Jennifer Garner Has One "Ridiculous" Thing She Wants Every Mother's Day From Her Kids

When Mother’s Day comes around in May, Jennifer Garner just wants one thing from her three kids. It’s the same thing every year, and the 13 Going On 30 star admitted to People that she thinks it’s “ridiculous at this point.” But still. This is what she wants. And every year, her three kids deliver because really, it’s her “one ask.”

Garner recently spoke to People about her Mother’s Day traditions with 18-year-old daughter Violet, 15-year-old daughter Seraphina, and 12-year-old son Samuel, all of whom she shares with ex-husband Ben Affleck. And it sounds like she really just has the one tradition for Mother’s Day, which is to get all of her kids to sit on her lap.

“I have one ask, and it is that when my kids were really little, on some Mother’s Day, they all sat on my lap one after the other all at once for a picture,” the mom of three told the magazine. This particular photo shoot is one she is fully committed to regardless of how ridiculous it might be as her kids get older. “And I want that picture every year, even though it’s ridiculous at this point. They’re so big. But I make them take it and they are just like, ‘Mom.’ But that’s my ask.”

It sounds like a fair ask to us. Also a pretty easy one for the kids, who are now off the hook for buying their mom a Mother’s Day gift. A win for everyone involved.

As a single mom of three, Garner has been carving her own path when it comes to parenting her teenagers. She opened up last November in an interview with Hoda Kotb on TODAY about raising her kids with a bit of “benign neglect,” encouraging them to love their own lives while she is also loving hers. “I don’t know that I have some overarching philosophy,” Garner explained at the time. “I just think they’re such cool people and I want to hear everything, and I want to be around. But I also think it’s OK if they suffer from a little bit of benign neglect.”

She also doesn’t mind using her yearly Mother’s Day ask to get a photo of her big kids on her lap. What a series that will make as the years go on.