RHOBH's Erika Jayne also revealed "the hardest part" of being a single parent.
Erika Jayne's son, Tommy Zizzo, has never appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but she's now sharing new details about what it was like to raise him, and how often she sees him today.
On the August 30 episode of the Two Ts in a Pod podcast, Erika opened up to host Teddi Mellencamp about giving birth to her now-32-year-old son when she was just 20 years old.
"I was 20 when my son was born [and] I got married to my friend," Erika said, referring to Tommy Zizzo's dad. "It's so funny, my first husband's name is Tom, my second husband's name is Tom [Girardi], and my son's name is Tom. I have been surrounded by Thomases."
Erika went on to say that she "had no business being a parent" when she was that young, but she was fortunate enough to get some help from her loved ones.
"I did the best I could with what I had, and thank god we're super close. I had a lot of help," she said. "My first husband had his mother who was very involved so my son had his grandmother on his side. There was my mother and my grandmother was alive at the time, so my child had many hands on him, and I was there too."
Once her son got older, though, Erika felt a shift in their relationship.
"What happens, I think, and I'm just gonna speak on boys, because I have one, they separate themselves from their mother. They want to be their own person, they're growing up. I remember one day when I went to visit my child for lunch with open campus and he was like, 'Do me a favor. Meet me on the corner...'" she continued on the podcast. "He had become that age where [he said,] 'I don't want to be seen with my mom.'"
Though her son kept some distance from Erika when he was a teenager, the two are now very close.
"All of that to say [that] my son is 32, I see him three times a week, he's at my house, everything is great, but boys are like that," she said about Tommy Zizzo, who is now a police officer. "They need to go have their own identity."
Erika Jayne reveals "the hardest part" of being a single mom
The "XXPEN$iVE" songstress said that "the hardest part" of her son's upbringing was when they would be apart and she'd wonder "What am I missing?"
"I always kept the line of communication open, so if my son were to call me right now, I would literally say, 'I need to take this call,' and I always did that all his life," Erika explained. "But, you don't know what you don't know, and that's what you're missing out on is milestones. Not necessarily milestones, but when they become teenagers and they start to come to the fork in the road where they can make good decisions or bad decisions, that's where you f-ck up because you're not there to help. That's the problem. That's what my experience was."
Erika noted that her son made good choices at that age.
"Fortunately for me, I had a really great kid, so I got super lucky," she concluded. "He's a great guy.
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