I was trying to help my 5 year old son understand the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We always taught him that we don’t keep secrets, mostly to try to keep him from lying to us, but also to protect him in general.
But when saying we need to not tell mummy about a surprise we are planning he tells me we don’t keep secrets. And this is what i came up with to help him understand the difference.
Secrets are kept and hidden from someone. whereas a surprise is held to be given to someone.
There’s also the difference between good secrets and bad secrets. Good secrets feel good to keep, like planning a surprise party or a birthday present. Bad secrets feel bad to keep, like one we are scared about
Yup! We called the good ones “happy secrets,” and they’re perfectly okay.
Surprises have an end. Secrets are forever. A surprise is a secret for now, but I can tell you later. Secrets are things I can never tell, which can be dangerous.
I think you need to add in the concept of ‘confidental’ as well to this. Your address isn’t a secret, but you don’t tell somone on the internet, even a ‘friend’ on the internet, where you live.
A fair point. The rule is more to not keep secrets from eachother. This post was more about the distiction between secrets and surprises, and not really focused on the moral considerations or other nuances.
Also the intention behind a surprise is always to reveal the surprise otherwise what’s the point? A secret is something you hide without planning to reveal it generally.
Oh I love this distinction. I’ve always taught my kid that grown ups should never ask them to keep a secret, (specifically grown ups because part of growing up is having harmless secrets between friends and I didn’t want them to have a complex about that, but at the same time I think it’s important to teach what’s appropriate at a young age for their protection) but I always struggled with how to distinguish a good secret (like a surprise) from a ‘bad’ secret without making things confusing. This sums it up perfectly!
Most surprises start off as secrets.
lol wtf?! Don’t give him a reason to lie to you.
What do you mean? How am i giving him a reason to lie by helping him understand that secrets are bad.
We don’t keep secrets.
Secrets are kept.
Kid: Oh, thank you. Now it is all clear as day, crazy parents.
That’s not a contradiction.
Planes are flown
We (our family) don’t fly planes.
You might have a pilot in your family, but we don’t, so both are true.
I wasn’t talking about formal contradiction. Nevermind. That’s of no use…
You don’t need to be a pilot to fly a plane. Look up your local flight school and see if they offer discovery flights. It’s usually with a CFI, so they might let you operate the controls
We don’t fly planes.
Not sure you get it. But i feels intentional.
I am not saying secrets are kept but that we as a family do not.
