Parenting is a demanding experience at the best of times, but it can become particularly stressful if you’re essentially on call every day. And as families find themselves stuck at home, they now find themselves without the reprieve of school that would normally allow them to see dealing with the energy of kids as a team effort.
And for those who are working from home with young children in the house, it can feel a lot like doing two jobs at once. And even two jobs that you may love can still feel like a lot in circumstances like that.
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Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama are well aware of that reality, so they’re taking part in a kind of story time for the nation in the full video.
On May 14, a five-minute video of Barack and Michelle Obama appeared on the former president’s Twitter account.
In his tweet, he said, “Michelle and I want to do our part to give all you parents a break today,” so they decided to share a children’s story they have a particular fondness for.
Their video was the latest in a web series conducted by the Chicago Public Library called “Live From The Library.”
As People reported , this also served as an opportunity for Obama to announce that his future Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side will also include another branch of the library.
Before the couple read the story they had selected, they took a moment to affirm what essential institutions public libraries are.
For her part, Michelle Obama shared a story of her first trip to the library at age four, saying, “My library card was a key that unlocked a world of knowledge and experiences.”
With that, they proceed to read *The Word Collector* by Peter H. Reynolds.
In it, we meet a boy named Jerome who amasses a large collection of words he heard and read in his travels that catch his fancy. These words come in all sizes, express all manner of emotional states, and describe all of the world’s wonders.
In Obama’s words, this book was chosen because it “illustrates the transformative power of words.”
He then expresses his own fondness for words, which Michelle confirms with a knowing smile suggesting the former president can be a little long-winded.
As they read, they show off the book’s illustrations and Michelle puts some particularly inflection into the longer words that the book describes as like little songs.
So if you’ve got some children who need distracting or you just want to relax for a few minutes, their reading of this tale of Jerome and his words are in the full video.
