Growing up in the public eye is tough, and like her older sister, Sasha Obama has never hidden the fact that she doesn’t love the celebrity life. However, spending her formative years under a microscope isn’t the only thing Sasha has had to contend with. Between a scary illness and a car accident, let’s dig into what she’s faced.
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Okay, so growing up with famous parents is just one aspect of Sasha’s life, but it is a pretty big one, so we’ll start with that. While some may think being the kid of a president comes with a ton of perks, both Sasha and Malia Obama had some apprehensions right from the start, and their dad didn’t hide that. Speaking to People in 2008, Barack Obama explained, “They are not looking forward to moving. They have a wonderful life in Chicago, they have lifelong friends in Chicago and the prospects of having to make new friends, that’s never something that kids are looking forward to. So I’m sure that there’s a part of them that says we won’t be heartbroken if things don’t work out.”
As for Michelle Obama, she also addressed her and Barack’s concern over their kids’ newfound (and unwanted) fame, telling “The View” that her number one goal was keeping things as normal for them as she possibly could. She also admitted to having some concerns about her daughters’ lives if they did move into the White House. “I think about it. I try not to obsess about it because, you know, we’ve got a lot of work before, you know, it’s even a reality, but … Barack and I think about our girls every single day,” she said. Of course, Barack did win, and the girls were propelled into the limelight — but more on that in a sec.
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Sasha had to be rushed to hospital as a baby
Taking things back a beat to before her dad was a presidential candidate, some may know that Sasha Obama had quite a frightening health scare when she was an infant.
Both Barack and Michelle Obama have spoken about their youngest daughter being diagnosed with meningitis when she was just a few months old. Michelle addressed it in a 2013 interview with Rev. Al Sharpton, sharing on his radio show, “One hour she was fine, she was normal, she was happy, doing everything I was used to her doing and the next hour she was crying inconsolably, and that just wasn’t like her” (via NBC News). The then-FLOTUS shared that after trying everything from feeding Sasha to burping her and soothing her the same way she always did, she’d called her pediatrician, who had told her to get to the emergency room as soon as possible. As for Barack, he opened up about the situation the year prior, in a campaign video. “I still remember going to the hospital together and they had to give her a spinal tap,” he said (via Politico). Unsurprisingly, the dad of two was incredibly worried. “Your world narrows to this very small point,” he said.
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Of course, despite the terrifying diagnosis, Sasha survived — and as is to be expected, both of her parents were overjoyed by the turnaround. “She turned out — obviously, as this story ends, she is fine, she’s healthy, she’s a beautiful young lady,” Michelle told Sharpton. Even so, it was a scary ordeal nonetheless.
Sasha Obama once had a car accident on her way to school
On to another scary moment for Sasha Obama, in a March 2025 appearance on “Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce,” Michelle Obama revealed that her second-born was in a car accident one morning while she was driving herself to school.
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“Sasha got T-boned. Literally, her car totaled, some lady T-boned her and you get this call that, ‘Sasha was in an accident, the car was totaled,'” Michelle recounted. Luckily, despite driving herself, Sasha was being tailed by her Secret Service agents, so they were able to help her out. What’s more, while undoubtedly a frightening moment for anyone, Sasha doesn’t seem to have been hurt. After all, the first time the accident made the news was more than eight years after her father’s second term ended.
All that said, Michelle did share on “Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce” that one of her first thoughts was of the woman who’d caused the accident. “I thought, ‘Ooh, I hope the lady that hit her is okay.’ Because you can imagine, right? Like, you T-bone Sasha Obama, and then there are agents,” Michelle quipped. A pretty dramatic moment, indeed — but kudos to everyone involved for keeping everything under wraps for so many years.
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Sasha and her sister were shamed for their Turkey pardoning ‘fits
Sadly for Sasha Obama, though her car accident didn’t become public knowledge until years later, she wasn’t always spared from press coverage. In 2014, when she was just 13 years old, she found herself in the headlines after the then-communications director for Rep. Stephen Fincher made some very uncalled-for comments about her and her sister.
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Taking to Facebook, Elizabeth Lauten called out what she saw as unacceptable dress and behavior from the first daughters at that year’s Turkey pardoning. “Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class,” Lauten wrote (via ABC). She went on to instruct the then-teenagers, “Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar.” Yikes. Unsurprisingly, Lauten’s outburst wasn’t exactly well-received — and she later issued an apology. “When I first posted on Facebook I reacted to an article and I quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager … Please know, those judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart,” she wrote in a follow-up Facebook post (via Forbes). Lauten also resigned soon after.
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Neither Sasha nor Malia ever responded directly. That said, their mom has since spoken about the steps taken to protect them from that kind of situation in the first place (which is pretty sad in itself). In a 2018 interview with Jenna Bush Hager for “Today,” Michelle Obama shared, “You would rarely see the girls outside of public events … there were a set of things where we sort of told the press, ‘Okay, the girls are gonna be here.'”
Sasha didn’t get to attend her dad’s farewell speech
Some may remember that when Barack Obama made his final address as president in January 2017, his youngest child was nowhere to be seen. That much became hard to ignore when the outgoing POTUS praised both of his daughters for handling their circumstances with grace, and the camera panned to just Malia Obama sitting with her mother, fighting back tears. Cue frantic questions from X users, asking where she was. “Watching #ObamaFarewell like #whereissasha ???” wrote one confused viewer. Another shared a GIF of the “Scooby Doo” characters searching for something, with the caption, “Twitter rn trying to find out where #SashaObama is.” Eventually, CBS News’ Mark Knoller came through with the answer everyone was looking for. “Where was Sasha? WH Official says she stayed back in DC tonight because she has an exam at school tomorrow morning,” he wrote in an X post.
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Unsurprisingly, the internet had a field day with the reason for Sasha’s absence. One reply summed it up, though: “Normalcy is what they always provided under really weird circumstances.” Sure enough, that was exactly what both Barack and Michelle Obama had said even before his first election victory. Speaking to People, Barack explained, “Our job, more than anything, is to make sure that in addition to monitoring whether or not they’re feeling sad or neglected at all, that they’re also not feeling special because their dad is running for president.” Michelle had concurred, backing him up with, “That’s right.”
It’s never been revealed what Sasha ended up getting for that exam, nor has the former first daughter said how she felt about missing her dad’s final address. However, there’s certainly a lot to be said for her parents’ consistency through it all.
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Sasha was devastated to leave the White House
Even with all the ups and downs during her time in the White House, it’s safe to say Sasha Obama felt attached to it, as did her sister. That’s not super surprising when taking into account something their mom shared at Essence Fest 2019. That is, for the majority of their childhood, the White House was their family home.
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Speaking to Gayle King at Essence Fest, Michelle Obama explained that the day of Donald Trump’s first inauguration was a major rush, as they weren’t able to move any of their things from the home until the Trump family arrived. Despite that, she said of the night before, “My kids come … with their little friends, and they’re like, ‘Can we have a sleepover for the last night?’ And I was like, ‘What? A sleepover?‘ … So there’re eight little girls crying the night before, and I’m like, ‘Okay, okay, y’all, you can have a sleepover, but you’ve got to get up and get out of this house.” Unfortunately, things didn’t exactly run smoothly the next morning, and Michelle joked that she’d had to kick some of the kids out, with both Sasha and Malia still crying. That said, she also understood where they were coming from. “I was moving my children out of the only house they had really grown up in, and I think that that gets lost on people,” Michelle told the audience.
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Of course, Joe Biden’s grandkids are close with both Sasha and Malia, with Joe once revealing that Maisy Biden and Sasha are besties, so it’s possible she returned when her dad’s VP became president himself. That said, the sad reality is it’ll never be Sasha’s home as it had been. Unless, of course, she decides to follow in her dad’s footsteps.
