Secrets Worth Keeping

“Can you keep a secret?” she said to her friend.

Her friend responded “Yes, can you?” and walked away. 

My daughter’s friend Nicki still wears “Pull-Ups” when she goes to bed.  When her mother accepted an invitation for Nicki to sleep at our home, I assured her that I would be discrete.  Olivia would not know.  Nicki’s mother placed her trust in me that I would not allow her daughter to be hurt. 

Unfortunately, the “Pull-Up” fell out of Nicki’s bag, and Olivia saw it.  Nicki was very honest with Olivia, and said that she sleeps so deeply that she does not wake up when she has to use the bathroom.  I took the opportunity to speak to the girls about friendship and trust, while at the same time making sure it was not perceived as a big deal.  After all, Olivia still sucks her thumb at night.  Children grow up at different speeds.  The girls found a commonality and bond in things that they do in their sleep, unconsciously, that they may not want others to know about.  I specifically told Olivia that there was no reason why she should tell anyone about Nicki’s “Pull-Up.”  This was something that Nicki and her mom trusted us with, and to be good friends, we should not betray that trust. 

A few days later, my daughter was talking to my mother while we were in the car.  She began to tell my mother about how Nicki still wears a “Pull-Up” to bed.  Her intention was innocent but the effects could be far from harmless.  I immediately told Olivia to stop speaking and that it was not OK to speak to her grandmother about it.  She handed the phone to me, and my mother wanted to know what the big deal was.  She said that Olivia could tell her anything – she was her grandmother.  I passionately and vehemently told her that if Olivia told her what she was going to tell her, she would be breaking her friend’s trust and that was not OK.  My mother and I argued about it.  I told my mother that just because Olivia could tell her anything did not mean she should.  It seems like such a stupid argument to have, but I stood my ground. 

I know that there is a fine line between keeping secrets that should be kept and secrets that should not.  I am struggling with how to explain that to my daughter.  If one of her friends comes to her in the future and confides that she is being hurt, I want Olivia to understand that those are the sorts of things to tell a grown-up, someone who can help.  There will be other times when she should not tell me, or anyone, something that a friend has confided in her.  The confidence shared may be something silly, but it is not what is shared that is important, but the fact that it was shared at all.  Trust and friendship is not something that can be measured or quantified – but it can be easily broken.  To have the absolute trust in someone to be able to tell them anything is wonderful and it makes a safe and healthy child.   But to learn the discernment of what you keep to yourself and what you tell others will make a healthy and trustworthy adult. 

I want my daughter to begin to think at an early age of the purpose of her communications with others. What would have been the purpose of her telling my mother about her friend?  There was no reason for it other than “to tell for the sake of telling.”  It would have been one more person who knew.  Nicki’s mother trusted me to keep this private to protect her young daughter.  Nicki trusted my daughter not to throw her under the bus with their friends at school.  Unless my mother was keeping Nicki overnight, there is no reason for my mother to know.  Telling my mother casually might have made it too easy for Olivia to casually tell someone else. 

We live in a world where communication is too readily at our fingertips. We can shoot off a text message with no second thoughts about the tonality perceived by the recipient.  We can send off an email with no thoughts of how it could have been composed more effectively.  In the days of letter writing, using “snail mail”, communication was more focused, done with more intention.  We tend to say quick things in email that we may not say if we thought about it while writing an actual letter. 

We certainly say things behind the safety of a screen that we would not say in person.  We do not think of the intention behind our communication enough now.  We do not think of the purpose we are hoping that it will achieve.  Too often, we do not weigh the “need” to just “tell someone something to get it off our chest” against the needs of others and their trust to keep their communication with us sacred.

I think that if we, as women, focused on the intention and purpose of our communication with each other a little more, then we would eliminate many problems that we have with one another.  If we would stop talking just to talk, we would find that our words have more value to one another. 

Believe me, I have done my fair share of poor communicating.  I have been a gossip, and outright slanderous at times in my past.  I have also just been stupid, and said something I should not have only to have it burn me.  The best of intentions gone awry.  I have told someone something that a friend told me, thinking it was absolutely harmless, only to have that friend find out and not trust me again.  And, it happened more than once – you would have thought I learned after the first or second time.  I have trusted the nasty women and pushed way the good ones.  I have been sucked into drama that did not concern me, and I have caused drama.  I know that I am not the only woman on here who has done these things.  I was not the first, and I will not be the last.  I have been both perpetrator and victim – as have all of us. 

There is a lot that I do not understand about the way that women treat each other, and I probably never will.  There are going to be questions my daughter will ask me that I will not know how to answer.  I know that none of us can change the world – but we can change how we approach it.  I know that none of us can control someone else’s words, demeanor or attitude, but we can control our own. 

The only thing I know right now is that I have to try to be the woman that I want my daughter to be.  I am the rough draft – and she will be the masterpiece.