Daddy Donald puts stock - and bonds - into baby Barron’s bedtime reading
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
Just in time for Father’s Day - and, even more importantly - last night’s season finale of ‘‘The Apprentice” - Donald Trump graciously provided the media with some insight into his parenting style. A Father of the Year contender he’s not.
He’s not in the running for Top Hubby either, I’m deducing. It turns out that The Donald has never changed little Barron’s diaper. ‘‘I would never ask to change him,” Dad told the New York Post. ‘‘Melania probably wouldn’t let me. I’d just do it wrong.”
Ask to change him?
This is a man who can put together billion-dollar deals (even if he does occasionally dabble in bankruptcy) but can’t figure out Pampers? I’m not buying it. Even so, it should be noted that he does help out in his own Trumpian way: no, not by giving the baby combover tips, but rather by reading to him - from the newspapers.
As a mother who sang her children to sleep with a slow version of the ‘‘Brady Bunch” theme song because I was ignorant of more traditional lullabies, I can understand a little thinking outside the box, but Page Six? The Week in Review? The Wall Street Journal? Did Barron Trump, all of 2 months old, learn about the Enron convictions instead of Peter Cottontail?
But guess what? It turns out Donald’s on to something. Still steaming over Donald’s ignorance of diaper-changing techniques (on whose behalf I’m not sure since it’s a good guess Mommy Melania isn’t changing a lot of the diapers herself), I called a bunch of very involved dads, and they, too, reported unusual literary choices.
‘‘From time to time, on the theory that I would need her to fix the computer when she turned 9, I’d read (my daughter) instructions on downloading software or how to use the MP3 player,” one dad told me.
Another father, a lawyer, also read the Wall Street Journal to his baby, and he said he knew it had an effect on her. ‘‘Before turning the pages of her ‘First Words Book’ she would carefully lick her thumb and index finger.”
Some dads confessed that reading the papers was more for them than their children, except for one dad, who didn’t read his princess-and-pony-obsessed daughter the newspapers. Not because he thought it might bore her, though. ‘‘She wouldn’t put up with it,” he reported. ‘‘She’s the boss,” he said.
Somehow I don’t see Barron Trump wielding the same power. While other dads may walk, croon and cajole their little ones, trying to beg a nap out of them, I can just see The Donald pointing a big, beefy finger at his cranky infant and giving him a definitive: ‘‘You’re tired.”
