It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to be as famous and successful as Jennifer Lopez while still balancing the duties of parenthood. And it was apparently something that Lopez struggled with until she got a bit of a reality check from her own kids.
The 56-year-old appeared as a guest on The Howard Stern Show this week on Wednesday, Oct. 15 to promote her new film, Kiss of the Spider Woman. During the conversation, she opened up about a discussion she had with her twins Max and Emme, now 17, when they were preteens during the COVID-19 pandemic that made her change her approach to parenting.
“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],’” Lopez recalled, via People. “And I realized how much they needed me there.”
At the time, Lopez said that being a single parent made her feel as though she had to work harder to provide for her kids, until she realized they just wanted a present mom.
“It wasn’t just about me giving them a great life … It was about me being there for them all the time,” she continued. “I started trying to balance that a little bit more.”
As a result of the “wake-up call,” Lopez said that she and her kids have “the best relationship now.”
“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 f–king know now,’” she quipped.
Lopez explained that showing up for her kids is all about her “behavior” and that her team, including her longtime manager Benny Medina, know “that my kids are my priority.”
“So if I say ‘I can’t do this because of the kids, they just, they don’t even touch it,” she added. “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.”
Last week, during an appearance on Live With Kelly and Mark, Lopez opened up about the next chapter of the twins’ lives, who are both soon-to-be college bound.
“It’s crazy. We’re like visiting colleges today, going in between doing this and the premiere,” she explained. “It’s happening. They’re leaving. They’re going.”
“I’m happy because I remember how exciting that time of my life was when I was like, ‘Oh, I’m figuring out what I want to do with my life,’” Lopez added. “And it’s an exciting adventure, and I want that for them. But I also think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be by myself.’”
