Tips for Parents in Family Business to Help Their Children Lead Meaningful Lives

Listen to Thayer Willis, a family wealth educator, born into the founding family of the multi-national Georgia-Pacific Corporation family based in Oregon, USA, discuss tips to help children of affluent families deal with the complex pressures, pitfalls and perils of wealth. Children of the rising generation in family business inherent many resources, however, a meaningful life must be earned.

One of the most important messages to give the children in wealthy families is that it is up to them to build a meaningful life for themselves, that that is not something that will be given to them. Number one, it is important for kids to be able to follow their dreams and a lot of kids really need some support and encouragement around that. They might not think it is possible for them to dream, they might think that the parents have a prescribed future already set up for them. There might be all kinds of reasons. And number two, encourage kids to volunteer, because it is in volunteering that we get to know parts of ourselves that we would not know otherwise. And it is important to let children choose who they volunteer for. So let them choose something that they are excited about, whether it is pets, or children who are in the hospital. As any of us know who have volunteered, it is amazing how much we receive from it and how much we learn and how much it develops us as a person. Whenever possible it is best to do it with the kids. So the parent and child, maybe even the whole family can go and volunteer together and that is a tremendous experience because the child learns that it is valuable enough that the parent will put their precious time and effort in to it also. So there is a powerful message there. And number three, give children the opportunity to know family and to know the generations that came before them. Get them to tell their stories, so the children understand the kind of people that they came from and what their heritage is in the family and some of the traits that we inherit, like courage and honesty and integrity. These are traits that are passed down in families. Sometimes in my work I use a chart called a genogram, which is a family tree but it has more information on it. Much beyond births and deaths and places that people lived, it goes into what people were like. Eventually patterns emerge. It is always interesting to people and sometimes it is surprising. They recognize traits in the family that they have known and they suddenly see how those traits trace back through the family. And then they begin to understand that they have choices about what they can encourage in their own children, what traits are likely to be strengths and where the gaps are. What I found fairly early on in my work was that we all are given many resources, many gifts, we inherit many kinds of things. The one thing that no one inherits is a meaningful life. For that we have to work.