Barack and Michelle Obama did not see eye to eye when it came to implementing a parenting technique on their daughters. Michelle revealed on Wednesday’s episode of her podcast IMOthat she and Barack disagreed on whether or not to use the sleep training technique for babies called the Ferber method, which teaches babies how to sleep independently by reducing the amount of times a parent checks-in on them while they cry, on their daughters Malia and Sasha. “I wasn’t sure about it—the notion that you just let the little person that you love the most cry and cry and cry,” Michelle said. She admitted that she “didn’t want to do it” at first, but Barack did. “We set it up where Barack took the night shift. I went to bed, which was helpful because it got me some sleep. I would have to cover my ears so that I couldn’t literally hear the crying,” she told her co-host and brother, Craig Robinson, and this week’s guest, social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt. The former first lady said that she noticed a difference after only a week, remarking how “the quicker you start to implement the action, the more responsive the child is sooner.”
