‘Today’ Host Dylan Dreyer’s Mother Shares Honest Thoughts About Her Parenting

Dylan Dreyer‘s mom has some thoughts about her daughter’s parenting choices.

The Today meteorologist shares her three sons — Calvin, Oliver, and Rusty — with her ex-husband, Brian Fichera. In July 2025, Dreyer announced on Instagram that the pair had quietly separated a few months prior. She officially filed for divorce in March.

In addition to confirming her divorce had been finalized on the Thursday, October 15, episode of The Parent Chat podcast, Dreyer also sat down for a conversation with her mother, Linda Bullington, who has moved in with her post-divorce.

“I’m curious what you think of me as a parent. Are you surprised I’m not fazed by more?” Dreyer asked her mom. Bullington was candid in her response, telling her daughter, “You’re a little lax in certain things, maybe. But that’s because the world is so different. And when you guys were kids, this was law and order. You don’t have law and order.”

In particular, Bullington said Dreyer is lax about dinnertime. “When you were kids, that would never happen. We also didn’t have this huge mirror in the dining room where some of the kids like to sing and eat,” she stated. “But then, they jump, and they get up and they come back, and it’s like, your father and I [would] never put up [with that].”

Dreyer questioned, “What did you do? How did you keep us able to sit still? My kids do not sit still.” Bullington said, “Your father just had to look at you and, or maybe, sometimes just me. And they knew, you knew, we had to buckle down.”

Bullington went on to suggest that Dreyer bring back her star chart rewards system. “They knew this was going to be like, if things weren’t going well, ‘We can’t lose stars, we’re going to behave more.’ And I think that was really a good thing with them,” she stated.

Dreyer agreed, adding, “I think we should bring the star thing back because that did change everything. They sat until their dinner was done. They didn’t have any of the boy humor language at the table.”

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Bullington also told Dreyer that she’s lax about keeping her home tidy, but Dreyer credited the messiness to the family’s current living situation. “I plan to tell the boys to put their shoes away when we move out of this place, because there is no place to put shoes away,” she shared. (Dreyer moved to the suburbs last year.)

On the flip side, Bullington praised how Dreyer behaves around her kids. “I wish I did more of that when you kids were kids. Reason more than yell, probably. Talk to them easier,” she said. “I don’t think we had a lot of that when you guys were kids. It was this way or the highway.”

She continued, “I know you are so great because when the kids want to play a board game, no matter what you’re doing, you’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s go play.’ I don’t think I’ve ever done that when I was a parent.”

Dreyer said her parenting is all about “balance,” explaining, “I tend to just balance, ‘Do I really need to say no right now or can I just suck it up and do it?’ It doesn’t mean I always want to.”

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