The 1 Seemingly Harmless Phrase That 'Crosses A Line' With Your Grandkids

“Don’t tell mummy,” says Grandma with a cheeky wink, handing over a couple more sweets. “It’ll be our little secret.”While it doesn’t seem like a particularly insidious exchange, some experts warn that encouraging kids to keep things from their parents “crosses a line that shouldn’t be crossed”.In a video shared to TikTok, DeeDee Moore, who is the founder of More Than Grand, explained why she finds this type of exchange problematic. “Don’t be the grandparent that teaches your grandchild their first lesson in deception. Let me be clear: asking grandchildren to keep secrets from their parents crosses a line that should never be crossed,” said Moore, who is a grandparent herself.Offering the example of a grandparent giving their grandchild another cookie and asking them not to tell their parent, Moore said it “seems harmless”, but it is “never okay”.Why is it a problem?Saying “don’t tell mummy” or “don’t tell daddy” is “literally asking a child to lie to their parents”, Moore explained.“Children need to know that they can tell their parents anything and you’ve just taught them the opposite,” she said.Doing this also “undermines” the parent-child relationship. She continued: “A child’s safety can depend on open communication with their parents. Encouraging secret keeping is exactly how predators operate. You don’t want to normalise that.”What should you do instead?The answer is simple: respect parents’ rules. If whatever you’re doing is actively going against a parent’s wishes, then Moore advises not to do it.While some think it’s not that big of a deal (“oh my gosh! Could we NOT overthink everything,” said one commenter in response to the video), others agreed it’s not OK for a grandparent to go behind a parent’s back.“If you can’t do something openly don’t do it at all,” said one respondent.“Granny here. Thank you for this. Safe adults do NOT ask children to keep secrets,” added another.Teach kids about secrets and surprisesParents might also find it useful to teach their kids the difference between secrets and surprises.As Consent Parenting explains: “A secret is something that is intentionally kept hidden and not shared with others. It can often cause harm, shame, or fear to the person keeping it or the person it is being kept from.”In contrast, “surprises are events or gifts” that are kept quiet “for a short period to build anticipation and excitement”. Yet unlike secrets, “they are meant to be shared, not hidden forever”.It can help to tell children that they can always share secrets with a safe adult – and that safe adults don’t tell kids to keep secrets. As part of this, you could equip your child with a phrase to say when someone asks them to keep a secret from you, such as: “We don’t keep secrets in our family.”According to Consent Parenting, this can “make a huge difference for the child because it can fend off” someone who might be grooming them. It’s not just down to kids to do this work, though. The site added that parents should teach the other adults in their child’s life that you don’t keep secrets from each other, too.Related...‘Where’s My Village?’: Millennial Parents Say Grandparents Are Missing In ActionWe're Therapists – These Are The Most Common Ways Grandparents OverstepGrandparents Think Kids Are Ruder These Days. Are They?

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