Jenna Bush Hager has the realest advice for calming back-to-school nerves.
As TODAY co-hosts Jenna and Hoda Kotb talked about their children’s first days of school, Jenna revealed that her kids, Mila, 11, Poppy, 9, and Henry, 5, were feeling nervous to enter 6th grade, 3rd grade and pre-K, respectively.
Sharing a photo of her kids holding their “first day of school” signs, Jenna gave them a shout-out, especially to her youngest who was entering “big school.”
“Does it not look like he’s either my father in a 5-year-old body or being held captive — he’s like, 'Should I go or should I not go?’” Jenna joked about Hal’s similarity to her dad, former President George W. Bush.
Jenna told her kids: “It’s OK to be nervous.”
Jenna told her children about her own experience going from a "tiny private middle school" to a publich high school with 1,000 kids in her freshman class.
“Mila’s like, ‘How am I going to find 6th grade? I have to walk around, how am I going to find my class?’” Jenna said. “I was like, ‘I’m telling you, I walked in, my knees were shaking.’ And Hal was like, ‘You were?’ Because it’s OK to be nervous!”
Hoda, whose daughters are Haley, 7, and Hope, 4, praised her co-host for not sugarcoating hard things
“By the way, I think that’s one of the best parenting things that you do and I’ve noticed this a lot,” said Hoda. “Instead of, ‘It’s going to be fine!’ you always say, ‘I was scared, tell me why you’re (scared).’”
Jenna said she can sense when her kids feel fluttery, even when they don’t say it. When it came to Hal, she said, “I could feel it on him.”
“He looks miserable,” Jenna said about her son Hal in the photo, “but it’s going to be fine.”
