Half-baked hating on Bean Dad

If you saw the thread that was burning up Twitter these last few days (at least before a certain meetup in Washington, D.C.), you read a story almost as long as the six-hour ordeal the dad describes, which began when his daughter wanted some baked beans and the father, John Roderick — aka “Bean Dad” — told her to open a can and heat some up.

The problem?

Said daughter, age 9, had never used a can opener … and Dad decided not to show her. He would wait out the whole time it took for the girl (who must not have access to Youtube)

to finally, desperately figure the dang thing out.

In 23 tweets, since deleted, Bean Dad wrote about every frustrated exchange, e.g.:

“So I said, ‘How do you think this works?’ She studied it and applied it to the top of the can, sideways. She struggled for a while and with a big, dramatic sigh said, ‘Will you please just open the can?’ Apocalypse Dad was overjoyed: a Teaching Moment just dropped in my lap!”

When the girl finally did puncture the can, she was triumphant, and Dad was, too. Then came the commenters. Like beans exploding from a pressure cooker, they were all over the place. Some praised Pop: Through his tough love, his daughter became resourceful.

But far more were more like, “Godspeed, s—goblin.” (A new word to me, too.)

Pretty soon, the haters came so thick and fast — some calling his actions child abuse — that Bean Dad took down his whole thread.

Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com and author of “Has the World Gone Skenazy?” To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy @yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.