Photo:Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Arnold Schwarzeneggersays his parenting style was unusual but effective in raising great kids.
Speaking with PEOPLE about his new motivational bookBe Useful: Seven Tools for Life(on sale Oct. 10),the actor, 76, opened up about taking a unique approach when trying to impart life lessons parenting his kids — Christopher, 26,Patrick, 30,Christina, 31, andKatherine, 33, who he shares with exMaria Shriver.
Did he really burn her shoes? “Yes, absolutely," he grins. “Now uses thesamemethods which she cried over and that she complained about.”
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Katherine Schwarzenegger/ Instagram
Schwarzenegger also recalls a time when Patrick was 9 and the frustrated dad threw his mattress out the window after his son failed to make his own bed.
“I opened up the door to the balcony, picked up the mattress and threw it down with the bedsheets, the pillows, everything. I said, don’t ever make someone come in and clean your room, clean your shower or make your bed,” he shares. “I said, ‘Because I taught you how to make the bed.’ "
He also recalls contention with Patrick over his long, hot showers, telling his son, “It’s over, no more showers. Five minutes, one shower, and then that’s it and we’re turning it off.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger and daughter Katherine as a child.Katherine Schwarzenegger Instagram
While it worked for a while, a young Patrick attempted to go back to his old ways days later.
“In Munich, they have the showers that have those timers that people put money into and then after the money ran out, the cold water came out. I said, ‘I’m going to get one like that,’ and that’s exactly what I got,” Schwarzenegger shares. “And so when he got the shower on and he was whistling and singing in there and thinking Daddy’s not around, all the sudden the ice-cold shower came on. And all of a sudden, we heard downstairs, the scream.”
While the kids had strong reactions to his tactics growing up, Schwarzenegger - who also shares sonJoseph Baena, 26, with Mildred Baena - says over time the stories have become legendary in his family. “Funny enough,those kinds of things are what they bring up all the time with tremendous laughterand tell other people as a joke.”
“It’s the funniest thing when Katherine comes over, she loves bragging to other people about how bossy I was, how tough I was when she grew up and how she didn’t get away with anything,” he continues.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and family.Patrick Schwarzenegger Instagram
The dad insists it wasn’t about being a “drill instructor,” but rather the fact that, “I just happened to grow up with nothing.”
“Every pair of shoes that I had, which there was only one pair, I washed every day and cleaned every day and I put them away. So I said, ‘I want you guys to do the same thing, even though you have many shoes. Just put them away in the mudroom. We have a mudroom, put them in the mudroom because I don’t want to go and clean up your shoes.'”
He noted that it paid off and that today Katherine and husbandChris Pratthave “an immaculate house.”
“It’s like everything is hung up in the closet — every little sculpture, everything is put perfectly on the shelf. Every piece of paper, everything is lined up. The phone is lined up perfectly with the computer. Everything is great. There’s no kind of sloppiness there at all.”
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source: people.com
