More than two decades of rearing kids in Hollywood has made Will Smith an expert on unorthodox parenting. The celebrity father has shared the secrets to fathering two sons, Jaden and Trey, and a daughter named Willow in the spotlight over the past few years. Check out Will’s greatest quotes on parenting below!
On Punishing the Kids
“We don’t do punishment. The way that we deal with our kids is, they are responsible for their lives.” –E! News, 2013
Encouraging Creativity
“There’s a really powerful internal quality as an artist that as parents we encourage. You gotta get out on the edge, you have to try things, you have to be comfortable doing things that people don’t agree with, and you have to be comfortable doing things that you could fail.” –BBC Radio
The Circle of Safety
“They’re allowed to tell us everything that they did [in the circle of safety], and they can’t get in trouble. The rule is, if we find out after the circle of safety that there was something you didn’t say, there was hell to pay.” –The Tonight Show, 2016
Equal Rights
“I think that, specifically in African American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there’s a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I released with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person. Things like cleaning up their room. You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don’t tell our kids to clean their rooms.” –Haute Living, 2013
It’s All About Love
“The buffer provided by a loving and supportive family who accepts their children exactly as they are is the absolute best thing you can offer your children.” –Psychology Today, 2013
