Alison Curtis: When your child has a secret, what should you do?

We need to help our children learn how to honour secrets and earn trust but also to always have confidence that they can in turn trust their parents with any information

Recently a friend of my daughter Joan told her something that they wanted her to keep a secret. However a few hours after their conversation she obviously wanted to get it off her chest and said she would tell me only if I didn’t tell anyone else …. Ever!

I told her unless she was really worried about what was said to her she didn’t need to tell me if she didn’t want to.