Obama reflects on Father’s Day

President Obama in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” discussed his relationship with his daughters Malia and Sasha and reminisced about the limited time he spent with his own Kenyan father.

He said that his daughters are the perfect age now and that he anticipates rockier days when they become teenagers.

“Perfect day on Father’s Day is just spending time with them. The great thing — and some of this is Malia and Sasha are the perfect age, you know, 13, 10, where, you know, they are interesting and

{mosads}funny, and they’re their own people, but they still actually want to spend time with you. You know, and that may not last that many more years,” he said.

“I could not ask for better kids, and so I’m not anticipating complete mayhem for the next four or five years. But I understand, you know, that, you know, teenagehood is complicated,” he said.

Obama said that he is maintaining his routine of having a hour or hour and a half dinner with his kids every night at 6:30 unless there is an “actual national emergency.”

Since he hardly knew his own father, Obama relies on his mom as a model for parenting, he said.

He said part of his philosophy is “your child isn’t your friend, at least when they’re young. You’re the parent. And so you’ve got to set limits for them.”

Although Obama focuses on his kids on Father’s Day he also thinks back to a one-month visit he had from his own father.

“The fact that certain interests that I have, in basketball or jazz music, came from a one-month visit that I had from my father,” the president said. “You know, he gave me my first basketball.”