‘Don’t Embarrass Us ’ Michelle Obama Talks About The Difficulties Of Raising Two Girls In The White House

Jul 17, 2019 by apost team

Being a teenager is hard enough, coping with raging hormones, school pressure, and figuring out who you are as a person. Tack on being the daughters of the President of the United States and being in the spotlight 24/7, then it’s clear that you need strong guidance every step of the way.

Even for the incredible Michelle Obama, she admits it was hard for her to be that guidance for her two daughters Sasha and Malia.

Michelle recently sat with Gayle King for the Essence Festival in New Orleans in front of an audience of 50,000 people to speak about her book, “Becoming,” and her time in the White House. She answered Gayle’s questions about what it means to bring up two daughters in such a public sphere, and what it took to keep them grounded.

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She told Gayle that for her and Barack, the main focus was to keep life as normal as possible and pretend that “the craziness around them wasn’t happening.” They separated their dad’s job and their daughter’s personal lives as much as they could, and Michelle told them:

“Your goal is to go to school, come back, get some decent grades. Don't act up. Don't embarrass us."

However, it wasn’t always possible to keep a life of normalcy with so many secret service agents around. 

Michelle even joked that she’s surprised that her children have any friends at all, with the level of security around them. Other kids at sleepovers needed to hand over their social security numbers and dates of birth,

“And by the way, there will be a man with a gun sitting on the front porch all night. Let him come in and use the bathroom, it would just be nice." 

Michelle even quipped about trying to have your first kiss around “a bunch of men [with guns] and earpieces.” We don’t think Michelle had to worry about anything since her two daughters turned out just great.

Watch the entire interview below:

Yes, flying around in Air Force One and meeting the most famous people in the world would be some amazing benefits for Sasha and Malia, but it seems to come at a cost. If you were First Lady, would you raise your kids the same way Michelle did?