Will Smith Explains 'Respectful' Parenting, Won't Tell Kids to Clean Their Room
Will Smith, the 44-year-old actor who shares two famous children with 41-year-old actress Jada Pinkett Smith, has been sharing his approach to parenting and recently revealed how he shows his children respect.
"We respect our children the way we would respect any other person. Things like cleaning up their room," Smith told Haute Living magazine recently. "You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don't tell our kids to clean their rooms."
The actor went on further to explain his concept.
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"We tell our kids 'you don't have a room, that's our room and we are letting you borrow it,'" he told Haute Living. "So the same way you would say to an adult if you let them use your car, you say, 'Yo man, clean my car! Don't drive around all filthy like that!' And it's perfectly reasonable for you to want an adult to clean your car, so we feel it's perfectly reasonable to ask our kids to clean the rooms that we are letting them use."
Smith and his 14-year-old son Jaden are currently promoting their joint movie "After Earth." After the father and son duo were questioned about when Jaden was last punished, the Smith patriarch admitted that his family does not utilize punishment methods in their home.
"We don't do punishment. The way that we deal with our kids is, they are responsible for their lives," Smith told Metro New York last month. "Our concept is, as young as possible, give them as much control over their lives as possible and the concept of punishment, our experience has been- it has a little too much of a negative quality. So when they do things- and you know, Jaden, he's done things- you can do anything you want as long as you can explain to me why that was the right thing to do for your life."
