Jada Pinkett Smith's Golden Rules of Parenting

In the November issue of Cookie magazine, Jada Pinkett Smith opens up about everything from her marriage to Will Smith to raising their kids together. I especially like her "Golden Rules of Parenting." They include the following:

1. Eat as a family. "There’s flexibility about when they eat breakfast and lunch, but dinner together is sacred."

2. Enlist help. "I’m lucky to have a lot of people in my world who help me. My mother travels with me all the time, and when I travel and the kids aren’t with me, she stays with them."

3. Drink water. "I tell them, 'You have three bottles of water a day, then drink what you want. I’m always like, 'Listen, we’ve got to keep our bodies strong — we got too much stuff to do!'"

4. Respect their boundaries. "Staying out of kids' space can teach them to be responsible for their own decisions and mistakes. Is it their room, or are they borrowing the space while they’re living in your house? If it's theirs, then they should be able to do whatever they want with it. If it's their clothes, they have the right to do whatever they want with those clothes. We have to give them some freedom to be who they are."

5. Choose your battles. "Who is it going to hurt, really, if she has orange balloon pants on the red carpet? I try to stay outside my ego and what I want and to respect them as I expect them to respect me."

6. Expose and educate. "We go to church as a family on Sunday, but we study world religion during the week as well. We read excerpts from the Bible, from Hindu texts, Kabbalah, Judaism..."

For more of Jada's interview, check out Cookie online.