Photo:Jenna Bush Hager/Instagram
Jenna Bush Hager/Instagram
Jenna Bush Hageris looking back on the first time she talked about puberty with her daughter.
On Thursday’s episode ofToday with Hoda & Jenna, Bush Hager chatted with co-hostHoda Kotbabouthow she approached the conversationwith her girls. Bush Hager shares her three kids — Hal, 4, Poppy, 8, and Mila, 10 — with husband Henry Hager.
“When Henry and I first got together, and he had to buy me tampons for the first time, I might as well have asked him — he thought I asked him to go buy illegal drugs,” the mom of three joked.
“He was like, ‘I got the goods, I got them!'” Bush Hager said, cringing her face and pretending to be on the phone. “And now, after 15 years, he’s like [pretending to be on a call] ‘What do you need? A tampon? Yeah, I got it. Ma’am! Tampons?’ He don’t care!”
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“Yeah,” Bush Hager replied. “Well, she readAre You There God? It’s Me, Margaret— thank you to Judy Blume. The talk was…yeah…”
“So she was ready then. Did she ask you or did you say, ‘I think we should talk?'” Kotb asked the mom of three.
“She came in and she was like, ‘What’s puberty?’ She was a little young but I said, ‘Well, it’s when a woman’s body changes,” Bush Hager recalled of the encounter, noting that her daughter was “probably 8” at the time.
“But she was interested and wanted to know?” Kotb asked.
“She was interested and I explained it to her,” Bush Hager continued. “And evidently, the other day in the car, Henry was taking them to school and out of nowhere, Poppy goes, ‘I hope I get mom’s boobs!'”
“What!?!” Kotb said with surprise. “And Mila was like, ‘I don’t! I would rather not!’ Poppy’s like, ‘When I go through puberty, I hope I get mom’s boobs!'”
“Well that’s what happens when you go through puberty, you develop breasts,” Bush Hager said as Kotb laughed.
“Thank you for the tutorial. The reason I was asking you how and when is because I actually saw Gwyneth Paltrow being interviewed about something and she said something about how her kids learned all about that stuff in school at a class thing and then they came home and asked for clarification,” Kotb explained.
“And then it got me thinking, ‘When did I learn about that?’ I learned in school, too. No parents were sitting down having conversations,” she continued.
“Did you ever have a birds and the bees conversation?” Bush Hager asked.
“No. They were like, ‘Learning at health ed, okay?'” Kotb recalled.
“Yeah, we never had a birds and the bees conversation. And we haven’t [had that talk with our kids] either, but one day we will,” Bush Hager shared. “But nobody [in my life] was ever like, ‘Let’s sit down and discuss.’ No. But I’m evolved!”
source: people.com
