Jennifer Lopez is opening up about how she’s shielding her kids from the scrutiny that comes with being a public figure.
The singer, 54, joined Apple Music Radio on Wednesday to debut her new series “This Is Me Now…Radio” in celebration of the release of her new album, This Is Me…Now. To kick off the two-part series, Lopez is interviewed by Zane Lowe and reflects on how she tries to shield her kids from the pressures of the Internet.
“And you can’t protect them from that, right?” Lowe asks, referring to the things her kids might read online about Lopez and husband Ben Affleck.
Lopez shares twins Max and Emme, who celebrate their 16th birthday next week, with ex Marc Anthony. Affleck shares his three kids — Violet, 18, Seraphina Rose, 15, and Samuel, 11 — with ex Jennifer Garner, 51.
“We can’t because they’re techie kids. Like every other kid, they’re on their phone constantly. They search everything. The minute you say any new word to them, they look at any new name, any new anything,” she explains.
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“Any new information they want to know what it is, and they know they can. And so they’re much more informed and it’s totally into the meme culture and think it’s hysterical,” Lopez continues. “And now that they’re a little bit older, we try not to make it such a big thing in our house because their lives are so much more than the fact that we are their parents in that way, that we’re famous.”
“And so we do it in ways that kind of just go by like, ‘You know that’s ridiculous.’ They’re like, ‘No, we know. We know.’ And they’re all so incredibly smart and heartful and brilliant in their own ways.”
Adding that her kids have been handling fame “really well,” the proud mom says “the five of them have had a difficult kind of… I wouldn’t say difficult, but kind of this surrealistic kind of upbringing where they’ve been watched from the time they were very small.”
“And so them becoming who they are in the public eye could be very, very hard for them. And I am sure it is at times even more than they share with us, but they handle it very beautifully.”
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During an appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark in May, the Mother actress opened up about parenting teens with her husband.
“It’s almost five teenagers!” Lopez told the hosts. “The younger is 11, so he’s not quite, but pre-teen!”
When Ripa teased those years were “worse than teens,” Lopez insisted, “he’s an angel.”
“But the teenage years are tough,” she conceded. “It’s challenging. You have this baby for a while and then it’s like, your best little friend who loves being with you all the time, and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Get out of my room.'”
Lopez continued, “It’s a time when they are individuation, and they are challenging everything you say and everything you do and everything you are, and that’s what it is. And you have to kind of just ride the waves.”
Lopez opened up about the twins’ teen years in an appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan in early 2022.
“They’re amazing, first of all,” said Lopez. “And they’re just now, they’re adults. They’re like little adults and they have their own lives and they have all their own ideas about the world already and they love to kind of like, show you that they know things.”
The actress said her twins are also constantly teaching her new things.
“I feel like I learn so much from them. They keep me so abreast with the world and what’s happening now and how kids are thinking,” she shared. “It’s a whole different thing. It’s a different world!”
