Sometimes I hear parents say to their kids, “We’ll talk about it later.”

Sometimes I’m the one saying it.

It’s always when the kids have done something that warrants a talking to but do parents follow through on the threat?

Our generation heard a lot of “Wait til your Father gets home!” (I think there was even a tv show of the same name with a really bad but catchy theme song).

Except today, Father is home, usually in the home office right next to Mom’s and after a lengthy neutral-territory debate, “We’ll talk about it later” was born.

Whenever I’ve suggested to my kids we would talk about something later, I see double fist pumps and hear them whispering, “AWESOME!” Mom will long forget about this by the time later rolls around and/or her eyebrows grow back.

I tend to confront things head on, mostly because I have a terrible memory when it comes to bad things my kids do.

If it’s a minor discrepancy, I might say “let’s talk about this later” because I just don’t have the energy to get my thoughts together and I need to make it seem as though I’m going to address the bizarre hair-cut my kid just gave their now former friend, to appease another parent.

My version of something serious has to involve some or all of the following; a monkey, animal feces, foghorn, branding iron.

Another parent’s version of serious “to be discussed later” might be the misuse of a pronoun on a Mad Lib.

And how does one go from playing basketball on the driveway, giggling, sharing a sparkling lemonade while tousling their kids hair to, “Okay, NOW I’m going to yell at you for slashing your sister’s bike tires with the Easy Bake oven tongs six hours ago!”

I said LATER didn’t I?