your child easily to speak when they are in any kind of pain, physical or emotional.

Children will always have secrets but it lies in your hands to build a long lasting relationship with them that affords them the mind to share with you their deepest secrets. When children feel they can trust you, it enhances the likeliness of them being open to you.

The goal here shouldn’t be to find out what secrets they hid from you but to build a relationship with them that allows them to share freely with you the things that bother them.