Michelle Obama has opened up about how her husband, former President Barack Obama, struggled with raising his youngest daughter, Sasha.
On Wednesday’s episode of the former first lady’s IMO podcast, alongside her older brother Craig Robinson, Michelle revealed the differences between her two daughters, Malia, 27, and Sasha, 24, and why Barack found his oldest daughter easier to raise.
“I’d say this to Barack, when it comes to, you know, [our] oldest, Malia, she is going to figure out who you are, what do you like and let’s discuss it,” Michelle told that week’s guests, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade.
She continued, explaining that Malia would constantly try to appease her father while Sasha simply didn’t care.
“When Malia was a teenager, it wasn’t that she was going out any less or doing anything differently,” the Becoming author said. “She would tell me, ‘I’m going out this weekend, but I’m going to go in and give dad like 15 minutes.’”
Normally, the eldest daughter would do this by trying to discuss politics with her dad.
“She’d go into the Treaty Room and be like, ‘Tell me about Syria,’” Michelle recalled, adding that Barack would leave the conversation saying, “I just had an amazing conversation with Malia.”
However, Barack struggled to understand why he could not have the same relationship with Sasha, calling her “difficult.” Michelle then rushed to the defense of her youngest child. “Sasha is like a cat,” she said. “She’s like, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t pet me. I’m not pleasing you. You come to me.”
She told her that parents need to “be a chameleon” and adjust to each child having a different personality and parenting style that they respond to.
Despite Barack’s parenting challenges, he has previously admitted during an appearance on his wife’s podcast last month that he would have struggled to raise a son instead of his two daughters.
“I think we did a pretty good job of raising our girls, but I've said often that I think I would have had more difficulty raising a son,” Barack said at the time, to which Michelle replied, “I agree.”
“I think I might've been more judgmental, harder, and I would've tried to — I'd like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that, but I just think father-son relationships, for me, particularly if I don't have a dad around to show it to me, might've been more difficult,” the former president added.
