Jessica Simpson is officially looking up to the little boy the world watched her carry on red carpets. Her son Ace, now a lanky preteen in a school jersey, is suddenly taller than the pop star mom who once ruled the early 2000s.
In a recent Instagram Story, the 45-year-old singer and actress shared a tender sideline moment with her 12-year-old, who leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Across the image, she wrote that her son is now “much taller than his Mama,” turning a simple height check into a snapshot of a family rewriting itself in real time.
For the soundtrack, Simpson chose Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.” Then she let fans in on a deeply personal detail, revealing that her son quite literally entered the world to that same song. The choice linked the delivery room and the present day, echoing a promise she seems intent on keeping as her family navigates life after a split.
It was not a glossy family portrait, and it did not need to be. It was an athletic jersey, a messy sports day, and a kiss. For a celebrity who once filmed her entire marriage for reality TV, the quiet, blurry sweetness of this image landed with a different kind of weight.
The Photo That Sent Fans Back to 2000’s Jessica
According to Page Six, the picture appeared to be taken after one of Ace’s sporting events. He wore a Sierra Canyon school jersey and shorts, towering comfortably over his mother as he bent to plant that kiss. The moment felt familiar to any parent who has realized overnight that the little hand they used to hold now rests casually on their shoulder.
For Simpson’s longtime fans, the image carried an extra jolt of nostalgia. This is the same woman who invited the world into her newlywed kitchen, asked about chicken and tuna on camera, and strutted through music videos in low-rise denim. Now, the camera is on a middle schooler in a basketball jersey who has outgrown her, physically and almost symbolically.
Simpson wrote that her “12-year-old Ace” is taller than she is, a reminder that the baby she once cradled on magazine covers is now a teenager-in-training. The height difference looked almost exaggerated, his frame stretching above hers as if to mark how far they had both traveled since her early pop star days.
The “I Wanna Love You Forever” singer has long woven music into her personal milestones, but choosing “Stand By Me” for this post felt especially pointed. It was not one of her own hits. It was a classic, a promise, and an echo of the labor room where Ace’s life started. By telling fans he was born to that song, Simpson anchored the sweet sports-field moment in a longer story about staying close, even while everything else changes.
On social media, Simpson has shared slices of Ace’s childhood before, including birthday tributes and family travel snaps. Page Six previously highlighted her posts celebrating his 12th birthday, which showed a playful, tight-knit clan gathered around her only son. This new Story, however, read less like a party and more like a quiet checkpoint in a year when the definition of “family” in the Simpson-Johnson household has been shifting.
Inside Jessica and Eric’s Gentle Co-parenting Pact
In early 2025, Simpson and her husband of a decade, former NFL player Eric Johnson, confirmed that they were separating after months of speculation about their marriage. The announcement marked the end of a long chapter that began long after the cameras stopped rolling on “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,” and after Simpson had carefully rebuilt her reputation as a businesswoman, author, and mother of three.
The pair share three children, daughters Maxwell and Birdie, and their son Ace. According to reporting cited by Page Six, they worked quickly to create a schedule that kept the children’s lives as steady as possible. A source later told People that the couple were united on one point.
“The kids will always come first,” the insider said. “They are co-parenting.”
That kids-first message has shown up not just in quotes, but in the way Simpson and Johnson have continued to appear together. As Page Six noted, they were seen jointly supporting Jessica’s sister, Ashlee Simpson, during her Las Vegas residency, smiling side by side in the audience.
Over the holiday season, Simpson told TMZ that the family spent Thanksgiving under one roof, gathering at her mother’s home for their first major holiday after the split became public. It was a simple setting, but a meaningful signal that the end of their marriage did not mean the end of the family unit.
“We were all together yesterday, over at my mom’s,” she said, adding that Johnson is “my kids’ father.” She signed off with two words that could easily double as her post-divorce mantra: “Family first.”
Those three phrases, “the kids will always come first,” “my kids’ father,” and “family first,” form the quiet backbone of the way Simpson now presents her personal life. The kiss-on-the-head photo is not just a growth update. It is evidence that her children remain at the center of her choices, even while her romantic life moves into a new, more private phase.
From Newlywed to Mom of 3, With Cameras Still Watching
Jessica Simpson’s relationship with public scrutiny has always been complicated. She came of age in an era when reality TV turned marriages into plotlines and Paparazzi culture followed young starlets to the grocery store. She weathered a high-profile divorce from Nick Lachey, rebuilt her career with a billion-dollar fashion line, and later opened up about addiction and self-worth in her memoir.
By the time she married Eric Johnson, the spotlight had softened, but it never disappeared. Fans have watched her pregnancies, cooed over baby announcements, and parsed her interviews about sobriety and self-acceptance. Her social media, particularly Instagram, became a curated mix of family snapshots, career projects, and nostalgic throwbacks to her pop princess days.
According to Page Six, Simpson’s posts for Ace’s 12th birthday showed her embracing single-mom energy, celebrating her son with amusement park trips and silly faces. In those images, she leaned into fun, chaos, and matching grins. The newer sideline kiss carries a quieter energy, almost as if she is clocking the moment when her little boy starts to look like a young man.
There is a subtle shift in how she frames herself, too. This is not Jessica Simpson the punchline, or Jessica Simpson the tabloid target. It is Jessica Simpson the parent, standing on tiptoe emotionally, if not physically, to stay eye to eye with her growing child.
Her daughters, Maxwell and Birdie, appear in her feed as well, often in coordinated outfits or family group shots that include Johnson. Together, the images sketch a portrait of an ex-couple determined to keep familiar rituals intact. The parents may no longer be a romantic pair, but the kids still have a front-row cheering section that includes both of them.
For Gen X and older millennial fans who remember watching “Newlyweds” in real time, the evolution is striking. The woman who once puzzled over canned tuna on national television is now making careful, intentional choices about what her children see and remember. Instead of inviting cameras into her home for a series, she releases curated, controlled glimpses on her own terms.
The “Stand By Me” Story fits neatly into that pattern. It is sentimental, but it is also specific. It reminds Ace, and anyone watching, that his mother has been standing by him since the first notes of that song played in a delivery room, and that she intends to keep doing so, even as co-parenting schedules, public scrutiny, and adolescence swirl around them.
In the end, the most striking thing about the photo is not that Jessica Simpson’s son is taller than she is. It is that, in a life measured so publicly in albums, reality TV episodes, red carpets, and headlines about her love life, she keeps returning to images that center her children’s faces, not her own. The world may still be watching, but the camera, these days, belongs to her.
