Michelle Obama reveals family’s TV habits

Jan 14, 2010 10:01 GMT  ·  By
The Obama girls are allowed to watch only Nickelodeon and Disney Channel on weekends
   The Obama girls are allowed to watch only Nickelodeon and Disney Channel on weekends

These days, a lot of emphasis is placed on the kind of shows that air on television, as well as on the part parents should be playing in their children’s TV habits. The US First Family, for instance, is one that believes limits and rules must be established so that whatever children watch on TV is first filtered, as Michelle Obama reveals in a new interview with People magazine.

Barack and Michelle Obama have two girls, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, both of which are huge fans of such pop acts like Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers. In this new piece, though, Mrs. Obama sheds some light into the daily habits of the family and how the two girls are limited only to Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. The only exception, the President says, is if they want to watch football with him, which is never the case.

“They can only watch the kid-TV channels for the most part, because you just never know,” Mrs. Obama says. One important note is that the two girls are allowed to watch television only on weekend, because the TV set is completely off limits during the week, on school nights. As for MTV’s controversial “Jersey Shore” reality show, that too is out of the question: not even the grown-up Obamas are watching it. “I’ve heard about it. Not seen it,” the First Lady says.

“With their TV intake limited, Malia and Sasha have been honing other skills. ‘We found over the [Christmas] break that they are both very good Taboo players,’ says Mrs. Obama. In the game, one partner tries to prompt the other to guess a word, without using the word itself or any of five related words on the card. ‘We vacation with a bunch of different families, and there were like 13 kids,’ says Mrs. Obama. ‘So, the kids all played, and we let them pass if they didn't know what the word was. Kids would just file through it, but Malia and Sasha were focused’,” People writes, citing Michelle Obama.

To this, the President has only to add that his girls are “very quick” and a joke that the foundation on which his marriage to Michelle is based is her in-depth knowledge of sports. He still watches football on TV alone, though, he adds.