Arnold Schwarzenegger made eldest daughter cry by BURNING her shoes and forced son to take freezing showers
While opening up about his no-nonsense parenting style, Arnold Schwarzenegger has revealed he made his eldest daughter burst into tears by torching her shoes as she kept leaving them by his fireplace – and forced one of his sons to take cold showers.
Arnold Schwarzenegger made his eldest daughter cry by burning her shoes and forced his son to take cold showers.
The 76-year-old ‘FUBAR’ actor – who has children Katherine, 33, Christina, 31, Patrick, 30, and Christopher, 26, with his 67-year-old former wife Maria Shriver – said the incidents were part of a string of “humorous” tales his kids could tell about their strict upbringing.
He told People: “You could talk to them about what they liked about their upbringing because they have very humorous stories.
“The first one is Katherine... as a matter of fact, Katherine comes over with Lyla (her three-year-old daughter) 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.’”
When asked if he really torched Katherine’s shoes, Arnie boasted: “Yes, absolutely. Now (she) uses the same methods which she cried over and that she complained about.”
He added: “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.”
The former Mr Universe also recalled how he hurled his son Patrick’s mattress out of his window when his boy was aged nine after he refused to make his bed.
He said: “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’.
“I said, ‘Because I taught you how to make the bed.’”
He also said he hated Patrick’s long, hot showers and told him when he was growing up: “It’s over, no more showers. Five minutes, one shower, and then that’s it and we’re turning it off.”
Austrian-born Arnie even installed a shower with a timer that switched it to cold water after a few minutes.
The disciplinarian said: “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.”
Arnie left his wife Maria devastated when it emerged in 2011 he had fathered his son Joseph Baena, now 26, with their housekeeper Mildred Patricia ‘Patty’ Baena, and the couple divorced in 2021.
He insisted his tough parenting style is now brought up “all the time with tremendous laughter” by his kids, who tell them stories about his no-nonsense approach to “ither people as a joke”.
Arnie added he didn’t mean to be like a “drill instructor”, but said his approach was the result of him being raised with “nothing”.
He said: “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 said his technique worked as his daughter Katherine and her actor husband Chis Pratt, 44, have an “immaculate house”.
Arnie added: “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.”
