Michelle Obama has opened up about a past parenting approach, admitting she used to ‘spank’ her children, a tactic she later realized was ineffective for discipline.
During her time as First Lady, it wasn’t easy to get a clear picture of the Obama family’s private life. However, since the 44th President left office in early 2017, Michelle has been more forthcoming about their experiences before, during, and after their time in Washington DC.
On a recent episode of her podcast titled IMO with her brother Craig Robinson, Michelle shared that she sometimes resorted to spanking her daughters, Malia and Sasha, when they misbehaved— a decision she now regrets.
“I felt silly. It took a couple of spankings for me to be like, ‘yeah, you know what? I don’t want to do this anymore,'” she explained.
“I felt like, you know, this is a little kid. And the fact that I can’t think of any better way to get my point across than to smack somebody on the butt – I felt embarrassed.”
Michelle further expressed her views on modern parenting, suggesting that many parents today try to control their children’s lives to prevent mistakes or failures, thereby hindering their learning process.
She added: “I want to be a proponent for reinstating some of the stuff that we had. You know, parents are too afraid to set those kinds of boundaries. And I think that’s also part of the challenge that we’re facing in this generation.”
With Malia and Sasha being the daughters of the US President, it was challenging for the Obamas to shield them from the media spotlight— a topic Michelle recently addressed.
In an interview on Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, Michelle, now 61, said: “That was a lot of work and it got harder as they got older.”
“They had to drive and they had to go to prom and they were on teams and they traveled to other schools and they had to do college searches, and they went to parties and they had drinks, and they tried out smoking and they did all the things,” she recounted.
Michelle continued: “Every weekend was a nightmare. Because we had to work to make sure that them being regular teenagers didn’t wind up on Page Six.”
Malia was just ten when President Obama took office, while Sasha was seven. The girls spent much of their formative years residing in the White House.