Discipline

With President Obama in charge for 8 years, the Obama girls had quite a ride at the White House, but it’s not as pleasant and as glamorous as it seems. Aides who know the girls say they are disciplined, thanks to their father but mostly to their mother. (Some staff members even joke that they wish they could send their own children to Mrs. Obama’s boot camp for training.) Here are just a few of the household rules that she has mentioned in interviews and other appearances:

¶ When the girls go on trips, they write reports on what they have seen, even if their school does not require it.

¶ Technology is for weekends. Malia, the oldest may use her cellphone only then, and she and her sister cannot watch television or use a computer for anything but homework during the week.

¶ Malia and Sasha had to take up two sports: one they chose and one selected by their mother. “I want them to understand what it feels like to do something you don’t like and to improve,” the first lady has said.

¶ Malia must learn to do laundry before she leaves for college.

¶ The girls have to eat their vegetables, and if they say that they are not hungry, they cannot ask for cookies or chips later. “If you’re full, you’re full,” Mrs. Obama said in an interview with Ladies’ Home Journal. “I don’t want to see you in the kitchen after that.”

We all wish all children grow up under these rules, but so many of them are spoiled, and so many parents lose all kind of control over them.