Michelle Obama reveals why she stopped spanking her daughters as punishment

Former first lady Michelle Obama said she stopped spanking her daughters when they were growing up because it made her feel “silly.”

Obama said she spanked Malia and Sasha — now 26 and 23 — a few times before she felt that it wasn’t an effective way to discipline them, and the punishment made her feel “embarrassed” as a parent.

“I felt silly,” she said in a candid conversation with Damon and Marlon Wayans about corporal punishment on Wednesday’s episode of her IMO podcast with her brother Craig Robinson.

“It took a couple of spankings for me to be like, yeah, you know what?”

“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,” Obama admitted.