Michelle Obama has been speaking about parenthood on a recent podcast.

Michelle’s been opening up about her life a lot lately, but this time it’s about her parenting techniques

On a recent podcast, she talked about something a little too personal… she shared how she used to spank her daughters back in the day.

There was so much we didn’t see

Back when she was in the White House, we didn’t get to see much of the Obama family’s day-to-day. It was all pretty formal, all the time. We never really got to see more of their family.

But things definitely changed after leaving the White House

Once they moved out in 2017, Michelle started getting real about how life actually was. She’s been way more open since then.

She shared an unexpected parenting confession

On her podcast IMO, which she does with her brother Craig Robinson, Michelle shared something honest, saying she used to spank Malia and Sasha when they acted up.

The moment she knew it had to stop

“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 said.

“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.”

What today’s parents are getting wrong

Michelle also said she feels like a lot of parents today are a bit too controlling, trying to protect their kids from messing up or feeling failure. But in doing that, they’re kind of stopping them from learning or having their own experiences in life.

She also said she misses the way things used to be

Fame made privacy impossible

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 president’s kids, it was impossible to keep them totally out of the spotlight. She talked about that and about how hard it was to give them a normal life.

Teen years came with even more challenges

While chatting with Kelly Ripa on Let’s Talk Off Camera, Michelle 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.”

When Barack took office, Malia was only ten, and Sasha was just seven

They basically grew up inside the White House. That was their childhood.