- Maria Shriver opened up about a parenting trick she learned from her mother.
- She said she taught her children to stand up whenever she entered a room, something they still do to this day.
- Shriver said the women in her family were “big on manners,” something she wanted to pass down.
Maria Shriver has opened up about the parenting tip she inherited from her late mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and why she believes it instilled her children with good manners.
Appearing on a recent episode of the TODAY podcast “Making Space with Hoda Kotb,” Shriver, 69, said that she taught her children to stand up “out of respect” whenever she entered a room — something she said they still do to this day.
“I make them stand up,” Shriver said. “I used to make them. Now they just do stand up.”
Shriver, who is the niece of former President John F. Kennedy, shares daughters Katherine, 35, and Christina, 33, and sons Patrick, 31, and Christopher, 27, with ex-husband Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Shriver said the rule didn’t just apply when she entered a room.
“I wanted my kids to, when I walked in the room, or their dad walked in the room, or you would walk in the room, that they stand up out of respect,” she said.
Shriver also encouraged her children’s friends to do the same when they visited their home: “When their friends would come over, I’d be like, ahem.”
She continued: “I didn’t want to walk in the room, and they’d be sitting looking at a phone or watching the game. I’d be like, ‘I’m here. Here we are, and here I am. And look me in the eye, say hello, thank me for coming, write me a thank you note if I take you somewhere.'”
“Even though my kids moaned and groaned about it, they now say it was a good thing,” she added.
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Shriver said the rule is something her mother — who died in 2009 — also enforced when she was growing up.
She added that both her mother and her grandmother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, were “big on manners.”
Another etiquette rule she learned from her elders was bringing interesting topics of conversation to the dinner table, she went on.
“When we went to the dinner table, everybody had to have something to bring to the table to talk about, to converse about. My mother would be like, ‘What’s your opinion of the gospel? What’s your opinion of what the president said today?'” she said.
“You could be 10, 11, 19, 20, but you had to step up.”
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Shriver said that at the heart of her parenting style was the idea that her children were “four distinct individuals” who knew they were valued and “a priority in a public family.”
She added that she wanted to “guard their privacy” and to “make sure they were not part of political pamphlets” or “used as props.”
Shriver’s approach to parenting and her emphasis on teaching her children manners aligns with the authoritative parenting style, which is typified by setting rules and high standards.
As Business Insider previously reported, experts say authoritative parenting can help children develop responsibility and emotional regulation.
“This style encourages children to take responsibility for their own actions and make decisions that are appropriate for their age and development,” Kalley Hartman, a marriage and family therapist and clinical director of Ocean Recovery, told BI in 2023.
