When basketball superstar Dwyane Wade co-hosted TODAY with Jenna & Friends, he asked Jenna Bush Hager what it was like for her to grow up “in a very public, strict way.”
The mother of three shared that her parents, Former President George and Laura Bush, didn’t necessarily want their children to be carbon copies of themselves.
“They wanted us to be our own people, have our own thoughts, have our own beliefs,” said Jenna. “I feel like in our country now, what a refreshing thing.”
Wade said this conversation has been top of mind for him. “My kids are growing up in the spotlight and they didn’t ask for it,” he said to Jenna. “So as someone who did not ask for it, who was born into the spotlight that you were born into, how do you handle that?”
Jenna shared her biggest advice for parents.
“Let your kids make mistakes,” she said. “And that’s for kids who have famous parents and kids who have regular parents.”
She continued, “My parents were ‘regular’ until they weren’t. My parents let us be ourselves. They let us fail. They let us fail publicly.”
Jenna referred to an instance when she drank underage and it made headlines. “It wasn’t good,” she laughed. “But the point is I think we’re protecting our kids so much.”
“We don’t want them to fall at all,” Wade said. “We’re right there. We’re a soft landing for them every time.”
“You’re letting your kids be not who you want them to be but exactly who they are. And that’s not easy,” Jenna said.
“Yeah, I’m trying,” nodded Wade. “I understand that my kids are not me even though they have my genetics, my DNA. They also have another 50 percent of someone else’s DNA. They didn’t ask for this. I’m learning how to navigate this in real time. So there’s no way that they know how to navigate this.
“A lot of it is learning it together in a sense, especially my 23-year-old son,” Wade continued. “We grew up together. If he’d make a mistake or I’d make a mistake, I’d be like, ‘I don’t know. Who do we ask?’ We’ve never done this before.”
Wade says how much he appreciates “being able to look at my kids and be like, ‘OK, I’m learning from your mistakes that you made and you’re learning from my mistakes at the same time.’ This is how we grow and evolve.”
