Kylie Kelce’s oldest daughter, Wyatt, will be heading to kindergarten this fall, and the self-proclaimed germaphobe is already bracing herself.
“I try my best to just release all of the anxiety that is associated with it,” Kylie tells TODAY.com with a smile and a sigh.
“We try our best to wash our hands really well at home and hope that when they’re at school, they wash their hands just as well,” she explains, in an exclusive interview with TODAY.com. “You’re about to go to school, touch every surface and lick your hands. The cold that you are about to bring home is going to be ‘peak school.'”
Despite the school germs that may come, Wyatt is such a “social butterfly” that Kylie is really looking forward to watching her build new relationships with her classmates. In true mom style, Kylie is feeling all the feelings about sending her daughter to school.
“When your kids leave you, you hope they’re polite. You hope they use their manners. You hope they speak up for themselves. You hope they advocate for themselves. You hope that they’re kind to their peers, their classmates and you hope that they’re respectful of the teachers,” she says.
Body Confidence, The Kelce Way
There is one major way that Kylie and her husband Jason have prepared Wyatt for school: teaching her to feel confident about herself, her abilities and her physical body.
Kylie hopes that even if her children encounter negative self-talk from others, she and Jason have laid enough groundwork to encourage them to continue to think positively about themselves.
Because she’s so passionate about the topic, Kylie has partnered with Dove’s Body Confident Sport program, the first evidence-based coaching curriculum designed to boost confidence in girls ages 11–17 through sport. She’s helping to unveil Dove’s short film, “Fans of Confidence,” in which the women of the Gotham Football Club surprise two youth soccer teams by showing up on the sidelines to cheer them on.
Growing up, “I was taller than everyone. I had thicker legs than my classmates,” Kylie recalls. Being able to “capitalize” on her strength and size by playing sports helped her feel good about herself.
“I’m so happy to tell other girls that your body might be different from your peers, or you might think that this is a negative, but in sport, it might help you out more than you could ever imagine,” she adds.
Occasionally, being so good at athletics earned Kylie some less desirable — though quite positive — attention.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, everyone’s staring at me,'” she remembers thinking when she had to stand up at school to receive the award for the Presidential Fitness Test. It was phased out of schools in 2013 but may be making a return.
Though Kylie welcomes any opportunity to get kids moving, motherhood taught her that hitting milestones like rolling over and crawling (and doing chin-ups, for example) don’t always happen at the same time for every body.
“None of our kids walked at the same time, none of our kids spoke at the same time, and so to hold everyone to the same exact standard just seems old school and silly,” she says.
“But you know what?” she continues. “I think we can just all agree that if we can encourage our young kids to start moving and to be active and to get outside and to enjoy play and active play, that we’re taking steps in the right direction.”
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