Jodie Sweetin says being a mom of teens is like being 'the bumper rails at the bowling alley'

For fans who watched her grow up on Full House, it may be hard to believe that former child star Jodie Sweetin is now a mom of two teens: Zoie, 15, and Beatrix, 13. As any parent of teens will tell you, the experience has its challenges.

“I think the hardest thing as a parent, at least at this age, is I’m constantly like, ‘Do they need this much freedom or not?’” the actress who played sassy Stephanie Tanner on the classic sitcom tells Yahoo Life. “It feels very strange, because you’re so used to [keeping kids] in their little bubble, and then, they get to this age, and you’re like, ‘OK, I have to start letting you out of that bubble and go experience the world.’ But it’s terrifying.”

For Sweetin, looking back at her own early teens is one way she’s able to determine how much independence to give her girls. “[I think], ‘What was I doing at 13 or 14?’” she says. “And sometimes, you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I have to let them go to the movies with their friends.’”

She’s also passionate about letting her girls “be free to express themselves, with their clothes, with their hair, with their makeup.” Says Sweetin, “I’m like, ‘Figure it out, try it all on — this is the age when you can try out different personalities, and you’re going to do stupid things with your hair, and you’re gonna look back in 10 years and be like, ‘Why did you let me do my makeup like that?’”

It’s all part of fostering her daughters’ sense of self, she adds. “I [believe] in not trying to shape your kids into who you want them to be, but to figure out who they are and learn how to best nurture that,” says Sweetin. “That’s the point. It's not to make your kids exactly like you. It's to figure out who they are and make them the best version of themselves. And my girls are very creative and very independent and very much themselves.”

Ultimately, she sees her parenting role these days as “less of the rule setter and the warden and more of the bumper rails at the bowling alley.” Here’s how Sweetin explains it: “I’m like, look, we have established the things that are right [and] that are wrong and we have open lines of communication. It’s kind of scary, but you see them in eighth, ninth, 10th grade, and you’re like, ‘OK, you’re kind of going now, and I have to let you figure it out.’”

This isn’t to say that her girls don’t “make stupid decisions” at times, acknowledges Sweetin, who also played Stephanie Tanner on the Fuller House spinoff. “You see them going to put foil in the microwave,” she says. “And there are so many things that they do know and so many things that they don’t know. I just have to hope that what I have said so far has sunk in and [say], ‘I’ll be there to protect you from your own stupid decisions as best I can but also not completely [allow you to] avoid the repercussions of your actions.’”

Of course, Sweetin’s kids often react to their mom’s feedback just as any teen would. “They’ll be like, ‘Mom, I don’t need a lecture right now,’” says the A Cozy Christmas Inn star. “I’m like, ‘OK, I'm sorry. Mom brain off. Ears are open, mouth is shut. I’m just listening and taking it in.’ And that’s really hard sometimes, because you want to fix it, and you’ve been so used to being the fixer in their life up to this point. And then, they get to an age where they don’t want you to fix it. They just want you to be there for it and hold their hand through … heartbreak, pain, losing friends — all of those things that they will survive. But at the time, it doesn’t feel like it.”

In the midst of these challenging moments, Sweetin has learned that there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. “I keep wanting to be that,” she admits. “That’s so much pressure. It doesn’t exist. It’s just not easy to be a parent. It’s a lot of constantly adjusting and recalibrating and showing up and doing the best you can.”

In addition to caring for her teens, Sweetin is also prioritizing her own well-being — specifically, her digestive health. “I’m going to be 42 in January, and the body is not the same as it was at 25 — cheese pizza no longer is like, ‘Yeah, sure, let’s do that! No problem,’” she says. “[I’ve been looking for ways] to not feel like a Thanksgiving Day balloon seven days out of the month.”

To that end, Sweetin recently partnered with Align Probiotic to launch its new product, Align Bloating Relief + Food Digestion. “If moms are in the middle of stuff, you don’t get to just curl up and be like, ‘Oh, I had some cabbage, and now, I don’t feel well,’” she points out. “So, Align is a really easy way to just incorporate one little capsule with five digestive enzymes and probiotics. I just really noticed that I feel like I have more energy. I feel like my body is functioning at a higher level, so it has helped immensely.”

It’s something she’s even discussed with her bestie and “bloat buddy” Andrea Barber, who played Kimmy Gibbler on Full House. “We’ve grown up together,” says Sweetin. “I mean, I was 5, she was 10 [when we met]. There’s nothing that’s off-limits at this point. We talk about everything, so [we’d often tell one another], ‘I feel so bloated,’ ‘I feel disgusting,’ ‘I just don’t feel like my body is functioning correctly.’ And she and I would joke about it, and I was like, ‘Well, if we’re talking about it, then other people have to be talking about it.’”