Truth or Dare?

My daughters have secrets, many secrets.

As we were making dinner last night they were whispering between each other. Whisper after whisper after whisper. It has to make you nervous when they whisper, look at you, and then giggle. (This definitely does not help your self confidence when you have insecurities about what others think.)

After seeing enough stares and hearing enough giggling I decided to ask what was so funny. What was their response? “We have secrets dad. We have always had secrets. Come on dad, you have secrets too, don’t you?”

My immediate response was no, I do not. Why? Because for the most part I don’t. They may not know everything but they don’t need to know everything. If there is something important or big going on they will know.

What do I keep secret from them?

That was the question that bounced in my head for the rest of the evening.

This is a hard questions to ask yourself and even more difficult to answer. But this is what I came up with. I want my daughters to know everything they possibly can about me, my life, my job, and what’s going on. I want them to understand it all so that they can understand why I make the decisions I do. That doesn’t mean that they will understand it all or agree with everything but that’s ok, they don’t have to. I trust that the more they understand the more sense my decisions make to them.

Is it bad that they don’t know everything?

I don’t believe it is bad. The things that they do not know most times are because I want to protect them and hide my own internal struggles. They don’t need to know about things that adults worry about. They don’t need to know about every decision I make every single day, but the more they do know the better they will be prepared to take on life when they are adults.