8:00pm bedtime, chores, making your own bed, etc. - How the Obamas are parenting in the WH

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8:00pm bedtime, chores, making your own bed, etc. - How the Obamas are parenting in the WH

February 22, 2009
First Chores? You Bet
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON

CONSIDER the perils of parenting in the White House.

There is a movie theater, a bowling alley, a horseshoe pit, a swimming pool, five full-time chefs and dozens of household staff members ready to dish up ice cream at all hours. There are trips to foreign lands, dinners with kings and celebrities, swarming paparazzi and blaring motorcades, all with the potential to transform sweet little children into bossy, self-important ones. (Or lonely, dysfunctional ones.)

What are presidential parents to do?

Lay down the law, according to the newest parental unit in the executive mansion. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, might not be in Chicago anymore, but they say the old rules still apply when it comes to their daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

In the Obama White House, bedtime is still at 8 p.m. The girls still set their own alarm clocks and get themselves up for school in the morning. They make their own beds and clean their own rooms. And when the much-anticipated pet arrives, they will walk the dog and scoop its poop.

“That was the first thing I said to some of the staff when I did my visit,” Mrs. Obama said in an interview with ABC News, describing her talks with White House employees. “Don’t make their beds. Make mine. Skip the kids. They have to learn these things.”

Even as Mr. Obama tackles the recession and Mrs. Obama embraces the role of first lady, the Obamas are finding their footing as parents in the White House. They strive, and even struggle at times, to balance the intense public interest in their family with their desire to preserve a sense of normalcy and privacy in the lives of their daughters, according to relatives, friends and television and magazine interviews with the Obamas themselves.

Mr. Obama is a modern-day dad who leaves the Oval Office for dinner with his girls, rarely misses a parent-teacher conference or piano recital and prides himself on having read all seven books in the Harry Potter series aloud with Malia.

Mrs. Obama juggles play dates and homework with speeches to federal agencies and students. Both are committed to keeping their daughters grounded, their friends and aides say.

“Those are some special girls, and everyone is rooting for them to make it through this intact,” Craig Robinson, Mrs. Obama’s brother, said in an interview.

The president echoed that sentiment. “Right now, they’re not self conscious. You know, they don’t have an attitude,” Mr. Obama said on CBS News. “And I think one of our highest priorities over the next four years is retaining that.”

The Obamas have long believed that rules and routine help children thrive, particularly during unsettling times. During the presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama stuck so firmly to the 8 p.m. bedtime rule that Mr. Obama sometimes had to scramble to catch his daughters awake.

“Michelle won’t keep them up just to talk to their father,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president and a family friend, told The New York Times in 2007. “Bedtime is part of their normalcy. It isn’t going to be interrupted because he’s at a fund-raiser.”

But as every parent knows, there are rules, and then there is reality

Continue Reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/fashion/22firstp.html?hp