9 Strict Rules Elon Musk Expects His Kids To Follow
The life of a baby billionaire.
Twitter / Instagram / Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock Elon Musk has never been one to stick to traditions just for the sake of it.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder has always had a knack for putting his own personal flair on whatever he does. Love him or hate him, no one can deny that the man is certainly unique in how he approaches life.
That uniqueness also applies to his parenting style with his children.
Musk shares twins Griffin and Xavier, 18, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian, 16, with his ex-wife Justine.
The couple also lost their first son, Nevada Alexander, at just 10 weeks old in 2002.
Musk and ex-girlfriend Grimes also have a son, X AE A-XII, who turn two on May 4, and a daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl who was born in December 2021.
The new owner of Twitter and one of his top Neuralink executives, Shivon Zilis, reportedly welcomed twins in November 2021, a month before the birth of his second child with Grimes.
Being the children of one of the most wealthy and recognizable people in the world comes with its own set of rules and expectations, many of which come from Musk himself.
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Here are 9 strict rules that Elon Musk’s kids follow.
1. Elon Musk’s kids are expected to be his protégés.
Though Musk says he takes a backseat in parenting until the kids are older, Grimes revealed in 2022 that he may have bent this rule for their son X.
The singer says her ex has high expectations for their infant son so we can likely expect to see a lot of the toddler.
While Musk has always kept his older kids out of the spotlight, we have seen snippets of X in recent years.
“X is just out there," she says of her son being in the public eye. "I mean, I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff.… X is out there. His situation is like that."
2. Elon Musk believes in allowing his kids to be educated by the internet.
Musk’s view of education is very unconventional. During a live interview on an audio app called Clubhouse last year, Musk said that he believes his children have learned more from the internet than they have anywhere else.
“Well, my observation is that my kids were mostly educated by YouTube and Reddit," Musk said.
"I guess there were lessons as well, but judging by the amount of time they spent online, it seemed like most of their education is actually coming from online."
The CEO has been open with his criticism of traditional education in the past.
He has said on the record that college is a bunch of “annoying homework assignments,” and he famously does not require his employees at Tesla to have a college diploma.
“I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they're not for learning," Musk said at the Satellite Conference in 2020.
3. Elon Musk’s son isn’t allowed call Grimes ‘mom.’
Musk and singer Grimes’ 1-year-old son X, curiously does not call his mother "mom" or any variation of the word. Instead, X calls Grimes by her first name, Claire.
Grimes has theorized that her son does this because he is so perceptive that he can sense her lack of affinity for being called “mother.”
“Which I don’t even know why I have a distaste for ’cause I like, respect it, I just, I don’t, I can’t identify with it weirdly. Like, maybe he can like, sense my distaste for the word mother,” Grimes told Vogue in September.
“Which I don’t even know why I have a distaste for ’cause I like, respect it, I just, I don’t, I can’t identify with it weirdly.”
4. The Musk kids are required to read more often than they play video games.
Musk’s childhood love for video games helped him develop his passion for programming which has served him so well in his career.
Naturally, Musk’s own kids followed suit as avid video game players.
While Musk generally supports his children delving into the hobbies that he loves, he has one very strict rule regarding playing time.
Instagram / Amber Heard
In an interview with Ashlee Vance for his biography about Musk, the multi-billionaire said that the kids must spend twice as much time reading as they do playing video games.
He says that he does this to prevent the kids from becoming too addicted to their screens.
5. Elon Musk thinks his kids need to face hardship in order to become successful.
It may be easy to forget given his status now, but Musk faced plenty of challenges in his childhood and early adulthood.
He moved from his home country of South Africa to Canada at the age of 17 without any parental support.
He also experienced bullying at school up until he was 15.
While these hardships were difficult at the time, Musk believes they helped to form him into the success he is today.
As such, he believes that his kids need to experience some sort of hardship as well.
"I had a terrible upbringing,” Musk said at a 2011 awards ceremony. “I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don't face enough adversity."
6. The Musk kids are very health conscious.
Musk seems to encourage healthy eating as well as healthy minds in his household.
A babysitter who once cared for his triplets while they were spending time with a friend revealed in a TikTok video that the boys were very health conscious.
'We all went to dinner at Whole Foods. These kids were very health-conscious at such a young age. I was expecting a Johnny Rockets or something, but they were like, "No, let’s go to Whole Foods."'
She also described them as “well-behaved” so it seems manner is also an important practice in the Musk house.
7. Elon Musk’s kids attend the school he started.
In line with his views about traditional education, Musk founded his own school where students are taught the way that he believes all kids should be, and his own children are enrolled.
Musk mentioned that he had founded the southern California school Ad Astra, Latin for “to the stars,” in 2014.
He went into more detail about the school in an interview for Chinese television that has since been deleted.
In the interview, he described the school as not adhering to traditional grade structures and focusing more on critical thinking and problem-solving.
Musk says that he hated going to school as a child, but that his kids love going to the school that he founded.
8. Elon Musk doesn’t play an active role in his kids' lives while they’re young.
Now that Musk’s older sons are teens, they can expect to be seeing a lot more of him than they may have when they were younger.
But for his younger kids, they’ll have to stick with being cared for by their mothers and nannies for now.
The billionaire revealed in 2020 that he doesn’t play a large role in raising his kids when they’re babies.
“Right now there’s not much I can do. Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now,” Musk said to The New York Times.
“When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me. I think just doing what I’ve done with my other kids.”
9. The Musk kids must be prepared to travel a lot.
In the same interview, Musk revealed that, for his older sons, being his kid means a lot of jet setting.
“If I have a trip for Tesla to China, for example, I’ll bring the kids with me and we’ll go see the Great Wall or we took the bullet train from Beijing to Xian and saw the Terracotta Warriors,” he explains.
Jonathan Alfano is a writer who focuses on news and entertainment topics. He majors in journalism at the University of Central Florida with a minor in sports business. Follow him on Twitter.