This Mom’s Clicker Experiment Shows Why Parents Regularly Lose Their Minds

Default parents everywhere feel this in their bones

Ahhhh, summer. Little kids get up extra early for who knows why, and the questions immediately begin: “What are we doing today?” “What’s for breakfast?” “Can I go outside?” It never ends until they gloriously fall asleep. And the whole thing starts all over again the next morning. And the next. Seemingly forever. TikTok mom @jothemama was really feeling the default parent burden when she decided to document just how many times she received a request from her sons in this viral video.

“I have three boys, ages 5, 3, and 1, and I continuously lose my sh*t. Internally. Sometimes it comes out. Sometimes,” she admits. “I lose my sh*t right around 2 or 3 p.m. every day without fail. My husband works from home. But he does not lose his sh*t consistently. So, what’s going on?”

This brilliant and fed-up woman downloaded a counter clicker app on her phone to document every time her two older boys asked her for something. She skipped any easy questions like “What color is the couch?” and “What time is it?” and only included actual requests for drinks, butt wipes, TV shows, and the like.

@jothemama revealed that by 1:20 p.m., her counter was at 86. Yes, 86 individual requests from her two children. “They go to bed in seven hours. I’m not even halfway through the day,” she laments. Oh and requests that are made over and over and over until you give up your will to live are only counted once in this experiment.

“I guarantee you that if I were to ask my husband how many requests he gets a day at work… it’s in the single digits, for sure,” she says.

There isn’t a default parent in the world who is shocked by these findings.

The video hilariously ends with one of Jo’s kids popping into the frame and asking, “Can I have a snack?” followed by, “Well, why are you sitting there?” Because of course.

Thoughts and prayers, mom, thoughts and prayers.