Hoda Kotb, 60, says people assume she is her daughters’ grandma

Hoda Kotb has no problem correcting people who assume she is the grandmother of her young daughters.

The 60-year-old offered advice for other “older” moms on Tuesday’s “Social Dilemmas” segment of “Today with Hoda & Jenna” after a viewer wrote in to ask about the etiquette of reprimanding people who make the mistake .

“Yes, you should. Yes, you should. This has happened to me before,” Kotb shared.

Her co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, appeared stunned and asked, “Someone called you grandma?”

“Yes,” Kotb replied. “Someone said, ‘Oh, are you her grandma?’ I said, ‘No, I’m her mother.'”

While the outgoing “Today” co-host said she doesn’t mind the confusion, she understands why others feel frustrated when they need to clarify their status.

“I imagine it would probably get annoying if it happened non-stop all the time,” she said.

Kotb shared that she prefers correcting people because she wants her children Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, to “see and consider” her as their mother.

“So I think for your kids’ sake you should say, ‘Oh, no, actually…’ but don’t be offended either, because as I tell my kids, some moms are older, some are younger, some are taller, some are older smaller,” she continued.

Bush Hager, 43, lightened the topic by joking that “some moms are tired” while others “want to crawl into the pantry and eat string cheese.”

Kotb first expressed her stance in a column on Real Simple on Monday, writing: “I think you correct her. Quiet. Because I learned that your daughter will not react to what the person said, but to how You are react.”

Bush Hager, co-author of the column, agreed: “I think these conversations aren’t about how the other person feels. It’s about how You feel. You are proud to be her mother and you want your daughter to feel that. You want her to feel how happy you are that you chose this.”

Kotb adopted her first child, Haley, in February 2017, when she was 52 years old.

She and her then-boyfriend Joel Schiffman adopted a second daughter, Hope, in April 2019, when she was 54.

The “Hope Is a Rainbow” author has previously spoken about both the joys and challenges of being an older mother, even revealing that a viewer once mother-shamed her for being her age had children.