Jenna Bush Hager Describes George and Laura's Parenting Style — and the Lie That Got Her and Barbara Grounded

Shealah Craighead/The White House/AP Photo

Jenna Bush Hager is looking back on her childhood fondly.

During Tuesday's episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna, the 40-year-old shared with co-host Hoda Kotb a glimpse of what it was like growing up with George and Laura Bush as parents.

"We had curfews," she said, but "they weren't that strict." Unless, that is, she got caught in a lie.

"There was a party senior year of high school, and I went to it [saying] I was 'spending the night at Ferrell Fields' house,' and all of a sudden my parents show up," Bush Hager recalled, as the audience gasped. "They took me and Barbara out of that party. They weren't strict but if they said 'no' and we went behind their back…"

And there were consequences to the twins trying to sneak past their parents.

"I sat and did puzzles with my parents while all the other people [went out]," Bush Hager said. "They're like, 'Would you like some hot chocolate?' Like, 'Not really.' I mean, we were grounded. Remember, grounded was a thing. Grounded was a thing."

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Yet the mom of three was also quick to point out that her own mom did possess an ever-so-subtle cool factor, even if the results were "cringe."

"She was the best," Bush Hager said of her mother, Laura. "She was the most calm human that it was almost, we couldn't understand it. We could not rattle her. But she was our steady rock of a mom."

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From left to right: Barbara Pierce Bush, George W. Bush, Jenna Bush Hager and Laura Bush

Bush Hager went on to tell a story about visiting spring training in Florida with the Texas Rangers when she was about 13 — George W. was an owner of the team in the 1990s — and how Laura tried to be "kind of cool."

"She'd be like, 'Girls! Now look, there's some cute boys. Look, Barbara, Jenna, they're cute.' Like we were supposed to go up and be like, 'Hi! Want to hang?'"

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These days, the TV personality is more likely hanging out with Margaret "Mila" Laura, 9, Poppy Louise, 6, and Henry "Hal" Harold, 3, whom she shares with husband Henry Hager.

In September, Bush Hager told a story on the show about how Mila reacted when she had just returned home from Scotland, where she had initially gone for an interview of now-King Charles III's wife Camilla, scheduled for the day of Queen Elizabeth's death at 96. Bush Hager extended her trip to cover the historic moment.

Upon returning home, Bush Hager hugged her oldest child.

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"And she did, she held me so tight but immediately she kind of looked back, then looked at me and said, 'You're right mom.'"

"I'm like, 'I'm right about what?'" to which Mila bluntly replied, "You do look better in makeup."