OH, THOSE POOR LITTLE RICH KIDS
Ivana discusses parenting, life with Donald in book
Ever wonder why the Trump kids are so poised and successful? Don’t look to the Tweeter-in-Chief for why they turned out so well. The original Mrs. Donald Trump — Ivana — informs us in her new tell-all, “Raising Trump,” that’s her handiwork.
Ivana Trump stayed mum during the presidential campaign.
Most Americans know she lived with The Donald, bore him three children, came to loathe him, got a massive divorce settlement out of him after he ran off with Marla Maples and still lives a life utterly unlike theirs.
Now this working mom — she started her own apparel and perfume line — has pulled back the veil on the glitzy, jewel-studded, big-haired life the media has portrayed for decades.
Her ex, she claims, was more or less an absentee dad, famously off cutting his deals and slapping the Trump name in big gold letters on everything he could. Though, she says, he balked at naming his son Donald Jr., afraid he might be “a loser.”
Ivana wants us to know that if she was a fabulously wealthy and glamorous mom, she was first and foremost a mom. In fact, “Raising Trump” is almost a parenting howto for the 0.001 percent. Helicopter parent? Oh yeah. “My version of helicopter parenting was to bring the kids to work with me in the Trump chopper,” confides Ivana.
Before you get the idea that these rich kids were pampered, be aware they had daily chores just like everyone else,
“I happen to believe that chores can be therapeutic, and kids thrive when they have a sense of personal responsibility and a clear understanding of what’s expected of them,” Ivana writes.
They took out the trash, tangling with raccoons in the wilds of Connecticut. They walked Choppy, the Trump family pooch. If they made a mess, they had to clean it up.
It was all part of instilling a work ethic in young people who, theoretically, with a billionaire dad, might expect they would never have to work.
Ivana informs us she allowed her children to enjoy the family wealth but always let them know the money wasn’t theirs. That lifestyle of the rich and famous was on loan, and they’d need to make their own.
“I lived well and enjoyed my luxuries, but the kids understood that I’d earned them through hard work. What I shared with them didn’t belong to them,” Ivana writes. And that, she suggests, is what strengthened their drive.
Despite boasting of her excellent parenting skills, she admits there were some parts of parenting she dreaded. Play dates, for instance. “I avoided play dates like the plague. … I did discourage play dates at Trump Tower. The triplex was just too huge and lavish,” she writes.
But what’s a tell-all without a little dirt?
Ivana opens up with her disdain for “the show girl” aka Marla Maples.
“After the show girl got pregnant and had a daughter (Tiffany Trump), Donald married her,” Ivana sniffs. “The whole world was watching. He couldn’t not wed the mother of his new baby, regardless of whether his heart was really in it.”
And speaking of relationships, she cast a mother’s critical eye on her daughter Ivanka’s marriage and conversion to Judaism.
“I’m not convinced about some of the Orthodox customs, but if Ivanka was willing to give up lobster and bacon, she must really love him,” the loving mom writes.
And oh, about The Donald, Ivana tells that as bitter as the divorce was, as soon as it was over, they became friends. In fact, she says, to this day the president of the United States includes his exwife among those he seeks out for advice.