Michelle Obama Gave Sasha And Malia Reality Checks While Growing Up In The White House

Michelle Obama’s forward-thinking approach to raising her daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama, originated in her own childhood and the influence of her mother, Marian Robinson. “She told me and my brother, ‘I wasn’t raising children. I was raising adults,’” the former first lady said in 2018, per CNBC. “She would include you in big grown up conversations. There was never anything that she wouldn’t talk to us about.”

As part of raising her daughters to become confident adults, Michelle ensured Malia and Sasha’s lives in the White House weren’t unduly effortless. “My job is not to bulldoze a path for them in an effort to eliminate all possible adversity,” Michelle informed British Vogue in 2019. “Instead, I need to be a safe and consistent place for them to land when they inevitably fail; and to show them, again and again, how to get up on their own.”

When it came to getting up in a more literal sense, Malia and Sasha discovered they could receive a daily wake-up phone call from the White House’s operator. While the sisters loved this hotel-like luxury, Michelle quickly put the kibosh on the practice by getting the White House’s interior decorator to provide alarm clocks. Michelle recalled a similar experience with her own mother, telling NPR, “As early as kindergarten she gave us alarm clocks because she knew that we were capable of getting ourselves up. She wanted us to feel the power of our competence.”