PARENTING THE PRIVILEGED: A CONVERSATION WITH PRIVATE SCHOOL HEADS   Paris Hilton!  Those two words strike fear into the hearts of affluent parents everywhere.  In a culture fascinated by wealth and its consequences, there is a deep seated suspicion that coming from a privileged background has the power to confer disadvantages upon our children.  This is an oft voiced concern amongst our clients, many of whom are young, affluent families.  After attaining a measure of confidence in their finances, it is common, indeed natural, to ponder the impact of a childhood, perhaps very much unlike their own.  In short, does a childhood accompanied by wealth and privilege produce ne’er-do-wells?     As financial advisors, parents ourselves and wanting answers, we began questioning colleagues.  An estate planning attorney with ample opportunity to see the intimate dynamics of wealthy families stoked my worst suspicions.  “Wealth and family dysfunction” he stated, “are correlated.  The wealthier you are the more messed up your kids will be.”  Was this simply an awful stereotype, or was there a grain of truth in it?     In a fortunate coincidence, it turns out that a number of our clients are private school heads.  These educators are an eloquent bunch and were both willing and well-equipped to help us to shed light on the matter of parenting the privileged.  The following are their and some of their colleagues’ anecdotes about raising well adjusted children despite fiscal advantages.   One head of school summed up the group’s common sentiment, “I have seen kids with financially set parents, but the parenting skills are so strong that the kids are not just fine but lucky as hell.”  Another said, “For affluent families, parents have to make really clear and intentional choices.”  The following are the most thought provoking excerpts from our interviews in which the topics were materialism, charity, fostering independence, achievement-pressure, shielding children from consequences and parental involvement.   Also note that those interviewed were given anonymity in order to encourage the freest, most unguarded exchange of ideas.  You will note also the occasional generalizing of [details that might identify an individual.]     I hope you that you will find this as fascinating as Chuck, Ed and I have.   MATERIALISM   “What you see your parents doing is of huge importance.”   “What kind of demonstrable need do you have for your privilege to show?  We have the [executive] of [a large company,] and when his child was student of the week [a professional athlete] came and [did a sports activity with the kids].  This showiness was not very appealing.  We have others, with great wealth, who will sometimes bring in their dog, a sibling, or an uncle who plays guitar.  And those are the families where, at the end of the day, we see ‘normal’ natural kids coming out of the mix.”   “Families who are comfortable with their wealth are not pouring all sorts of belongings onto their children.  Their children are not coming to school with fancy jewelry or expensive electronics.  The kids just don't have it.  They may live in a big expensive house, but the kids’ rooms are very child centric.”   “It is a given that when you have more money you will have more things.  It is just critical for parents to constantly remind their kids of what they have and that not everyone has it.  Parents forget, but as adults, if we take things for granted, our kids are going to take things for granted.  You just have to remember it every single day.”   “I overheard an argument between second graders about whether they had stayed in a four-star or a five-star hotel or a six-star hotel.  It escalated with carrying back and forth.  Amongst seven year olds!  It blows the mind.  Some parents are doing a really good job of helping their children to deal with wealth.  Those children don't talk this way about where they go on vacation.  Every trip they take is an educational trip.  Perhaps, the Galapagos or Africa….  That is a very different trip than three weeks at the Ritz on Maui.  Get the kids involved in where they want to travel.”   “If the parents are retired, what are they doing with their time?  Does the father only play golf?  Some nonworking women, their children only see mom working out, having lunch and getting her hair done.  That is the extent of values modeling.  These moms may have more depth to them, but that is not what their children are seeing.  What you see your parents doing is of huge importance.”   CHARITY   “If you are going to ask charity of your kids, you need to model it yourself.  Otherwise, it is just an exercise.”   “It is up to every family to figure out how charity is going to work for them.  I know families where every birthday the kids get a certain amount to give to the charity of their choice or where they do community service together.  But how each family goes about it has to be organic and representative of who that family is.  It is very important for kids to understand the importance of giving back early, because that is how they learn that you can make a difference in somebody’s life that is simple but profound.”   “If you are going to ask charity of your kids you need to model it yourself.  Otherwise, it is just an exercise.  I am leery of ‘we are so lucky, let’s go and help those poor people who are not as lucky as we are.’  It is like anything else, you have to like what you do.  You have to have a passion for it.  Working at a soup kitchen is a good family event.  Doing it once a month makes it a family event.  But know that if you are not there scholping out the mashed potatoes someone else will be.  So, you are not really changing your world.  You are changing your ability to see yourself as part of your world.  Get kids involved where they can actually make a difference and feel safe.”   “I am thinking of one particular family where the parents do not agree on their philanthropic priorities.  The kids get to hear their parents have really good arguments about where to give their money instead of which diamond ring they are going to buy, which is the case in some families.”   “I really like this idea that whatever money you get, perhaps as allowance, a part of it goes to charity, some of it goes to savings and some of it is for you to spend on whatever you want within your parents’ permission.  It provides a way of organizing the world.  And if you can teach them responsible stewardship of money and resources then hopefully you are going to create a better country and a better world.  It is a part of the education process.”   FOSTERING INDEPENDENCE   “I told them to, ‘Go make your own fun.’  And when they realized that I meant it, they figured it out.”   “Think of independence like muscles.  It needs to be worked out.  It needs to be exercised.  When we make all of the decision for them but then expect them to be independent, it is not going to happen.”   “By 18 years of age your kids are responsible for 100% of their decisions.  Do you want them to figure it all out the month before they go to school or a little bit at a time?  When your kid are successful, give them more leash.  Set markers and expectations gradually.  By ten, they should be making 50% of their own decisions.”   “By fifth grade your child should be independent, meaning all they need is guidance.  That doesn't mean you don't ask if their homework is done.   But you can’t do it with them anymore.  By sixth grade, you won't know anything that goes on at school.  They are on their own.  They are either building good friendships with good kids or they are hanging out with troublemakers.  They may have good relationships with their teachers, they may be goof offs.  You simply won't know any of those things until something great or something bad happens.”   “I am a huge proponent of sleep away camp.  It teaches kids so much independence.  They are making their own beds, they are cleaning their cabins, they are making friends, and they are outside all day.  And it gives parents this huge break.  Parents need that.  Their job is exhausting.  That can really help in a dual working household.  No one does eight weeks any more, but I really push parents for at least one week.  It is really good for kids and it is REALLY good for parents.”   “When summer starts, most of my students are either on a trip with their parents, or immediately in camp.  Whether it is sports camps or art camps, they move from one structured, organized environment to another where people do things for them.  Mostly this is for the convenience of their parents.  It creates a lack of resourcefulness in kids and a lack of independence or ability to plan their time and all those things which are life skills.  Parents can't go to college with their kids.  And when kids get to college, they don't know how to wash their own clothing, but they also don't know how to plan their own time, and how to get stuff done and all the rest.  It's a particular problem amongst affluent children.  They don't have to be resourceful.  If you're a latch key kid, you have to figure out how to heat up a hot pocket.”   “Today, with play dates, you are generally making appointments with kids that are the same age as your child.  From native cultures all the way through history until sort of recently, we played with kids of all different ages.  And you learn so many things from how to take care of the younger one in the group versus how to respect the older one and there is a real interesting socialization that happens around that experience.  We are really missing that piece.”   “Set the right amount of allowance by figuring out what it will cover.  You are trying to teach kids the value of money and to foster some independence where they have choices and responsibility.  My own child used allowance to get to school and pay for lunch.  The rest was for her to keep.  So, she made her lunch when she could have bought one.  She got to decide and take on the responsibility. ”   “Force them to make decisions about money.  Lots of affluent children don't make any decisions for themselves.  They can get forty bucks today, forty bucks on Tuesday a one hundred and forty bucks on Wednesday, if that's what's necessary to propel their social life.  It's about setting guidelines.  Communicate that you have things that you would automatically condone, and, absolutely, give your money to do.  And you have things where it's like, ‘You have gone to the movie three times already and you don't have any money.  Your money is all gone.  You are not going to the movies.’  And when they ask, ‘Can I do something extra?’ No.  That's just another way of getting more money.  They will be bummed.  And they will have to tell their friends that their parents would not give them $20.  Tough.”   ACHIEVEMENT PRESSURE   “I ask parents ‘Are you the CEO of your company, and, if not, why not?  Aren't you a high achiever?  Don’t you want the best for yourself?  What's inhibiting you from being in the top 5% of your company?’”   “We want our kids to feel good about themselves, all of the time.  They need to be in the top 5% of their class, all the time.  They need to be the best athlete, all of the time.  They need to be the best of the best of the best.  It is a ridiculous expectation.  It's not fair to expect them to live up to it.  I ask parents ‘Are you the CEO of your company, and, if not, why not?  Aren't you a high achiever?  Don’t you want the best for yourself?  What's inhibiting you from being in the top 5% of your company?’  That usually brings a better perspective.  We all can't be at the top.  That's hard for financially affluent people with good positions in companies to think that maybe their child will not be at the top.  They want their children to believe that they can always be the top.  It is stressful.  It creates an environment where children cry if they get a B.  They quit.  Either they are having a nervous breakdown or they shutdown.”   “We praise kids way too much for being smart and not enough for the effort.  We are so concerned with our kids being smart or gifted or bright that we forget that it is actually one of the lowest indicators of a successful life.   A kid who has perseverance, who has joy in what they do, will be successful.  What do you want for your kids, to get straight As at school and go to the best schools?  Or do you want them to have a healthy relationship and enjoy their job, getting up every morning feeling passionate about what they do?  Parents believe that straight As will lead them to what they want.  There is more and more research that it does not.”   “We all want what is ‘best for our kids.’  So, most kids today go to school and play sports and an instrument and go to Hebrew school do this list of endless things that is totally exhausting.   And then by a certain time they have to do homework, and we hold their feet to the fire on homework.  Imagine you work all day long and then you come home and have a little break for dinner and then you have to do it again.  And then you shower and go to bed.  It is not a great day.  Look, we love our children most of anything.  They are our most prized possession.  Like a favorite sports car we want to shine them and have them look good and run well and do everything well.  They are going to be great and go fast.  But it isn’t necessarily so.  Some just need quiet moments around the house.”   “You get perceived by your children tremendously.  Even if you pretend that you don’t care, they know that you care.  They know how intensely you care.  And it’s not just the mom that bursts into tears when the kid brings home a B.  Kids should be achieving for themselves.  But we have kids who are one hundred thousand percent pleasing their parents.”   “Getting into a top middle and high school is only the opportunity of a lifetime if you are the right kind of kid.  And parents need to remember that standardized testing is a tiny percentage of the consideration given at elite schools.  They care about character, who is your child on a whole.  What sort of things has the school to say about your child and what sorts of things does your child have to say about themselves?  The academic best is not what they care about.”   SHIELDING CHILDREN FROM CONSEQUENCES   “Everybody wants their children to learn how to solve problems, but nobody wants their children to have any problems to solve.”   “I see parents shielding children from consequences a lot.  Often the work of teachers is to coach parents through the tendency to protect their children from failure.  Every year at my back to school night speech, I talk to parents about their choosing an independent school not so that their children will never have bumps along the way.  But in fact, you are choosing an independent school so that you will have partners with which to weather the bumps.  They should celebrate when their children get in trouble.  They should celebrate when their kids hit bumps, because that's how they learn to survive setbacks.  That's how they become resilient and learn to stand up and keep going.  Everybody wants their children to learn how to solve problems, but nobody wants their children to have any problems to solve.”   “Tolerating your children's discomfort is extremely difficult to do.  You wouldn’t believe number of times we see parents making a second trip to drive home work to school, that their children left on the floor of their bedroom, to avoid a late slip.  What happens if you leave it on the floor of your bedroom three times in a row?  You have to have some situations before they go off to college, where you left them fall down.”   “There is an anxiety around parents thinking their child's failures will affect their future.  It stems from the competitiveness of schooling and college entrance.  So, when a child does make a mistake, which they are supposed to, and which is how they learn, it kicks in a certain level of anxiety around ‘Oh no, what are the outside consequences for this mistake?’   It ought to be, ‘Wow, what a great learning opportunity.  This is a chance for me as a parent to reaffirm our values as a family and to have that discussion with our child around what is important in this household, why we don’t do x,y,z.’   It is really a case of managing anxiety with parents.  A child’s mistakes are exactly how they learn.  If you don’t let them have those failures than you really have some problems going forward.”   “Take the extreme case of students asked to leave a high school after an incident of cheating or alcohol.  Those too are opportunities where parents can reach down deep inside to say, ‘What do we need to do to pull this family together and get this kid the help that he needs.’  And it is a catalyst to real change where the next schooling experience is usually much more positive.  And almost all of those kids go on to lead good lives.  What you want to avoid is the kids getting behind the wheel after drinking and killing someone or themselves.”   “I spend a lot of my time and my office, talking to parents about how I didn't understand their kid’s intentions.  Or that she did not mean it.  People want to excuse accountability for their kids because they think I am saying their kid is a bad kid.  What I am saying is we have to figure out how to get them to make better decisions ahead of time.”   “When a child makes a mistake, ask them, ‘Was there a part of you that when you were making this mistake said ‘bad idea’?’ 99% of the time there is.  Then the question is, ‘What stopped you from listening to yourself?’ They love this and it makes it more interesting to them.  Go through that for a while.  There are lots of reasons.  More importantly, you are just trying to get them to pay attention to that part of themselves.  The next question is, ‘What do you need to do to make it right.’  They will say, ‘I can’t, it’s broke’  But what can you do to make it better?  We do a terrible job teaching our children how to earn forgiveness.  You can earn it.  But if someone just bestows it on you, it isn’t real.  I tell the kids that if you give a sincere apology, you will feel different about it.”   “I say to all in coming sixth grade families that at some point they are going to get a call from the school telling them something about your child that you are not going to believe.  Inside you are going to think ‘That’s not my child.  She would never say anything like that.  He would never do anything like that.  I have news for you, they do and they will.  Your job is not to take it personally.  It is not about you.  And it is not to rush to their defense.  It is to ask your child a few questions.  It is to let your first reaction go.  And it is to listen to the school.  Your child is now experimenting.  You might not agree with the consequence.  Let it stand, because there is nothing worse than when a parent gets involved to soften the consequence.  Sometimes it won’t be fair.  That’s OK.  Life’s not always fair.”   PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT   “Every study that has ever been done says that one of the most important things a family can do is eat dinner together.”   “We have kids that come here at eight and don’t leave until six.  And it is because their parents are working.  But there is sometimes a sense of loneliness around those kids.  If there is a way to create some sacred time where the phone is disconnected and the television is off, you create traditions around sacred moments with your kids.  But dinner, especially, there is so much research around dinner together.”   “I feel like some parents, even though they work their butts off in their own professional lives, when they get home, they are totally present for their children.  That means they are looking them in the eye, and they are really hearing what they have to say.  And I think that is so much about what can make a good parent.  They also ask for help from the children and give them work to do.  They also take the bad things and ask, what could you have done differently, Instead of oh you poor thing, Do you feel bad.”   “You have to eat dinner together.  I don’t care how late it is.  And you have to do it as often as possible.  The other important family ritual is putting your children to bed.  In the dark is when you find out the dirt, what is really going on with your kid.”   “I write to parents about when I open go to the curb and open the door for their kid to get in the car and they are on the cell phone, I just watch the kid deflate and the moment is over.  The beautiful transition moment to give them your attention is over.”   “When your kids become adolescents they pretty much unceremoniously fire us as their manager.  It is over with.  There is no re-hiring or anything.  Our job then is to grieve, get over it and get rehired as their consultant.  It will become much more about influence than control.”