How do we talk to our kids about weight?

“The pain I felt for her - it would kill me,’’ said the Wilmington mother, who struggles with her own weight and with guilt for passing along bad eating habits. “What have I done to my kids?’’ she often asks herself.

As childhood obesity rises - the condition now affects 17 percent of all children and adolescents in the United States, triple the rate a generation ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control - so too does the need to guide children about healthy eating.

But fighting to ban cupcakes from the school celebrations or railing against fast food is one thing. Sitting down with your own vulnerable child, whether he’s obese or only the slightest bit overweight, and suggesting - delicately - that he forgo cookies, is quite another.

“This gets very emotional very quickly,’’ said Carleton Kendrick, a Millis-based family therapist, and author of “Take Out Your Nose Ring, Honey, We’re Going to Grandma’s.’’

“Many women have told me that they struggle so much with weight themselves, and have for so long, that [when they consider discussing it with their children], they click back to when their moms told them they were too fat and to not eat as much,’’ he said.

“They’re haunted. The mother may be dealing with her own eating disorder, and her daughter doesn’t know a darn thing about it.’’

Some of his patients also face another challenge: “These women know they have openly showed their frustration with their own weight - sucking in their stomaches when they try on a bathing suit, or cursing when their jeans are tight - so when they bring it up their daughters say, “Really, Mom?’’

In her case, Mastropietro said that when she did suggest that her daughter stop eating high-calorie food, her teenager played “the sensitive card’’ and started crying. “She’d say, ‘You’re supposed to love me the way I am.’ ’’