There are secrets that are best left alone, actions we’ve committed and our sharing of them would do no one any good. There are also the ones that we might consider how we might broach with the adults in our lives that we are intimate. Then there are those that beg for us to open up and release for in doing so we liberate not only ourselves but aid those close to us in seeing that life, while chocked full of tedious tasks and myriad of uncertainties, can be endured and enjoyed.
These secrets are usually the ones we keep from our children.
For me it was the fact that I didn’t’ have any friends during my time in elementary and through to high school. I wasn’t necessarily hated, nor did I hate others. I just wasn’t one of the in crowd.
There’s a lot of us out there. I meet them as parents whose children attend school with mine and I’ve come to know them in therapy, both as adult and those adolescent clients undergoing what I experienced.
It was and is easy to talk fellow parents and other adults about my trial. They, like me, survived. The fact that we joke about it evidences we got through it fairly unscathed. Yet some battle scars remain, those we keep hidden—and mostly from our children.
I know I have a secret tearing to come out when one of my children begins to tell me about an incident at school, usually hurtful, that they’ve experienced at the hands of another, either a classmate of another student. My chest tightens. My breath grows short. I want to march to the school and inform this student how much hurt my child felt in response to their words and actions. But it’s not only my child that is bothered. I am too.
Truth be told I’m back there on the playground as that little girl who in third grade was squeezed out of a threesome that became a twosome taking with it the girl I though was my best friend, or I as in high school learning that I hadn’t been invited to the party that would begin after the prom.
And though my friends who like I have survived, know that in the scheme of things, these events, however much they hurt, lose importance over time, I also know a residue remains.
I happen to think the memories remain not to haunt me, but to make me a better parent, someone who can identify with my child. This only happens when I share my secret—that like my daughter, I too had a childhood. And some days, more than I want to admit, truth be known, were difficult, challenging.
What’s in a secret?
A lot if we’re honest. And even more if we choose to open up and show we’re human.
I too have had a similar childhood. As I have grown to become a mother and grandmother, those childhood days do not haunt me. I also admit if my children come to me with a smiliar story, I too feel their pain. Also I love you thoughts on the meaning of a secret.
Thanks so much for your comment. I think the essence of secrets is letting them go and setting ourselves free. The most binding secrets are the ones we keep or hold from ourselves. With regards to our children, I feel that total honesty is best–but age appropriate. And by the word “total” I mean in letting our children know when we were most scared and most afraid. Again the watch phrase when doing this is “age appropriate,” as with when about to reveal something concerning our own fears–“When I was your age.”
Children benefit from knowing that we were once their age and underwent their same anxieties although in a form unique to our personalities. Sharing those experiences with them tells them that we trust them to be present for use with care and concern that oftentimes our parents or the adults that were with us when we were children were not.
Thanks for reading and commenting on this post.
I completly agree with you. I feel our children do need to know we (parents) were once their age. I also believe in letting my daughters know that I am not perfect. I feel being open and honest key to a healthy relationship.
I must admit, at my age, it seems things were a bit easier for me (than it is for my daughters today). In my opinion todays generation want to “grow up” too fast. I say let children be children, their time for adulthood will come quicker than they think.