Donald Trump’s 8-Point Guide to the Dad-Life
Donald Trump has been called a great many things, but a danger to his kids isn’t one of them.
In his own words, Trump confessed to New York Magazine in 2004:
“I’m a really good father, not a really good husband.”
NYM’s piece recounts Jonathon Van Meter’s meeting with the Trumps over the course of a few weeks.
The lengthy article gives a fair insight into fatherhood according to Trump.
Lesson One: Keep Your Kids Well-Grounded
Asked how his family escaped the money and fame trap that buried their famous peers, Don Jr (Donny) replied that his parents made sure they were well-grounded.
“We were spoiled in many ways, but we were always taught to understand the value of the dollar.”
“If there was something we wanted, we had to earn it,” Trump’s eldest son explained.
Lesson Two: Keep Your Kids Safe
Donny was 12 when his father’s affair with Marla Maples made headlines.
Recalling the ‘media frenzy,’ he described it as overwhelming.
Blaming his dad, he said he rebelled and didn’t speak to Trump for a year.
Don. Jr said, “But when you’re living with your mother, it’s easy to be manipulated. You get a one-sided perspective.”
To protect Don, Eric, and Ivanka from the media assault, Ivana moved them to Florida.
She then homeschooled the trio, with the help of tutors, for 3 months at Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
After this, they were sent to boarding schools. Not for the usual dysfunctional “get the kids out of my hair” reasons.
Donald and Ivana did “it with love. Being sent to boarding school was more a way of protecting them,” a friend of Ivanka’s said.
Lesson Three: Keep Your Kids Inspired
For Donny, working with, or even for his dad, was not a prospect any in his family thought possible.
Don told Van Meter that he had been hesitant to step up because he “wanted to make sure that he was making the right decision.”
“I was following my dad around from a young age. I don’t know if it’s genetic, or just because I was surrounded by it, but I was always fascinated with building and construction and development.”
“I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways — I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business,” he added.
Don Jr now runs the Trump business alongside his brother Eric.
Lesson Four: Keep Your Kids Busy
They say idle hands are the devil’s playground.
Trump, always busy himself, kept his kids on their toes.
“We were sort of bred to be competitive. Dad encourages it. I remember skiing with him, and we were racing. I was ahead, and he reached his ski pole out and pulled me back,” said Ivanka.
Lesson Five: Keep Your Kids Away from the Excesses of Modern Life
Answering Van Meter’s question on fame, youth, and its pitfalls, she replied,
“Look, none of us are saints. We all like to have fun.”
“I think our parents have just been pretty tough with us. They’ve always made sure that we lived within some realm of reality.”
Taking cues from their conversation, the 2004 NYM article noted that Donald and Ivana seemed to have ‘filtered out the excesses of modern life for the kids.’
“They knew the perfect way to give us what we needed without it being gratuitous,” she added.
Lesson Six: Keep Your Kids Close
Eric and Ivanka said their parent’s divorce was never about him leaving them.
“Bizarrely,” said Ivanka, “it made us closer to Dad.”
“Every morning before school, we’d go downstairs and give him a hug and a kiss. We didn’t take his presence for granted anymore.”
Not completely free of resentment, Donny inferred if there was anything he could change about his dad, it would be how hard he works.
“If I want to go fishing rather than play golf, it’s always like, ‘Why would you go fishing all weekend? I don’t get it! It’s crazy!’
Lesson Seven: Know Your Limitations
Chiming in, Trump’s late first wife, Ivana — mum to Don, Eric and Ivanka — said,
“Trump is not the kind of father who would ‘Choo-choo, goo-goo, noo-noo.”
“He would love them, he would kiss them and hold them, but then he would give them to me because he had no idea what to do.”
“They’re grown, he’s starting to learn them, teach them, and now it’s going to be his thing,” she explained.
Trump himself admitted in 2005, he doesn’t do diapers.
“There’s a lot of women out there that demand that the husband act like the wife and you know there’s a lot of husbands that listen to that…”
“I’m really a great father, but certain things you do and certain things you don’t. [Changing a diaper] is just not for me.”
He is a normal dad, with an abnormal public life.
This comes from the influence of Trump’s parents.
For the late, Liz Smith, the key to the “Trump Parenting Miracle” is hard work, and, in spite of the former president’s two broken marriages, “a lot of family values.”
Trump’s parents were “solid people,” Smith continued, “they never drank, or took drugs.”
Although Trump can be an “ass,” and his marriages ended over a couple of “irresistible women”, he had boundaries.
Lesson Eight: Keep Grandparents in the Picture
Some of Donny’s greatest mentors in early life were his mum’s Czech parents, Milos and Maria Zelnicek.
They lived with the ‘family in NYC six months out of the year.’
With his dad’s “focus in life on work”, it was Milos who taught Don. Jr to fish, boat, hunt and speak ‘Czech fluently.’
Trump stated, “The hardest thing for me about raising kids has been finding the time.”
He’s not shy of stating that he’s spent more of his time being a provider and teacher to his kids, than their nanny.
Fatherhood for Trump has been about loving his kids into the world he orbits, as much as protecting them from the world which orbits him.
Before Trump was hated by the media, they loved him.
Notably, twelve years prior to his Presidential candidacy igniting a political firestorm fuelled by legacy media, Van Meter glowingly declared,
‘If Don Jr is becoming just like his father, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.’
‘Let’s face it,’ Van Meter concluded.
‘The Trumps may not be monsters after all. There’s something surprisingly lovable about the family.’
___
Photo: The White House/Wikimedia Commons
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