When They Were Kids: What Were US Presidents Like as Children?

The childhoods of American Presidents offer a fascinating glimpse into the early experiences that shaped the nation’s leaders. From humble beginnings to famous careers, the stories of the formative years of a select group of men who would eventually become the president of the United States hint at the character, values, and ambitions that would later define their presidencies.

1. Ronald Reagan

Life is sometimes what you make of it—especially when your situation seems grim. And that is precisely what two of America’s best-known presidents had done as children. Ronald Reagan, born on February 6, 1911, in Illinois, grew up in a financially unstable household, with a childhood made that much worse by his notoriously lousy eyesight – he had 20/200 vision, making him legally blind. The little boy shied away from sports and group activities that required precise vision. Instead, he became an avid listener, often testing his memory by repeating and recalling specific radio broadcasts.

All that changed after the 13-year-old Ronald visited an ophthalmologist who prescribed his first set of glasses. Although clunky and ridiculed by his peers, Reagan used the glasses to boost his confidence in all other aspects of his life. The one-time shy boy plunged himself headfirst into sports and found a job as a lifeguard at a local beach. Some say that after one summer, when Reagan found himself going into the water nearly thirty times to save people from drowning, the confident teenager gained an appreciation for saving people he would later exhibit in his political career.

2. Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Yet it would be his boyhood in Indonesia, where his mother and stepfather relocated the family, which would prove to be a test of resilience for the young boy, whom friends and family called Barry. Obama’s biological father had left his mother when Barry was only two, forcing him to live with his grandparents and move frequently as a child.

In Indonesia, the six-year-old Barry was the only foreign child in his neighborhood, and his lack of fluency in the local language made life especially difficult. Local children bullied him because of his darker skin, and it also did not help that he was overweight. It dawned on the young man that unless he took it upon himself to improve the situation, help would likely not be forthcoming. Barry began to assimilate by learning the language, joining the local scouts, and teaching himself martial arts just in case anyone doubted his ability to stand up for himself. Obama would later remember his four years in Indonesia as “one long adventure, the bounty of a young boy’s life.”

3. John F. Kennedy

Obama was certainly not the only American president who faced off against bullies as a child. Perhaps the most peculiar case involves young John F. Kennedy, who was often mistreated by his brother Joe, four years his senior. The eldest son and namesake of the wealthy businessman Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Joe was groomed for greatness from a young age as the heir apparent in the political arena and a potential future president—something that his younger brother John (Jack to his friends) would accomplish after the elder sibling’s death during World War II in 1944. John resented the attention his brother solicited from his parents and all other siblings—in fact, he hated it.

As far as Jack was concerned, his brother Joe was a bully who found every opportunity to inflict pain on his more fragile and younger sibling. When the two wrestled or played sports, Joe always hit harder and pinned for a bit longer. A bike race around the block cost Jack 28 stitches after Joe collided with him near the finish line, and the siblings brawled at the dinner table after the younger Kennedy took something off his older brother’s plate. In retrospect, as tough as it was growing up in his brother’s shadow, John would later look back at the time fondly. If not anything else, it taught him resilience, adversity, and the lessons of failure—all qualities that came in handy when facing off against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as president of the United States.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s relationship with his older brother, while much different than that of the Kennedy siblings, was equally significant in instilling values the future president would rely on in adulthood. At elementary school, Ike, as he would come to be known, received unsolicited attention from an older bully. The threats and chases continued until to Dwight’s surprise, his older brother Arthur, an easy-going and even meeker individual than Ike was at the time, challenged the bully. The young Eisenhower learned the lesson of strength in numbers and the importance of having allies, if not friends.

Still, the bruising and bullying did not stop—and this time, it came not from the playground but from a sizable hissing goose at his uncle’s farm. Ike knew it was time to take his brother’s lead and stand up for himself to the pesky animal that charged him every time the young boy stepped into the yard. For days, the young Eisenhower cowered from the angry animal who would not let him pass until, one day, Ike was done running away. The young boy grabbed a broomstick and drove off the goose. Eisenhower would later refer to the incident with the animal as his first “war,” where he learned the importance of facing one’s enemies from the position of strength—a skill that would come in handy during World War II and later the presidency.

Defining Moments 

5. Herbert Hoover

Some presidents remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing when they stumbled on their passions that would later define them as grown men. This was certainly the case with Herbert Hoover, dubbed “the Great Humanitarian,” and Theodore Roosevelt, remembered as “the Conservation President.”

When Bertie, as Herbert was known to his family, was six years old, his father passed away, forcing his mother to send young Hoover to live with his uncle, Major Laban Miles, who worked as a US government representative at the Osage Indian Reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. For nearly a year, Bertie lived among his friendly Native American peers, learning how to carve things out of wood, shoot arrows, and live off the land. The young Hoover absorbed everything like a sponge, which included a new appreciation for nature and the plight of Native Americans who, regardless of their differing culture and relative poverty on the reservation, treated the curious boy with respect and humility.

Hoover studied geology in college, became a mining engineer, and eventually gained the nickname “the Great Humanitarian” for his extensive work in disaster relief and commitment to humanitarian efforts during and after World War I. Following his election to the highest office in 1928, Herbert Hoover strived to better Native American conditions—first by choosing Charles Curtis, of Native American descent, as his running mate, and later through reducing corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and promoting the policy of assimilation.

Young Teddy Roosevelt spent a few pages of his autobiography, published in 1913, talking about the moment that put him on a path toward appreciating the natural world. It would be an event that would culminate decades later when, as president of the United States, TR created the United States Forest Service and established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and eighteen national monuments through the passage of the American Antiquities Act in 1906.

All this began with a dead seal on a wood slab of a fishmonger in New York City. It was there where a seven-year-old Teddy, a sickly and asthmatic boy usually confined to his room with his books, first came across the creature he could simply not get out of his mind. The boy would return the next day and for many days after that (until the seal was sold for meat), measuring the creature, making observations, and taking notes.

When given the seal skull by the fishmonger, Teddy continued to pursue his newfound passion by starting a small museum of animals and other natural curiosities in his bedroom, which he called the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. Soon, the room was overflowing with various specimens, ranging from frogs and turtles to birds, which the young man skinned and stuffed to study their anatomy. By the time he was twelve, Teddy could no longer keep all of his exhibits and decided to begin a long-lasting tradition of donating his research to museums and national organizations such as the Museum of Natural History in New York and later the Smithsonian Museum. His love for everything outdoors would continue well past his presidency through the preservation efforts of animals and their habitats.

While all presidents have childhoods full of stories requiring a deeper analysis than just the few examples mentioned here, it is important to note that at the end of the day, they were all once kids—ones who do certain things they might not be too proud of in adulthood. President John Tyler is known to have led a revolt against his teacher in a one-room schoolhouse when he and his friends tied up the older gentleman with a rope and locked him in the broom closet. Many years later, another would-be president, Calvin Coolidge, locked a mule overnight inside the classroom of a teacher he did not particularly care for. George W. Bush painted a mustache and a beard on his face, mocking his educator, only to wind up in the principal’s office.

Andrew Jackson sneaked out at night and moved his neighbors’ outhouses by shifting them just enough so that when someone used them in the dark, they would accidentally miss the intended hole in the ground. While the story is often circulated as an anecdote about the rebellious child and lacks proper historical evidence to confirm it, the same cannot be said for Grover Cleveland’s prank. Until he accidently locked himself in and was caught red-handed, the young Grover would often sneak up into the school bell tower and ring the bell in the middle of the night, waking up the entire neighborhood. Eisenhower accidentally stabbed his brother in the eye, Richard Nixon scarred his friend for life with a toy hatchet, and Jimmy Carter won an argument with his sister by shooting her with a BB gun. As they say, sometimes, kids will be kids—some might even grow up to become the president of the United States.