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Will and Jada also show their children respect by encouraging them to have a children's council. One council meeting came about when 15-year-old Trey asked for an allowance of $100 a week. "I said, 'Okay, all you kids go into the room, and I want you to come back and make a recommendation to me of what his allowance should be,'" Will says. So Trey, 10-year-old Jaden and 8-year-old Willow, along with Will's niece and nephew, gathered to discuss the allowance.
"They all went into a room for about 45 minutes. They talked about it, and what they realized is whatever decision they made was a decision that was going to affect all of them," he says. "If it was unreasonable, they would lose their power." When the children's council came back to Will, he says they decided that Trey only needed about $40 a week.
"That is shocking!" Oprah says.
Will says Trey started questioning the importance of material things after his grandmother died. "He was there, in the moment, when she passed," Will says. "He got a real sense of that loss and the idea of needing to create the new Trey, needing to create that new idea." So for his upcoming 16th birthday, he didn't ask for gifts. Instead, he asked his friends to donate presents to a children's hospital. "He just realized, 'Gifts? What does that really mean?'"
"You all must be doing something right," says Oprah. "For a 16-year-old to say 'I don't want gifts. Bring gifts and we'll give them to other people.'"
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