Can we talk about our children's weight?

It continues to be a sore spot about Michelle Obama talking about her Sasha and Malia's weight and changing up their diets. I recently read in Yahoo! Shine that many people feel that Mrs. Obama was wrong or "misguided" for talking about her daughter's weight on a national platform. Mira Jacob of Yahoo! Shine wrote an interesting article, called , "Is it okay to talk about your daughters' weight if it's for the national good." She provided view points from both sides of the coin.

Here's my thought, from day one Michelle Obama has said that first she is mom. Above all else she is Mom-in-Chief. If she sees that her children are picking up some unhealthy habits and the evidence of such is starting to show in the waistline than I think that is highly appropriate to bring it to the forefront now. Better now, than when the girls are overweight and self-concsious about it.

We are making too big of a deal about her revealing to America how she handled the issue. Some felt that her talking about the girls' weight might spur eating disorders. That was a little overboard. I'm confident that Michelle knows her children well enough to know if this issue would damage their self esteem.

I applaud Michelle, because we need to have responsible, compassionate conversations about childhood obesity. We also need to learn how to address these types of issues with our children so that we build up their self-esteem. As parents, we need to address weight issues with our children early on and move swiftly to make changes so that our kids don't deal with a lifetime of weight problems. Mothers, like me, who has an overweight child, need a trailblazer to lead the way in fighting this battle. I'm glad that Michelle has taken on this initiative and setting the example. *Photo courtesy of Loeb/Getty