Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Parenting: Burning Shoes, Tossing Bed Out Window

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tough-guy image wasn’t just for his action films; it also extended to his parenting style. 

The actor has four children with ex-wife Maria Shriver: Christopher, 26, Patrick, 30, Christina, 31, and Katherine, 33. He also has a son, Joseph Baena, 26, with Mildred Baena. While they’re all grown up now, he recounted some of the tough parenting lessons he taught them as children in a new interview with People.

Arnold cited a recent visit from his daughter Katherine and her young daughter Lyla as an example. 

“You could talk to them about what they liked about their upbringing because they have very humorous stories,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Katherine comes over with Lyla and she says, ‘Lyla, I told you already not to put the shoes there. Keep your shoes on or you put them away, but you don’t leave them there by the stand in front of the fireplace because you know what Daddy did? When I left my shoes there twice? The third time, he burned them in front of me and I cried.'”

And he really did. “Yes, absolutely,” he said about the story. “Now uses the same methods which she cried over and that she complained about.”

Arnold also recalled tossing his son Patrick’s bed out the window at nine years old after he failed to make it.

“I opened up the door to the balcony, picked up the mattress and threw it down with the bedsheets, the pillows, everything,” he recounted. “I said, ‘Don’t ever make someone come in and clean your room, clean your shower or make your bed, because I taught you how to make the bed.'”

Although his actions caused strife at the time, Schwarzenegger said his children now view them as important life lessons as they’ve all gotten older.

“Funny enough, those kinds of things are what they bring up all the time with tremendous laughter and tell other people as a joke,” he said. “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.”