People Can't Believe This Guy Let His Kid Struggle With A Can Opener For 6 Hours

Father asks internet for high fives; still waiting

In uncertain times, the universe often offers an event humanity can rally behind. Last year it was Tiger King. The year before that, Bird Box. And this year, it’s Bean Dad. John Roderick, a man whose bio says he is a singer and podcaster, took to the internet to recount a day in the life of the Roderick household. See, Roderick was filling out an application for NATO Cosmic Top Secret clearance when was interrupted by… whoops. Sorry. He was working on a jigsaw puzzle when his 9-year-old daughter asked for assistance in opening a can of baked beans.

What happened next is peak internet.

For six hours, Roderick watched his daughter struggle with the can opener, ignoring her requests for assistance or instruction. At one point, the father told his daughter that neither of them would eat until she could figure out the mechanism for the can opener.

It was.. a lot. The long thread detailed every moment of the child’s struggle.

At the end of the totally healthy parenting lesson, Roderick’s daughter finally successfully opened the beans. No word on if the legumes tasted like brown sugar and hickory or little girl fury mixed with spite.

And now, a random sampling of things you can do in six hours:

• Fly from Atlanta to Rome
• Mix, bake, frost, and decorate a cake
• Buy a storage shed from a home improvement store, take it home, install it in your backyard, and move your patio furniture inside
• Down four shots of tequila, then spell the word ‘contemporaneously’ backwards and while standing on one leg

In series of 23 tweets, the proud papa told the story of how his daughter learned an Important Lesson in perseverance and determination, then waited for the adulation to come forth.

‘Feed your kid’ was the first reply. And then the deluge came.

A few people came to Bean Dad’s defense, with one Twitter user offering examples of how her mother made sure she learned how to sew.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1345759856993689612

Overall, Twitter couldn’t believe Roderick would not only put his daughter through a six-hour parenting lesson, but would go on the internet to brag about it. A parody account of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez summed up the internet’s mood with the succinct ‘she’s 9, buddy’.

Other users tried to explain how people actually learn, with Twitter user explaining the term scaffolding (teaching a child where they’re at).

Roderick seemed incredulous as the Twitterverse raised its collective eyebrow at his actions.

Famed psychologist Carl Jung once said, “nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” To which Roderick tweets seem to reply, “lol ok.” According to Roderick’s tweets, he knows he can be infuriating and that his actions can be viewed as ‘parenting theater’. He also acknowledges he suffers from the same lack of perseverance he sees in his daughter.