PRESIDENTIAL PERSUASION

Sherry Jones was driving son Malcolm, 13, to school recently when he mentioned something about some kid he didn’t like. Something about the kid being a jerk.

Jones told him that wasn’t kind. When you speak of people, she said, always speak well of them.

“Look at Barack! … During the campaign, no matter what, Obama always took the high road,” she told him.

“During the debates when John McCain would say a dig, Barack would never react. … He was always positive.”

Malcolm, who likes a good debate, was, for that moment, quiet.

In that silence, Jones realized that something about her spontaneous, trapped-in-the-car lecture was working.

“If my son didn’t agree, he would let me know,” says Jones, an accountant in suburban Silver Spring, Md. “Usually, he will say, ‘Yeah, but … ’

“When I use Barack Obama as an example, I can see him. He’s quiet. He may sit up a little straighter. He hasn’t gotten to the point where he says, ‘You are right.’ But there is something to be said for his saying nothing.”

Not getting the “yeah, but” can be the change a mother waits for, silent proof that her nagging isn’t going in one ear and out the other.

So some parents are summoning up Obama at the breakfast table to motivate a dawdling, recalcitrant child:

“Get up! Do you think Obama would have slept late and not made it to school on time?”

“Why don’t you guys share? Don’t you think Obama would want you to share?”

“How much did you read? Obama would have finished the book by now.”

“Do you think Obama would sneak cigarettes?” (Oops.)

Parenting is lonely, irritating, often maddening work. Parents are often second-guessing themselves, never sure whether their standards are set too high or not high enough. Never sure what’s working. Never sure that the child who seems fine now won’t be a mess at 30.

So they reach for help: an ancestor, a cousin, a historical figure – somebody to look up to. Their latest imaginary friend has become the president-elect, a person held to such high standards that if you parented just right, your child could end up like that, too.

We know this is fantasy. But Obama’s mother probably didn’t think she was raising a future president, either. So you grab at what strings are out there.

“It’s the third-party thing,” says Jill Miller Zimon, a freelance writer and mother of three school-age children. “Lots of times when a child won’t do something for you, you will … pretend a third party said it was a good thing to do.

“If you say the doctor said you needed to do this, or your teacher said you needed to do this, it has more impact than Mom and Dad. … Because they are more comfortable around Mom and Dad, it is easier to act up because they know there is unconditional love.”

In his autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama describes his mother’s emphasis on education:

“Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work.

“I offered stiff resistance to this regimen, but in response to every strategy I concocted, whether unconvincing (‘My stomach hurts’) or indisputably true (my eyes kept closing every five minutes), she would patiently repeat her most powerful defense: ‘This is no picnic for me either, buster.’ ”

Avis Jones-DeWeever, director of research at the National Council of Negro Women, bought her two children a book about Obama’s childhood.

“They see it as real,” she says. “I look at the picture of Barack on the tricycle. They can see themselves in him.

“I tell them all the time, You are brilliant, but brilliance necessitates hard work to get to the level he reached.’ ”

There was a point near the end of the presidential campaign when Obama’s perseverance rang clear for Jones-DeWeever.

“Both he and McCain were in Pennsylvania on a rainy day,” she says. “McCain canceled. But Barack was there in the rain. The rain was pouring, and he was speaking, and the crowds were there.

“He did not slow down. At that moment, I knew he would win. It is that sense of determination that I want to impart to my children. That being good is not enough – you also have to have that drive.”

She talked to her kids about Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech in New Hampshire.

“To me, what was inspiring about that speech – that was not a victory speech. He gave that speech after he lost,” she says.

“What does that tell you?” she asked her kids. “When you lose, you can still come back.”

Her 12-year-old son, Guy, memorized the speech and delivered it last semester to his sixth-grade class.

The Rev. Thomas Hagin, pastor of Brightwood Park United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., uses the stories on his children and those in his congregation.

“We say: No more excuses. All things are possible,” he says. “But it comes through hard work.”

His wife, Tammy, a social worker, says she has made a more conscious effort to go over school assignments with their daughter.

“Even in Amber, I have seen a push to do better because of the reality of Obama,” she says.

Turning to the eighth-grader, she says, “I asked you what you wanted to be, and you said you wanted to be a judge. Does that feel more doable now?”

“Yes,” says Amber, 14, “because Obama can do it. I see myself studying harder. I stay more focused. I take more notes. I am asking a lot more questions.”

Kids relate to Obama in a way that they say they have not related to other politicians. He might be the president-elect, but he’s cool, he’s young, he speaks a language they understand.

Harlan Jones, director of the New Sewell Music Conservatory in Washington, is sitting in his office talking about Obama with daughter Nia, 12, a sixth-grader whose grades have slipped from her usual straight A’s.

“You have to get back on page, just like he did,” he tells Nia. “We know you are better because you exemplified that through past studies.

“Suppose he had gotten down? With that in mind, Nia, please straighten up. Look at his strategy. He surrounded himself with people who were hardworking. … Who are your supporters?”

“My parents,” Nia says, submitting to the lecture.

“I’m glad you said that. … You have a support system to do what?”

And Nia, tidy in her blue-and khaki school uniform, obediently answers: “Succeed.”