Will Smith reveals his 14-year-old son Jaden wants to be emancipated
Published May 14, 2013
The Sun
Will Smith, left, and his son Jaden Smith arrive a news conference to promote their movie "After Earth" in Tokyo May 2, 2013.
(Reuters)
Will Smith was brought up by a military father who expected him to be seen and not heard.
But
the upbringing that he and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith are giving their
own children Jaden and Willow could hardly be more different.
They don’t punish them, instead letting them make their own decisions. And actor son Jaden has decided that for his 15th birthday in July he would like the gift of FREEDOM from his parents — and to be able to live in a home of his own.
Will, 44, revealed to The Sun: “He says, ‘Dad, I want to be emancipated.’ I know if we do this, he can be an emancipated minor, because he really wants to have his own place, like ooh.
“That’s the backlash. On the other side, if kids just want to have command of their lives, I understand.”
He and Jaden are about to be seen together in their second film, sci-fi tale After Earth.
The article above tells us everything we need to know about how weak and warped we are as parents in our society. The article points out the assumption of Will Smith that the heart of a man, woman, boy or girl is not sinful; a complete denial of what the Word of God says about us.
Prov. 22:15
“Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of
discipline
will drive it far away.”
Prov. 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old
he will not turn from it.”
The idea of “passive parenting,” or letting the child figure out what is “right to him,” leads to a fourteen year old asking for emancipation from his parents. Why? Because he sees no need of them. When parents are simply there to feed, clothe and provide for physical needs, but allowing the child to "do what seems right in his own eyes," children will see very little need for parents once they can fix their own sandwich and pick out their own clothes. The age at which a child no longer needs a parent's help in making it through the day is much younger if the parent is not seen as a guide or authority. At this child's age and with this family's financial resources, he can obtain daily provisions and services for himself and he sees himself as self-sufficient. At fourteen, I would wonder if he is fully ready for the decisions and responsibility of being "on his own" with no parental intervention.
There is always a way that seems right to man, but the end of that is destruction. I certainly have liked Will Smith in a variety of movies, but this article is one of the million reasons why as parents, we can not set the world up as our standard. I don’t want my boys doing what seems right to them, nor do I want to be a Dad who wants my children "seen and not heard." I believe God actually called Michele and I, along with every other Christian parent, to engage the hearts of our children. I must correct behavior, but the goal is not to force a certain behavior with positive and negative stimuli. Behavioral reinforcement may work with children for a while - as it can work with dogs and even cats (no matter how dumb cats are), but we are to be doing so much more than simply training behavior, we are guiding a heart. If we never use the Word, we never really get the to the root of the matter and that is always the fact that we are sinful people with sinful hearts keeping the truth of God in the forefront of our children's lives. May we never seek to emulate the world’s philosophy in raising the children God has given us. They are not ours, they are His.
