Let’s do it the smart way
One might think that children of wealthy families have everything going for them; they get the coolest toys, nicest clothes, are educated in the best schools, have private tutors, grow up with nannies, have the best doctors care for them and seem to lack nothing, but the truth is it is not easy to grow up with all these ‘things’ with the stigma of a ‘rich child’ or a ‘trust fund baby’.
When you read about ‘at-risk’ children, you envision children from underprivileged neighbourhoods, from broken homes, street kids, etc. and can hardly envision the kids of the top wealth percentile to be children ‘at-risk’. What a surprise that a recent research body has added a new ‘at-risk’ group of adolescent youth – children of affluent homes. A study of public school students, conducted by Suniya S Luthar shows: “that as many as 22 percent of adolescent girls from financially comfortable families suffer from clinical depression.
This is three times the national rate of depression for adolescent girls” [1]. The documentary film Born Rich [2], a controversial and much discussed work by Jamie Johnson, a member of the Johnson & Johnson family, shows interviews with 11 children of the super-rich and their struggle to find their own place in life. The film portraits a young man struggling with depression, and another one telling about the common use of LSD in one of the leading and most prestigious boarding schools at the young age of 12.
Another highlight in the film is Ivanka Trump telling how she discovered that her parents were filing for divorce by the headline in the newspaper and was surprised by a big crowd of journalists following her to school on that day. In my practice as multi-family office executive I have seen more than once that families have ‘that one problem child’ who has not completed school, has used drugs, is struggling and wants nothing to do with the family.
These kids show up at the family meetings, but make sure to be drunk or high and to embarrass their parents and siblings.