Photo: Jenna Bush Hager/Instagram
Jenna Bush Hageris celebrating a really sentimental parenting win.
Chatting with co-hostHoda Kotb, 58, about helping their kids make the most of the summer, the two moms agreed about the importance of listening to your kids, even when it’s tough.
“Everything comes pouring out. So all you have to say [to your kids] is, ‘Tell me more?’ That’s all,” said Kotb, who is mom to daughters,Hope Catherine, 3, andHaley Joy, 6.
“Somebody gave this advice to me when my kids — and they’re still young — but when Mila was young, was, ‘Listen to all the stuff,' " Bush Hager, 41, recalled.
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“And sometimes you don’t want to because they’re endless. But now, Mila writes me these letters from camp that have every detail. And other people are like, ‘All I heard was it was fun,’” she said of her oldest, 10. The children’s book author is also mom to sonHal, 3, and daughter Poppy, 7.
“I’m hearing every. Single. Thing,” she continued. “And then she wrote Poppy this letter that made Henry and I weep, which was like, ‘You’re going to feel homesick. You’re going to feel homesick, but the difference is, I got you.' "
Mila’s letter to Poppy continued, “I got you. I’m there for you. I’ll be there for you next year, and you can come into my cabin and I’ve got you.”
Kotb marveled as Bush Hager noted, “It’s something, I don’t know — [I’ve] done a lot wrong, but I do feel like I listen to all the things.”
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It’s not the first time the couple has found themselves teary at one of Mila’s letters home from camp. During Mila’s first summer at sleepaway camp in Texas in 2021, theTodayco-host said on air that she received the “saddest"letter from her then-8-year-old daughterthat “broke my heart in a million pieces.”
That fall, Bush Hager told PEOPLE that eventually, however, Mila got acclimated and came to “love” her camp experience.
“It broke both of our hearts, but I didn’t think that … I just put it out there. People would stop me on the street and be like, ‘When are you going to get Mila?’ I’m like, ‘I was just reading a letter!’ Then, the camp called, they felt really bad,” she said. “They were like, ‘Don’t worry, she’s happy.’ I was like, ‘No, it’s all okay.’ "
source: people.com
