When NOT to Tell Your Kids About Your Addiction

You want to be honest with your kids. You have heard that transparency builds trust, that kids need to see their parents are human, that hiding your past only breeds more shame.

All of that is true.

But here is what people do not talk about: there are times when sharing your story with your kids is not brave. It is reckless.

Not because honesty is bad. Because timing matters. Healing matters. The difference between sharing a scar and sharing an open wound matters.

So before you sit your kids down to tell them about your past, let me ask you a few hard questions.

Have You Actually Healed?

This is the question that changes everything.

A scar is evidence that something happened and then closed. The skin grew back. The wound healed. You can touch it without bleeding. You can talk about it without spiraling.

An open wound is different. It is still raw. It still hurts when pressure is applied. It still has the potential to get infected.

When you share an open wound with your children, you are not giving them your testimony. You are giving them your trauma. You are making them carry something they were never designed to carry.

Rob Grant, who has worked in recovery ministry for years, put it simply: "How could you deliver something effectively if you don't have victory in that area of your life?"

The answer is you cannot.

If you are still in active addiction, you are not ready to have this conversation. If you are still wrestling with unprocessed shame, still replaying your worst moments on a loop, still defining yourself more by what you did than by who God says you are, then sharing your story will not build trust. It will build confusion.

Your kids will see someone who talks about change but has not experienced it. They will hear about freedom from someone who is still in chains. And they will learn that transformation is just another word people use when they want to sound better than they are.

That is not the lesson you want to teach. If you are still stuck in that place where sobriety feels hollow, where you are clean but not actually free, that work needs to happen before this conversation does.

Are You Sharing for Them or for Yourself?

This one requires honesty that might sting.

Sometimes we want to tell our kids about our past because we feel guilty keeping it from them. We want the relief of confession. We want to stop carrying the weight of a secret. We want them to know so we do not have to manage the tension anymore.

But that is not serving your kids. That is using your kids.

Ask yourself: Why do I want to tell them this now? What do I hope they get from it?

If your answer is mostly about how you will feel afterward, pump the brakes. Your children are not your confessors. They are not equipped to process your pain for you.

Get that healing somewhere else first. A counselor, a mentor, a support group. Do the work there. Then, when you are whole, you will have something to give.

Are You Protecting Their Innocence?

Your story might include things that children should not know about. Not because the truth is bad, but because some truths require maturity to handle.

A six-year-old does not need to hear about the time you overdosed. A ten-year-old does not need details about the sexual situations your addiction put you in. Even a teenager might not be ready for everything.

This does not mean you lie. It means you tell age-appropriate truth.

The principle here is the same one we use in all parenting: you give them what they can handle, and you save the rest for when they are ready. You do not hand a toddler a steak knife because they need to learn to cut their own food eventually. You wait until they are ready.

Rob shared how he thinks about this: "There are areas where you just don't share. And the reason why you don't share it is because of their maturity level. I'm not going to share some things with my son just yet. But as he gets older and matures, I'm going to be like, 'Hey bro, we got to talk about this.'"

The truth stays the same. The depth increases with maturity.

If you are unsure whether your kids are ready for certain details, ask yourself: Will this information serve their development, or will it burden them with adult realities they are not equipped to carry?

Will This Undermine Your Authority?

Here is something parents in recovery fear but rarely say out loud: What if being too honest makes my kids respect me less?

It is a fair concern. Kids need parents who lead. They need boundaries, structure, someone who seems like they have it together enough to guide them. If you expose every failure, every weak moment, every terrible choice, do you risk becoming just another peer instead of an authority?

The answer is nuanced.

Being honest about your struggles does not have to undermine your authority. In fact, done right, it can strengthen it. Your kids learn that wisdom often comes from experience, including hard experience. They learn that leadership is not about perfection but about honesty and growth.

But there is a line.

If you share in ways that make you seem incompetent, like you are still figuring out basic life things they need you to have figured out, that creates insecurity in your children. They need to know their parent is capable of leading them, even if that parent has a complicated past.

The goal is humble authority. "I have made serious mistakes, and I have learned serious lessons from them. That is part of why I can guide you now."

Not: "I have no idea what I am doing, and let me tell you about all the ways I have failed."

What About When They Have Already Seen It?

Some of you have kids who do not need to be told about your addiction because they lived it. They watched you disappear into the chaos. They remember the arguments, the broken promises, the parent who was there but not really there.

This is a different situation entirely.

You are not introducing new information. You are acknowledging shared trauma and taking responsibility for it.

And honestly? This is not a matter of timing the way the earlier questions are. If your kids have seen your addiction, they need to hear you own it. They need an apology. They need to know that you know what you put them through.

But here is the part you cannot skip: they need to see sustained change before your words will mean anything.

You can apologize a hundred times. If you are still making the same choices, those apologies become noise. Words lose meaning when they are not backed by action. Understanding what grace actually means helps here—grace is not a free pass to keep hurting people. It is the power to actually change.

The work here is different. It is showing up differently, consistently, over time. It is proving through your behavior that the person who hurt them is not who you are anymore.

And it is giving them permission to be angry, to have questions, to need time. Their healing is on their timeline, not yours.

What If I Am Not Ready?

If you read through these questions and realized you are not ready to have this conversation, that is okay.

Not ready does not mean never. It means not yet.

Here is what you do in the meantime:

Get help. If there are areas where you have not healed, find a counselor, a pastor, a mentor who can walk you through that process. Do not try to white-knuckle your way to wholeness. Healing happens in community.

Live differently. The best testimony is not what you say. It is what you do. Let your life be evidence of change while you work on being ready to talk about it.

Prepare the conversation. Even if you are not ready to share now, you can start thinking about how you will share when the time comes. What do you want them to understand? What truths are essential? What details can wait?

Trust the timing. God knows when your kids need to hear your story. Your job is not to force the moment but to be ready when it comes.

Your past is part of your story. It does not have to stay hidden forever. But it needs to be shared from wholeness, not brokenness. It needs to serve your children, not just relieve you.

When you are ready, it will be one of the most p

owerful gifts you can give them. Until then, keep doing the work.

For the full guide on whether, when, and how to share your story with your kids, read Should You Tell Your Kids About Your Addiction?