“Because the more you experience the things you really don’t like, the more you can go and the tougher you get and the more you can handle. It’s that simple.
”So many young kids these days shy away from that, but you have to be attracted to that...
”Don’t start creating a generation of wimps and weak people... Let’s not over-baby people. Let’s go and teach kids to be tough, to do sports, to study and struggle and go through these kind of painful moments sometimes.”
‘Let’s not over-baby people. Let’s ... teach kids to be tough ... and go through these ... painful moments sometimes.’
The 76-year-old Austrian actor - who has Katherine, 33, Christina, 31, Patrick, 30, and Christopher, 26 with ex-wife Maria Shriver as well as 26-year-old Joseph with Mildred Baena - recently revealed he once threw one of his son’s mattresses out of the window into their swimming pool as punishment for not making his bed.
Speaking on ‘Jimmy Kimmel, Live!’, he said: “For the way I grew up, I was lenient. But I think for American standards I was probably strict.
”My son did not make his bed. He had his nanny make the bed, which was not allowed. So, I came in one time and the bed was made so immaculately, that I looked at it and I said, ‘Patrick, did you do that?’ And he said, ‘No, I didn’t.’
”So I grabbed the mattress, opened up the doors, and threw it off the balcony down into the swimming pool! It gives an example.
“So he had to, kind of, drag it up, the mattress and the pillows — I threw everything out there!”
The ‘True Lies’ star went on to add that his daughter regularly infuriated him by not putting her shoes away, so one day he decided to teach her a lesson by burning them.
He said; “My daughter would have this habit of taking her tennis shoes off and putting them right there by the fireplace.
”And I said, ‘I’m not going to go be a servant here. You know where the shoes go, they go into the mud room. Don’t put them here.
“The third time I said, ‘Okay look, I’ve told you now for three times, I told you I’m going to burn the shoes…so I took the shoes and I put them in the fireplace!”