Pinkett Smith says family comes first
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Jada Pinkett Smith is well known as a glamorous Hollywood actress but it's her off-screen work, as a mother, that she says is her main role.
Pinkett Smith, 35, has eight-year-old son Jaden and six-year-old daughter Willow from her 10-year marriage to actor Will Smith. She is also the stepmother to Smith's 14-year-old son Trey from a previous marriage.
The actress, currently starring in the movie "Reign Over Me," says motherhood is her main focus, which led her to become actively involved in children's charities, co-founding the Will and Jada Foundation to help fund youth educational projects.
She has now joined a child safety campaign called The Power of Parents, first launched in 2006 by the non-profit National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the battery company Duracell, and has written the foreword in a children's book "The Great Tomato Adventure" linked to the campaign released this month.
Pinkett Smith spoke to Reuters about child safety and balancing her family and work:
Q: What is this book hoping to achieve?
A: "I am hoping it will be a wonderful tool for parents who talk to kids about safety in a matter-of-fact way without all the scary stuff. It is a very serious subject matter but this book gives many different handles on how to talk to your kids."
Q: Is it is designed to replace the "never talk to strangers" message?
A: "We talk to strangers every day so the idea that you should never talk to strangers is too general. It creates the idea that every person they meet is an enemy and that is wrong. My kids are constantly around people they don't know so this book was very helpful for me in my own personal life to start conversations with my kids that made sense to them. There is a step that has been missed in the past. This is designed to spell out the idea that sometimes children need to reach out to people they don't know for help so it is more a case of finding indicators to know who you should stay away from."
Q: Have you ever had a scare with your children?
A: "Not necessarily. My children are always around people and large crowds of people and part of our business is about reaching out to people that we don't know. But it has been a difficult thing for me to talk to my kids about in a way that makes sense to them."
Q: How do you manage to balance your role as a mother and work as an actress?
A: "It is very difficult and it is very challenging but it is not impossible. I have to always know my priorities and know if there is something I can't do. My children and my husband come first. My family is my everything. I have a lot of people in my universe who help me so I have Jada time, family time and also work."
Q; Is it hard to keep your children from getting caught up in the celebrity world?
A: "It's not. That is not how we live. Kids live by the parents' example. That is just not a focus of Will and I and they have adopted the same attitude."
Q: You've written a children's book in the past. Do you want to write more?
A: "I would like to do more, Will and I have a couple of ideas. We love children and family and we have a couple of book projects that we are thinking about but they are ideas and we have not moved forward with them. The two ideas we have are linked to our foundation."
