Will Smith’s breakthrough hit was “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Now, the 47-year-old father of three has some firsthand experience on the matter.
In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Smith confessed that it’s sometimes hard to wrangle in his tribe of opinionated young adults.
“Jaden is 17, Willow is 15, and my oldest son Trey is 23. So like 23 is good but like teenagers should be an affliction,” he affectionately joked. “You know when people come up to you like, ‘Hey WIll how you doing?’ ‘Man I got teenagers. Simplex 2, man, simplex 2.’ It takes everything you have to raise teenagers.”
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While there are challenges to the lifetime role of fatherhood, with many questioning the decisions he and wife, Jada, let their children make—from hair styles and clothing choices to life philosophies—he’s taking the experience all in stride.
“Because we’re both artists, we decided a long time ago that it’s sort of better to flow with what people are naturally more than what our egos need them to be,” the actor explained. “So we really just try to find the things that they’re good at and support those things.”