With hands on hips as he goes about listing the various chores he needs to complete, 5-year-old Jude Tinker from Missouri sounds decades older than he is.
When his mom interjects and questions him about bills, he lets out a heavy sigh—a reaction that netizens have found hilarious.
“The sigh when he found out when the mail was mostly bills, he knew he had to get back to work,” wrote one social media user.
“He wanted to know if the water bill was in the mail so he could adjust his watering schedule to meet costs,” wrote another.
While Jude’s parents don’t discuss bills around their kids, Mrs. Tinker—an executive at a nonprofit—speculates that her comical son must have picked up the typical adult response while listening to his parents from afar.
In response to his workload that day, the mom of three said: “He was just acting overwhelmed with everything ... and was heavy sighing.”
But Jude, Mrs. Tinker said, helps out on the family’s 6-acre farm by checking on the hen house for eggs and assisting his dad with some of the chores.
“He has these little tools, tiny shovels and rakes, things like that, and he thinks he is helping so much, like he is working his fingers to the bone,” the 39-year-old mom said. “He‘ll come in sweat dripping, filthy, and I’ll be like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve been working with my dad.’”
With a small river at the back of their farm, Jude also enjoys fishing with his dad on their little boat.
Describing her son’s personality, Mrs. Tinker said Jude is “a spunky little boy” with “a very old soul,” who often says things that you wouldn’t hear from a typical 5-year-old.
In August last year, Jude’s first video went viral, gaining a million views in just 12 hours.
While his mom does share humorous moments featuring her youngest on social media, she said there has been a misconception that she and her husband are always recording.
“What you see in a one-minute snippet does not encapsulate our entire parenting methods,“ she said. ”It does not, and it’s not the entirety of our lives. We don’t hold a video over him 24/7, and there are many things we don’t record or take pictures of because, frankly, social media burnout is real.”
Serious about protecting their childrens’ mental health, the Tinkers have turned down offers to appear on reality television and are resolute about respecting their childrens’ wishes.
Mrs. Tinker stresses that they’re just “normal people” who are raising children who have a strong relationship with God and trying to set a good example for them.
