Jennifer Garner Gets Candid About Teenage Daughter Violet Growing Up: ‘It’s Heartbreaking’

Parenting a teenager is hard, just ask Jennifer Garner! The actress recently opened up about the difficulties of watching her eldest daughter, Violet, grow up.

“The heartbreak is just that she’s growing up at all,” the 48-year-old star said during an interview with SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show on Monday, March 15. “That’s what’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking for the mom and for the teenager, needing to have that kind of severing of this baby-mama tie. That’s what’s so hard.”

Jennifer welcomed 15-year-old Violet with ex-husband Ben Affleck in December 2005. The former flames also share 12-year-old daughter Seraphina and 9-year-old son Samuel.

When it comes to using her kids as inspiration for her work in Hollywood, the 13 Going on 30 alum said she has “never done a movie where [she] drew more from personal experience ever,” until now. Jennifer starred alongside Édgar Ramírez and former Disney Channel star Jenna Ortega in the Netflix movie Yes Day, which was released on March 12. The movie — in which the mom of three also produced — told the story of two parents who say yes to everything their kids ask for one whole day.

“I used to read Yes Day by Amy Krouse Rosenthal to my kids. We adopted Yes Days before they were a thing,” Jennifer explained during a Monday, March 15, appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “I think the whole world was kind of quietly starting to do them and then we made a movie of it. So here it is.”

Over the years, the Love, Simon actress has shared her parenting tips with fans. While chatting with Katie Couric at the 2019 INBOUND conference, Jennifer explained how she’s calmed down when it comes to being a mom. “I can’t really complain about my kids,” she gushed at the time. “They’re pretty awesome. They humor me. But I have chilled out and stopped trying to be my mom.”

She also reflected on her experience with her own mother, Patricia, and how she inspired Jennifer’s Once Upon a Farm brand. “My mom made every bite of food my sisters and I had growing up … That was her way of doing it. She was so frugal,” the Alias actress recalled, noting that she makes her own kids “homemade Wheat Thins like a nerd” and Violet, Seraphina and Samuel “don’t want them.”

Despite their lack of enthusiasm for her homemade snacks, Jennifer said that her first-born daughter is a budding food critic. “I have one who’s quite a foodie,” she joked. “She’s like, ‘This is kind of banana forward for me.’ I was like, ‘Who are you?’”