Somewhere between my first kid’s birth and my third tantrum of the day today, I developed a second language. It sounds like English. It is not English. It’s Mom-ese, and it’s spoken entirely in phrases that mean the exact opposite of what they say, delivered in a tone that gets more clipped with every repetition.

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying something to your kids and thought, wow, that sentence made zero logical sense, welcome. You’re fluent too. Here’s the official translation guide, because somebody needs to write this down before we all forget we used to speak like regular adults.

The Daily Rotation

• “In a minute.” Translation: Possibly never. Definitely not a minute. This phrase has nothing to do with the number sixty. It is a stalling tactic disguised as a time estimate, and we both know it.
• “We’ll see.” Translation: No. I just don’t have the energy to argue about it right now, so I’m buying myself twenty minutes of peace before you remember to ask again.
• “I’m not asking again.” Translation: I am absolutely asking again. In fact I will ask three more times, each one slightly louder, before anything actually happens.
• “Because I said so.” Translation: I have run out of logical reasons and I’m too tired to invent one. This is the nuclear option and we both know it means the conversation is over.
• “Does it look like I know where your shoe is?” Translation: I do know where your shoe is. It’s under the couch where it’s been since Tuesday. I just want you to experience the consequences of your own chaos for once.

The Ones That Come Out Louder Than Intended

• “We do not lick the cart.” Translation: A sentence I genuinely never imagined saying out loud before becoming a parent, and yet here we are, in public, saying it with full conviction.
• “Who did this?” Translation: I already know who did this. I’m just giving someone the opportunity to confess before I lose my mind entirely.
• “Five more minutes.” Translation: Could mean five minutes. Could mean the rest of the afternoon. Entirely dependent on whether I’ve finally gotten a hot cup of coffee into my hands.
• “That’s it, we’re leaving.” Translation: We are not leaving. We have thirty more minutes at this birthday party and everyone involved knows it, including the three-year-old currently testing my resolve.

The Ones That Reveal Too Much

Then there’s the category of phrases that aren’t really about the kids at all — they’re about me, slowly losing my grip on the version of myself who used to finish sentences and think complete thoughts.

• “Mommy needs a minute.” Translation: Mommy needs several minutes, ideally in a locked bathroom, with a snack she doesn’t have to share.
• “I just need everyone to listen to me for one second.” Translation: A fantasy. A beautiful, impossible fantasy that has never once come true in the history of this household.
• “Okay, but this is the last time.” Translation: It is not the last time. It was not the last time yesterday either. We both know how this goes, and yet we keep playing our parts.
• “I’m fine.” Translation: I am holding together with sheer will and the last ounce of patience I had budgeted for the day, but sure, let’s go with fine.

Why We Talk Like This

Here’s the thing nobody tells you before you have kids: you don’t actually lie to them on purpose. These phrases aren’t manipulation, exactly — they’re survival tools. They buy us time, soften hard truths, and occasionally let us pretend we have more control over the day than we actually do.

“In a minute” isn’t a lie so much as a hope. “We’ll see” isn’t avoidance so much as triage. We’re not bad parents for speaking in code — we’re parents who’ve figured out that total honesty at every moment (“I am too tired to find your shoe and also slightly concerned about my own sanity”) doesn’t exactly fit into a Tuesday morning before school.

And honestly, there’s something kind of funny about realizing your kids are picking up on all of it anyway. My oldest recently told her little brother “we’ll see” in a tone so eerily identical to mine that I had to leave the room and laugh into a dish towel. The apple, apparently, does not fall far, and it definitely learned the same vague stalling tactics.

A Few Phrases I’m Trying to Retire

I’ll admit, writing this list out made me wince a little. Hearing your own most-repeated sentences laid out in a row is a bit like hearing your voice on a recording — technically accurate, deeply uncomfortable. I don’t think I’ll fully retire “we’ll see,” because frankly it’s too useful. But I am trying to say “I need a minute to think about that” instead of “because I said so,” if only so I stop sounding quite so much like my own mother circa 1998.

Not that there’s anything wrong with sounding like your own mother. Turns out she knew exactly what she was doing, and so, somehow, against all odds and several cups of lukewarm coffee, do we.

But something happens the moment you become a parent. A switch flips. Suddenly you are capable of looking your own child dead in the eye and saying things that would make a courtroom judge raise an eyebrow, all in the name of making it to 7:30 PM with your sanity intact.

Why We Lie (And Why It’s Fine, Mostly)

Parenting experts will tell you honesty is the foundation of trust. Sure. Great. I believe that too, in theory, somewhere between the hours of nine and noon when everyone is fed and nobody is covered in something sticky. But by 4 PM, when the baseline level of chaos has reached a simmer and someone is asking me for the fourth snack in an hour, honesty takes a back seat to survival.

These aren’t the big lies. I’m not telling my kid the dog went to live on a farm. I’m talking about the small, tactical, completely necessary fibs that get a household through a Tuesday.

The Lies, Ranked By How Often I Use Them

• “The ice cream truck only plays music when it’s out of ice cream.” This one has bought me years of peace. Years.
• “If you swallow gum, it takes seven years to digest and also you won’t be hungry for dinner, so let’s just spit it out.” Half-true, fully effective.
• “Mommy’s phone battery is broken, that’s why I can’t let you watch videos right now.” Said while my phone sits at a healthy 74 percent, thank you very much.
• “That toy store is closed today.” Every single day. It is permanently, eternally closed. I don’t make the rules.
• “I don’t know how to make that snack.” I absolutely know how to make the snack. I simply do not want to make the snack.
• “We’re out of the good crackers.” The good crackers are hidden in the pantry behind the quinoa nobody will ever touch.
• “Mommy needs to use the bathroom alone because it’s the law.” Is it? No. Does anyone question it? Also no.
• “Vegetables make your hair grow faster.” I have no scientific backing for this. I have a four-year-old who now eats broccoli like it’s candy.
• “The remote control is broken, that’s why we’re not watching another episode.” The remote is fine. My patience for one more episode of talking trucks is not.
• “Bedtime is actually earlier tonight because the moon said so.” I don’t know why this works. I just know that it does.

The Ones That Always Backfire

Of course, not every lie lands smoothly. There was the time I told my son that spicy food “wakes up your tongue,” which he then repeated, loudly and proudly, to his very confused preschool teacher during snack time. There was also the unfortunate incident where I claimed broccoli trees “whisper secrets if you eat them slowly,” and now he insists on sitting in total silence while chewing, waiting for the broccoli to speak to him. I don’t correct this. I just let it happen.

And then there’s the lie that always, always comes back to bite me: “We’ll do that tomorrow.” My children have the memory of elephants when it comes to promises and the memory of goldfish when it comes to where they left their shoes. Tomorrow arrives, and suddenly I am being held accountable for a commitment I made under duress at 6 PM while trying to cook dinner one-handed.

A Small Defense of the Harmless Fib

I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for a household built on deception. My kids know I love them. They know the big truths: that I’ll always come get them, that I think they’re brilliant even when they’ve drawn on the wall again, that bedtime stories are non-negotiable even on the worst days. The little lies exist in a different category entirely. They’re less about deception and more about translation—taking “I am at my absolute limit” and turning it into something a small, snack-obsessed person can actually understand and accept without a twenty-minute negotiation.

Honestly, some of these fibs have become so woven into our daily rhythm that I’ve half-convinced myself they’re true. I genuinely flinch a little when I pass an ice cream truck now, half-expecting to find out it really is out of ice cream.

A Quick Reality Check For Myself

There is, admittedly, a version of me that worries about the day my kids figure all this out. I imagine a future therapy session where my son recounts, in detail, the Great Broccoli Tree Deception of his childhood. But then I remember that parenting is basically a long game of improvisation, and most of us are just trying to make it from breakfast to bedtime without a meltdown—ours or theirs.

So if you, too, have told your child that the library closes the second they ask to go, or that screen time causes “eye hiccups,” you are not alone. You are simply a parent doing the sacred, slightly dishonest work of keeping everyone fed, sane, and in bed by a reasonable hour. The truth can wait until they’re twenty-five and we’re laughing about it over coffee.