If there’s one thing people are bound to disagree on, it’s how famous people parent their children. There’s nothing like sharing a parenting story with thousands of followers to guarantee some pushback on your parenting style, as musician and podcaster John Roderick recently found out.
John went viral this weekend after sharing a story about his daughter which many found cruel and unusual.
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Musician and podcaster John Roderick earned tons of backlash this past weekend when he shared a story to his Twitter account involving his 9-year-old daughter.
While John has since deleted his Twitter, the story detailed his daughter complaining that she was hungry and then asking her dad how to open a can of beans. In a lengthy thread, John explained that he refused to help or make his daughter other food until she figured out how to use a can opener by herself.
According to John, this took his daughter six hours to do, and he wrote that at one point she said her “brain felt fuzzy” and that “there were tears.”
John referred to this as “a teachable moment.” You can read the entire thread here .
Backlash began pouring in immediately as fans of John’s and quickly strangers began chiming in about this method of teaching his daughter, with many referring to John as “Bean Dad” and calling his actions cruel.
Many felt the “teachable moment” went on far too long and that John should have stepped in to help his daughter.
“Six hours is the length of time between meals. Lunch at noon, dinner at six. They’re literally saying child abuse,” John wrote in a now-deleted tweet defending his actions, though many pointed out that his daughter was hungry at the start of the six hour journey and had likely not eaten immediately prior.
“Driving a hungry child to frustrated tears over a trivial task is not motivation. Nor is it a teachable moment about perseverance. If anything, after SIX HOURS, it’s a lesson in parental bullying, one I suspect she’ll remember well into her adult years,” wrote one fan.
While some agreed with John that he was teaching his daughter self-reliance, the vast majority of responses criticized his behavior.
What do you think? Was this a silly story about a bonding moment between a father and his daughter, or do you think that John should have fed his child before focusing on teaching her a lesson? Let us know how you feel in the comments below!
