Kids really can humble you, and celebrities are not immune from that. Jennifer Lopez recently revealed that a comment her kids made about her parenting completely changed her perspective and the way she showed up for her kids. During an appearance on the Howard Stern Show on Wednesday, October 15, J.Lo opened up about a time when her kids told her that she wasn’t like other moms — and not in a good way.
The “Jenny from the Block” singer, 56, is mom to twins Max and Emme, whom she shares with her ex-husband Marc Anthony. Max and Emme are now 17 years old, but when they were tweens, they shared their feelings with their mom in a way that made her very aware of her shortcomings.
She wasn’t around enough.
The conversation occurred at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic because she was at home and more present for her kids during that time. It was then that her twins confronted her about how she was not that present when a pandemic didn’t force her to stay home.
“They spoke to me, [and] they’re like, ‘You’re not a regular mom. You’re not here every day. You don’t drop us off and pick us up [like the other parents],'” she said. “And I realized how much they needed me there.”
The comment made her realize that being a good mom was about more than ‘giving them a great life.’
At the time, Jennifer was hustling and focusing on her career, at least in part because she wanted to provide for her children. She didn’t realize that her approach lacked the “balance” that her kids really needed. “I think when the pandemic happened, I got to stay home, [and] I realized I need to be more home with them all the time,” she recalled. “I realized how much they needed me there. It wasn’t just about me giving them a great life. It was about me being there for them all the time.”
That interaction was a ‘wake-up call.’
And from then on, Jennifer made a conscious effort to make her kids feel like her priority. “I just was like, ‘Okay, you’re gonna know — if you didn’t know before how much I love you and that you were the main thing in my life — everything I do for you, you’re gonna [expletive] know now,'” Jennifer said. Now, she and her kids have “the best relationship.” And now, she’ll turn down certain projects if she feels like they’ll interfere with her ability to show up as a parent. Her manager, Benny Medina, is aware that her kids come first.
“So if I say ‘I can’t do this because of the kids,’ they just, they don’t even touch it,” she said. “They respect it in a way that they know it’s a losing battle. There’s nothing they can say; if I say no, it’s no.”
