Jennifer Garner Admits Her Parenting Style Includes ‘A Little Bit Of Benign Neglect’
It cannot get more relatable than this.
What’s the best way to parent teens and tweens? Jennifer Garner shared her approach this week, and it is perhaps the most relatable and sensible parenting approach that the world has ever heard.
The 51-year-old actor dropped into TODAY on Tuesday, November 28, to discuss her new family holiday movie, Family Switch, which premieres on Netflix on Thursday. But her interview with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager soon turned to her own personal parenting philosophies.
“What is your parenting style like?” asked Kotb.
“I just really enjoy my kids,” she said. “I don’t know that I have some overarching philosophy. I just think they are such cool people and I want to hear everything and I want to be around.”
In other words, she wants to be present and she wants to listen to her kids. Sounds like a pretty darn good approach.
“I also think that it’s okay if they suffer from a little bit of benign neglect, where their lives are their own. I’m not trying to live their life and I don’t mind that they see that I love mine.”
It is so freeing to hear her say that.
Please sign me up for a tattoo that says, “My parenting style is benign neglect.”
Garner also used the interview to clear up any misconceptions that she has her sh*t together in any aspect of her parenting or her life as a whole.
“I’m a little big of a scatter-brained disaster,” she admitted. “People think of me as Type A, but I’m not. I’m more like Type Z.”
Again, that is very refreshing to hear.
The actor shares Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11, with ex-husband Ben Affleck. Violet turns 18 — and officially becomes an adult — in just a few days, on December 1.
Garner has previously been open about her parenting faults — or about her more hands-off approach to raising her kids. In May, she told Allure that she was a “nightmare” first-time mom who was over-involved and over-protective of her first born.
“I was such a first-time mom,” she said. “[My eldest daughter] didn’t have a shot. She couldn’t have a free thought — I was all over her. I was a nightmare for everyone around me,” she said.
The better approach? Letting them be free to be themselves, just a little bit more.
“Your kids will really figure out who they are and what they are when they're older,” she went on, “and most likely they will hew toward lovely.”
There you have it: Jennifer is more of a free range mom than a helicopter mom. While she wants to be involved in her kids’ lives, she also needs her own — and she understands that teens and tweens need space, time, and a little freedom to grow. At least as long as it doesn’t involve their own social media accounts. Hey, you have to draw lines somewhere.
