My parents were very cunning at sparing me knowledge of things they felt I didn't need to know, and only telling me about it years later. They were very good at hiding their own unease in times of adversity. Most of these were very sensible, some examples were:
When I needed an operation, aged four. I vividly remember the novelty of the hospital visit, but I didn't know in advance why I was going, that I would be put to sleep with "laughing gas", or why I had to wee into a container and not into the toilet.
On an overnight trip with my youth group, some of the other children (aged six or seven) knew that some of the teenage helpers were doing unspeakable things to each other, in the kids' dormitories! My dad was on this trip as well, he managed to keep it a secret.
That we might have moved house, to more than a hundred miles away. They left me to stay at someone else's house overnight (how exciting!), while they checked out where we might have lived. It never happened though.
That it wasn't just a burglary that I slept through aged nine, but an aggravated burglary. Even on the night they managed to conceal just how bad it was. Some years later they told me the whole story, and showed me their police statements.
I'm not so happy that they didn't explain that the secondary school I said I liked best was a fee-paying one, and that only a small minority of children would have the privilege of going to one. I was so naïve I didn't even realise until I'd been there for a year or so. Perhaps if I'd known, I might have willingly worked harder, and understood why I should have worked harder.
Incidentally @Hmmalittlefishy the same youth group loved the game "dead lions", or "dead soldiers" as they called it. For the same reason, they also liked the game where one child would sneak up and try to grab treasure, without being heard and pointed at by another child who was blindfolded. It was a great game for calming excited children down.