Founder Note

I didn't set out to build a product. I built it for me first — then opened the door.

I'm Sarah. A few years ago I moved to Italy from the States. Fell in love with someone here, got married, and eventually there were three small people in the house who needed things from me all day long. My husband works. A lot. Some weeks he's gone before I'm awake and back after they're asleep. Which meant on most days, when the hard moments arrived — and they always arrived at 7 PM — I was the one who had to figure out what to do.

I remember one night in particular. It was around 7:43 PM. My youngest had been escalating for eleven minutes. I'd tried the calm voice. I'd tried the redirect. I'd tried the thing I'd read in a parenting book that morning, the one that was supposed to work. And I felt that familiar tightening in my chest — the one that means I'm three seconds from saying something I'll spend two hours regretting.

That night I understood something. The books were never designed for 7:43 PM. They give you a model. They leave the translation — from model to exact sentence under pressure — entirely to you. And under stress, translation is exactly where it breaks down.

So I stopped trying to become a better mother by reading more, and I started building the sentence itself. The exact one. In the tone that works. From the position that works. With three ready alternatives for when they don't respond the first time — because they often don't. I built it backwards from the moment the words disappear.

The first night I used it, my son was asleep in nineteen minutes. My parenting hadn't changed. I just had the exact words loaded before the moment asked for them. That was the only difference. And once I saw it, I knew this wasn't going to stay something only I used.

The Toddler Decoder is that library — 30 scripts, 90 comebacks, one SOS mode — built for the mom who's read the books and still doesn't have the sentence when it counts.

— Sarah Lane
Founder · The Toddler Decoder™