Julie Bowen Admits To Feeling ‘Desperate’ for Attention From Her Teens: ‘I Feel Like I Got Dumped’

Seeing your kids grow up can be hard, especially when they start to get too busy (or too cool) to hang out with mom and dad. Julie Bowen is going through this right now with her teens Oliver, 17, and twins John and Gustave, 15, who she shares with ex-husband Scott Phillips. She just admitted that she feels “desperate” for their attention like someone going through a breakup, and man, she nailed it!

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The Modern Family star shared that her kids don’t really talk to her about things. “Basically I’m in the desert right now,” she said on today’s episode of TODAY With Hoda & Jenna . “It’s like I got dumped by three guys I was madly in love with. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m right in the kitchen,’ and they never show up.”

“It’s as desperate as I ever felt in high school when you had a crush on a boy,” she added.

Aww, poor Bowen! She jokingly recreated something she tells her kids: “Hi… it’s me… mom… I birthed you?’” The Hysteria star added, “They don’t care. But they do get excited. They’re excited about Hysteria . They get excited for new stuff. They’re excited for Happy Gilmore .”

One way she does capture their attention is by joining them on their favorite apps. She admitted that when she’s filming on location, she’ll talk to her sons through Snapchat. “Right now, cause I’m working on the East Coast and they live in L.A., the only way I communicate with them is through Snapchat,” she said. Smart!

But when she wants to communicate more sensitive topics, she sticks to leaving pamphlets around the house. “I have a lot of purposefully scattered about the house books that are informational about sex, drugs, what to avoid, how to not get people pregnant, not get diseases. I’m constantly talking about things…” she quipped in the interview. Oh well, it’s better than nothing!

Throughout the interview, Bowen showcased her knowledge of Gen Z slang, admitting that she “promised” her kids she would never say “Skibidi.” Bowen added, “They said to me the other day that I was ‘mad rizzy with a waiter,’ and I was like, ‘You mean like cha-ris-ma?’ and they go, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Where do you think the word comes from? You didn’t make up rizzy!’” Ah, kids these days.

In a previous interview with SheKnows, Bowen opened up about raising her kids. “They know that I’m a very strong and independent person, and I hope that I’m raising them with enough respect,” she said. “Their dad’s a super-kind guy, so I hope we’re baking it in and it doesn’t have to be a sea change where one day we’re like, ‘Hey, guys, turns out being racist is bad, and you’re not supposed to rape either!’ Like, I hope we only have to do minimal course corrections,” she added with a laugh.

Even though her teens may not want much to do with her right now, with parenting like that, they’ll come back around one day. Just hang in there!

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