Ivanka Trump Starts Her Day At 5 A.m. For A Very Important Reason

It's hard to hear the name Ivanka Trump without thinking of her famous father, Donald Trump. However, Ivanka is more than just the former president's daughter — her titles include fashion designer, author, entrepreneur, and, perhaps most importantly, mother.

Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner have welcomed three children over the years: Arabella Rose in 2011, Joseph Frederick in 2013, and Theodore James in 2016. Like many busy mothers, Ivanka wakes up early each day to squeeze in time for everything on her to-do list, including time with her children. "I want my children to see me first every morning, so I wake up at 5 and make sure to shower and exercise before they get up," the business mogul told People just four months after the birth of her third child.

Starting the day early is hard for many parents, and the mom of three can certainly relate. In a video for her web series AskIT (via MailOnline), Ivanka admits, "I fight the instinct to sleep in because I'm not naturally an early riser. I'm still very reliant on the alarm clock slash snooze button, but I do like to get as much as I can get done prior to the kids waking up."

Ivanka Trump doesn't let her a.m. hours go to waste, and she's sure to fit in as much as she can even before her children wake up. In a 2015 My Morning Routine feature, prior to welcoming her third child, Trump revealed that her two older kids are usually up at exactly 7 a.m., and to give them her undivided attention, she treated the period before they wake as sacred me-time, and still does, though it might look a little different with a third child in the mix. 

She outlined that she typically meditates or exercises, showers, listens to a TED talk, reads the paper, and gets ready, all before the clock strikes seven. Then, "At 7:00, I get the kids out of bed," she shared at the time. "While Arabella does her 'three things' — brush her teeth, wash her hands, and make her bed — I change Joseph and get him dressed. Then, we eat breakfast together as a family. I walk Arabella to school a few mornings each week, but if I'm going directly to the office, I usually head in between 7:45 and 8:00 am."

With three kids, the former White House adviser has even more to tackle in the mornings but she still takes a few minutes to make her children's breakfasts before heading out the door for work, as she explained to People.

Hectic mornings might not allow much time for Ivanka Trump to bond with her three kids, but she makes sure to schedule additional one-on-one time and family days throughout the week. She told People, "I try to carve out special time with each of them . . . Joseph loves playing with cars. Arabella could read with me for hours. I never loved baking until Arabella started cooking with me." She noted, though, that when Theodore was still a newborn, it was difficult to bond with him without distractions. "Poor Theo, he's always the one where they're interrupting his time with me," Trump recalled.

The entrepreneur wakes up early even on the weekends and tries to keep Saturdays and Sundays free of meetings and work engagements so she can hang out with her family. In a 2020 interview with People, Trump explained that her favorite weekend activity involves getting her hands dirty at her country house. "I love gardening with the kids, so that's something I have a lot of fun with," she said. "We produce a lot of produce. We've got tomatoes, strawberries. It's so much fun, I never grew up doing this."