Do your children have rich grandparents? If so, worry

My thesis stems from seeing many children grow up in an environment of abundance that had no connection to the level of work required to achieve such material success.

Many of your parents conveyed the correct messages about academic success and the correlation with hard work and overall success. But, children would experience life differently.

Great material things. No work needed.

To be clear, many of your parents worked reasonably hard. But the children would soon realize that the boat, the maid, the 10,000-square-foot house, in part or in large part, stemmed from more than just their parents’ efforts. Teenagers also noticed that their car, X Box and Blackberry “magically” appeared without connection to the necessary work.

By comparison, the students I worked with whose parents created wealth had two things going for them:

1) observed that their parents worked hard, often very hard, to achieve material success and

2) perhaps most importantly, his parents had the psychological make-up of those who strive for success. These psychological frameworks are naturally transmitted to children.

This is the part that hurts some parents. If you and/or your spouse grew up in a very wealthy home, it is only natural that you did not work very hard for material success. To be clear, many children of wealthy parents work hard, and the stereotype of the spoiled millionaire’s child is overblown.

But look around you. It is likely that a part of his wealth is due to the good fortune of being born into a fortune. He may see himself as a hard worker, but it is likely that his material abundance is not entirely due to the sweat of his brow. He probably didn’t incur debt for college or graduate school. It is possible that he had help to buy his house. It is possible that he was able to start his business because he knew he had a safety net.

And guess what? Your children have noticed.

He might as well have been considered a kind and generous father in buying his sixteen-year-old son a Porsche. But what message did you convey? Magical things happen, but not because of hard work.

Here’s a crazy parent example from someone who should know better. Sean John Holmes was born in the public housing projects of Harlem. He managed to get out of a difficult environment, among other things, his father, a drug dealer, was shot dead when he was young, and gained admission to Howard University. He then commuted between Washington, DC, and New York to work as an intern at Uptown Records. He became Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and now Diddy. Say what you want about him, but he certainly worked very hard when he started. It is now worth $340 million. His success was largely due to his willingness at a young age to connect hard work with success. In a few years, he might reflect on that fact alongside his recent purchase of his 16-year-old son’s first car: a $360,000 Maybach Zeppelin.