This Member of the Kennedy Family Makes Their Kids Stand When They Enter the Room
If you were to ask people in the United States who they think is the country’s equivalent of the royal family, I’d venture a guess you’d get two front runners: The Kardashians. And the Kennedys. (Is it something about having a “K” surname?!)
And so we weren’t the least bit surprised to hear that one member of the Kennedy family ran her household like a palace.
Maria Shriver’s kids were not taught to bow or curtsy (that they know of), but they certainly became masters at standing. The daughter of the late Eunice Kennedy sat down with Hoda Kotb and explained that her children and their friends (and. their. friends.) were expected to stand up when she entered a room.
“I used to make them,” Shriver told Kotb on an episode of her Making Space podcast. “Now they just do stand up.”
It’s a rule Eunice — daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and sister of JFK Jr. — also enforced.
“There are many things that I’ve emulated from my mother, but my grandmother [Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy] and my mother were big on manners,” Shriver said, per People. “So when somebody who was older walked in the room, AKA my mother, everybody stood up.”
Shriver shares daughters Katherine and Christina and sons Patrick and Christopher with ex-husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, and she didn’t want to find them “sitting looking at a phone or watching the game” when she arrived.
“I wanted my kids to … when [an adult] walked in the room … stand up out of respect,” she explained. “So when their friends would come over, I’d be like, ‘Ahem!'”
“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.’ That sort of stuff.”
And we’re all about instilling good manners, limiting screen time when possible, and making sure kids are grateful and present. But making them stand when you enter the room?! And making their unsuspecting friends do the same?! That sounds awfully regal and ultimately fitting for the Kennedy family.
“And even though my kids moaned and groaned about it, they now say it was a good thing,” Shriver said.
Now we’re just dying to know if Shriver’s daughter Katherine has taught her and Chris Pratt’s kids to do the same thing. Baby Ford is too little to master his manners, but do 4-year-old Lyla and 2-year-old Eloise stand when their mom or grandma walks in the room? Is Katherine keeping the stately Kennedy tradition alive? Or is a standard “please” and “thank you” more her and Pratt’s speed?
Before you go, check out some of Katherine Schwarzenegger’s best motherhood moments.