Share Secrets Common Children Small People Telling Parents

Young children often keep secrets from their parents. These are things that they want to keep "private" (known only to them), but they often share them with their friends.

One common way for children, and especially girls, to keep secrets is to use a "diary." A diary is a small book with "blank pages" (pages without any writing on them). Each day, the children begin with the words, "Dear diary," and then write about what is happening in their lives, or what happened that day. Many diaries have "locks" so that they can be closed with a small key. Sometimes girls share their diaries with their close friends, but they generally don't share them with their parents.

Another common way for children, and especially boys, to keep secrets is to become "blood brothers." If two young boys share an experience that they don't want other people to know about, each child will make a small cut in his "index finger" (the finger next to one's thumb) and then they hold their fingers together so that they share their blood. Because diseases, such as AIDS, are transferred between people by blood, the practice of becoming "blood brothers" isn't as common now as it used to be.

When children share secrets, they often ask each other to swear that they won't share them with anyone else. One common "oath" (the words that people say when swearing to do something) is "Do you swear to keep the secret? Cross your heart and hope to die?" This phrase means that the child should prefer to die than tell the secret. This is an "exaggeration" (what is said is much bigger than what is actually done), but the idea is that the secret should not be shared with other people.