Let’s just put this out there immediately: the phrase “touched out” does not even begin to cover the visceral, skin-crawling sensation of being needed by tiny (and not so tiny) humans every single second of the day. It is a special kind of torture reserved for primary caregivers, and it is enough to make the sanest person want to run screaming into the woods. One dad on Reddit recently questioned if his wife went too far with a punishment after she finally snapped, and the internet has thoughts. Oh boy, do we have thoughts.
This poor woman is currently in the trenches. They have four kids: 13-year-old twins, an 8-year-old, and a four-month-old baby. Just reading that lineup makes me want to lie down in a dark room. She’s dealing with postpartum depression, working from home 20 hours a week, and her husband works 12-hour overnight shifts. That means she is essentially solo-parenting four needy kids all day, every day, while running on fumes and postpartum hormones.
To make matters worse, the older three kids are massively regressing for attention. We aren’t talking a little extra whine here and there. We are talking about a 13-year-old asking how to plug in a microwave. That is weaponized incompetence designed to force mom to engage. They are literally tripping her when she tries to walk. She is drowning in a sea of neediness, and she is doing it while trying to keep a newborn alive.
She finally hit her limit and tried to set the bare minimum boundary for her own sanity. She implemented a rule that nobody was allowed to talk to her when she had headphones in or when she was taking a shower. That’s it. She wasn’t asking for a spa weekend in Bali. She was asking for ten minutes to wash her hair without someone hanging off her body or asking her to locate a cup that is sitting right in front of their face.
Well, the inevitable happened. The dad got a text from his son saying mom had gone nuclear, grounding them and taking electronics for a week. He rushed home to find his wife furious, the electronics piled on the counter, and the kids banished to their rooms. What was the crime? She went to take one of her sacred ten-minute showers, and the kids—including teenagers who absolutely know better—barged in five times in ten minutes.
Let that sink in. Five interruptions in ten minutes while she was naked and vulnerable, trying to catch her breath. That is not “needing attention.” That is psychological warfare.
The husband, bless his heart, completely missed the point. He felt the punishment was “too harsh” because he knows they just want her attention. He actually voiced this opinion to his wife, who is now rightly pissed at him for “making her feel bad for needing a f*cking minute to herself.”
Sir, with all due respect, you are wrong. Your wife didn’t overreact; she finally reacted appropriately to a relentless siege on her basic humanity. A 13-year-old does not need to interrupt their mother in the shower five times unless the house is actively on fire. By undermining her discipline, you are telling those kids that their desire to ask a non-urgent question trumps their mother’s basic need for privacy and hygiene.
Those kids weren’t just looking for a hug. They were deliberately stomping all over a clearly communicated boundary to see what would happen. Well, they found out. The punishment fits the crime because the crime wasn’t just interrupting a shower; it was the total disrespect of the person who keeps their entire world turning.
This mom is fighting for her life right now. She is in therapy, she’s working, she’s raising a baby, and she is trying to manage three older kids who are acting out severely. She needed backup, not a critique of her methods. She doesn’t need to feel guilty for taking a week of peace and quiet; she needs a lock on the bathroom door and a partner who understands that a week without an iPad is a small price to pay for mom not having a total mental breakdown.