Keep Em In Check: Sasha And Malia Obama’s Secret House Rules Revealed!

1) Non-School Related Reports: The girls must write reports about what they’ve seen on their trips, even if it’s not required by their school.

2) No Cell Phones, TV or Computer on Weekdays: Malia may use her cellphone only on the weekends, and she and her sister cannot watch television or use a computer for anything but homework during the week. ”We have clear rules about screen time and TV time. None during the week if it doesn’t involve schoolwork,” Mrs. Obama said. They’re allowed some TV time on the weekends, but even then “I try to fill up their weekends with a lot of stuff so they wind up missing that, too,” she confided. “It’s like, sports and games, and then, oh, it’s bedtime, so sorry you didn’t get your TV time in.”

3) Athleticism: Malia and Sasha have to play two sports: one they choose and one selected by their mother.

4) House Chores: Malia must learn to do laundry before she leaves for college. Though the White House has a large staff, Malia and Sasha have chores of their own. “They have to make their beds, they have to clean up their rooms,” First Lady Michelle Obama said last year. “They have chores to do, and they don’t get their allowance until they can prove that they’ve done their chores for the week.”

5) Healthy Eating: The girls have to eat their vegetables, and if they say that they are not hungry, they cannot ask for cookies or chips later.

6) No R-rated movies for pre-teens – While Malia, 14, has gone to a few R-rated movies (after they’ve been vetted by her parents), Sasha, 11, is not allowed to watch R-rated movies at all, and even kid-centric TV shows get monitored. “Nowadays, sometimes what’s on the kid programming, some of that teenage programming is pretty high-level stuff, too,” First Lady Michelle Obama said. “So you find that you have to constantly just be engaged with them and hear what they’re learning and talk to them about the shows that they’re watching.”

7) They can only have healthy snacks – ”We have fruit. We have some cereals, some crackers, nuts, dried foods that are out,” Mrs. Obama said. “We try to put out healthy snacks in clear containers, because seeing dried fruit gives the kids the idea, ‘Oh, yes, if I’m hungry I could really have this or the nuts or the soybean things.’ And my whole thing is if you’re really hungry, you can have that. If you don’t really want it, then you’re not really hungry.”

8) Quitting is not allowed – ”Kids tend to quit when it starts getting hard, which means that’s when they’re starting to learn something,” Mrs. Obama said during an interview this year. “And that’s the tough time to continue to make them go to that tennis lesson. Even though Malia was complaining about it, she now loves tennis. And now she’s saying, ‘Well, I’m glad you made me keep taking tennis.’ ”