First Lady Michelle Obama told third-graders Wednesday that they could help the president by working hard and never quitting.
Mrs Obama visited Ferebee-Hope Elementary School in southeast Washington and read the story 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day' to about 18 children.
Afterward, she and the eight- to 10-year-old children discussed how to cope productively with having a bad day.
"So sometimes if you spend all your time being frustrated about your bad day, sometimes it just makes it worse," she said.
Mrs Obama told the students that everybody had bad days.
"Nobody is going to have a great day every day. Everybody has a bad day - even me," she said. "Even the president of the United States has a couple of bad days."
But she asked the students never to give up, even when life is difficult.
"When something gets hard, because it will be, there will be plenty of things that will be hard for you all; there are things that are hard for me," she said. "Will you promise me that you will not quit?"
She said their pledge would help her husband, President Barack Obama.
She also encouraged the students to work hard at their studies.
"I want you all to be good readers, and to love learning and to love books, because it just makes life easier for you and it's more fun," she said.
Mrs Obama visited the school to meet with leaders from the dropout prevention organisation Communities In Schools, which provides individual tutoring for the third-graders she met.
WASHINGTON (AP):
Michelle Obama says everyone should have what she has: a chief of staff and a personal assistant.
Speaking in support of sick days with pay and flexible work schedules, Mrs Obama said that, as challenging as her new life may sometimes seem, hers is a "very blessed situation, because I have what most families don't have" - support from her mother and a staff.
"Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants," she said at a meeting of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organisation that works to develop and promote policies to help working families.
Personal time
Absent personal assistants for all, Mrs Obama said workers should have paid sick days, schedules that give them time for their family responsibilities, such as picking up children or taking them or parents to doctors' appoint-ments, and quality child care on the job.
Also needed is paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, or to deal with serious illness, she said.
Key to family survival
"These types of policies can be the key to whether a family remains economically viable or slips into financial uncertainty," she said.
Some 22 million working women don't have one paid sick day, Mrs Obama said, meaning they lose money anytime they have to skip work because of an ill child. Current law, the Family Medical Leave Act, provides unpaid leave for birth, adoption or serious illness.
President Barack Obama's wife talked openly during last year's campaign for the White House about her feelings when she juggled work as a top administrator at a Chicago hospital with raising two young daughters.
The issue, balancing work and family, is one she wants to focus on as first lady.