The Smith family was the talk of the town for all of the wrong reasons earlier this year when the family came under investigation from child protective services over a controversial photo of Willow Smith lying in bed with shirtless adult actor, Moises Arias. Luckily for the Smiths, CPS deemed them fit parents in the end, but that hasn’t stopped fans from still questioning their unorthodox parenting methods. Now, Jada Pinkett Smith is opening up about the controversy and why she believes in taking a different path to parenting.
When asked in a new cover feature for The Edit about the controversial bed photo, Pinkett Smith said simply, “Just don’t pollute something that’s not dirty.”
Jada goes on to say that she not only trusts her daughter, but she trusts that her skills as a parent are right for her family.
“I want my kids to be happy and I want them to be themselves,” said the 42-year-old mom. “I was saying to a friend the other day, ‘Remember, our kids are not us.’ They’re not. Sometimes we’re trying to fix things that happened to us or projecting [onto them], and that’s a terrible, terrible trap.”
Pinkett Smith also spoke with Us Weekly about her parenting techniques and she explained that she’s intent on making sure that instead of imposing her own ideas of what she wants her daughter to be, she wants Willow to have a strong sense of self.
“I’m not a conventional parent, which I take a lot of pride in,” she said. “I don’t just sit with Willow and go, ‘Hey, this is what Mommy thinks. Let me just bring in a little reality to validate what Mommy’s been talking to you about.’”
“What I do with Willow is I give her the opportunity to be empowered by having herself first,” said Jada.
Pinkett Smith tells The Edit that her open bond with Willow has allowed her daughter to teach her things about the world that she never even knew and even inspired her to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and work on a CNN documentary on the topic of human trafficking.
“When your daughter comes to you and is like, ‘Hey Mom, do you know that there are people selling girls my age for sex in this country?’ My first response was, ‘Oh no, that doesn’t happen here,’” she explained. “Then I did my research and I thought, ‘How could this be going on here and I not know?’ I felt ashamed and, being a woman in an industry that has a voice, I just felt this enormous amount of responsibility to at least let other people know.”
We commend Pinkett Smith on being such an open communicator with her kids and showing that there are different ways of being a parent and having a healthy relationship with your child. – nicholas robinson
