Jenna Bush Hager has revealed her four-year-old son Hal’s hilarious reaction when he first saw her on TV, saying he cried and asked her to turn off the TV.
The Today star, 42, explained on Wednesday that her youngest child didn’t know what she did for a living and was stunned when she showed him the opening of Today With Hoda & Jenna.
‘Hal Hager didn’t know what my job was. He didn’t know where I would be with you every day,” she told her co-host Hoda Kotb. “So I showed him the opening of our show, and he started crying.”
Kotb, 59, burst into laughter as Bush Hager recounted how Hal burst into tears and begged her to turn off the show.
Jenna Bush Hager, 42, opened up about her four-year-old son Hal’s reaction when she saw her for the first time on the Today show on Wednesday
The host recalled how her youngest child burst into tears and begged her to turn off the show after she showed him the opening of Today With Hoda & Jenna.
‘I do not like it! Shut it down! I do not like it!’ she said, imitating her son’s wail.
‘At first he was quite interested in it. He said, “Mommy!” (He was) a little shocked,” she explained, but then he started to get upset.
“I don’t know if the guy felt cheated, or if he just didn’t like the opening song Get Up, or if he didn’t like my suit, or if he didn’t like me hanging out with you,” she told Kotb . .
“I’m not sure, but he asked me to turn it off. “Turn this off! I don’t like it!” And like tears in his eyes, and I thought, “What? What is it?” “Shut it down!”‘
Kotb, mother of daughters Haley, seven, and Hope, four, couldn’t stop laughing at Hal’s visceral reaction to seeing his mother on television.
“That’s hilarious and sad, by the way,” she said.
“And totally fitting,” her co-star added.
Bush Hager and her husband, Henry Hager, are also parents to daughters Mila, 10, and Poppy, eight, and she often talks about her three children on the show.
Bush Hager co-host Hoda Kotb burst out laughing as she recounted Hal yelling, “I don’t like it! Shut it down! I do not like it!’
Bush Hager said she wasn’t sure if her son ‘felt cheated’ or ‘just didn’t like my suit’
The former first daughter recently celebrated Hal’s transition to a “big boy bed” after she was “embarrassed” by him sleeping in a crib.
A few months ago the Mother-of-three caused a stir on the show when she admitted her youngest child was still in a crib and wanted to stay in it until he went to nursery school.
Bush Hager said she tried to push Hal into his bed after encountering resistance because he was sleeping in a crib.
“You all had shamed me, and in fact the whole community had shamed me for the fact that he was in a crib. You all kind of embarrassed me,” she recalled.
Bush Hager and her husband, Henry Hager, are also parents to daughters Mila, 10, and Poppy, eight, and she often talks about her three children on the show
The mother-of-three recently celebrated her only son switching to a ‘big boy bed’ after she felt ‘ashamed’ of him sleeping in a crib
‘And I said, “Okay, Hal, I think it’s time, some friends have said it’s time to move!” And he wasn’t ready, he was scared.”
Bush Hager said she was “quarantining” in her room with COVID-19 when Hal decided it was time to say goodbye to his crib.
She told how her husband ran into their son’s room after hearing him shout, “Daddy!”
“He went in and (Hal) said, ‘I’m ready.’ And Henry said, ‘You’re ready for what?’ He said, “I need to move to my big boy bed.”
She explained that her son’s bed had been in his room for “about two years” before he wanted to sleep in it.
‘It all happened without his mother’s help! And I wonder if I’m too presumptuous when it’s just about him,” she said.