Almost every parent I have worked with during my 15 years as a family wealth coach arrives with some version of the same fear. It usually comes out as a practical question: At what age do we tell them about the wealth? But underneath is a harder question: Will knowing about this money take away my child’s reason to build a life?

I have spent just as much time with the children and grandchildren of ultra-high-net-worth families. One 31 year old captured the fear in a very real way. He described himself as “a passenger in my own life.” Recurrently, I am astounded by the level of resources available to the next generation in terms of education, networks, wealth and time; however, they are the least empowered population we work with. A fundamental observation has surfaced for me. Your child may not be unmotivated. Your child may be unpracticed.

From the outside, the two can look remarkably similar. A young adult cannot settle on a path forward. She abandons projects and focuses on social activities. He prefers to play video games rather than face the consequences of going against the family business. She lacks urgency despite being 32 years old and unwilling to participate in family board meetings. He doesn’t know what he wants to do and is paralyzed by overanalyzing every possibility, worried that his father won’t support his choice.

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These could easily be interpreted as a motivation problem. As we peek under the hood, it is worth reflecting on where this person has had the opportunities to succeed or fail on their own.

Research on human motivation has consistently identified autonomy and competence, along with relatedness (feeling a sense of belonging, connection and care) as vital contributors to intrinsic motivation. The very wealth parents worked so hard to create becomes the obstacle to providing a prepared heir. The missed flight can be rebooked. The lost phone is replaced. The internship is arranged. The overdraft is quietly covered. The family office handles the difficult phone call. The mortgage is paid even though there is no income.

Well-intentioned actions protect the child from succeeding or failing on their own and, more importantly, remove the opportunity to practice these fundamental character-building experiences of living a well-examined life.

The question is not how much to give them and when. Rather, it is about who they are becoming by giving them opportunities to practice autonomy and judgment, agency and confidence, long before they are responsible for significant assets.

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There are four places to start.

1. Be the Model

Children don’t learn your values from what you say. They learn from thousands of small observations: how you treat the housekeeper when something breaks, whether the server gets thanked, how you speak about people with less or more money, how you talk about a recent purchase or vacation, whether you keep commitments and how you use power. One young adult said it plainly. “Dad wanted to spend quality time with us in Europe. Every meal was exactly the same as at home. He was on his phone, and we had dinner with the security team.”

Research on affluent youth adds an important dimension. Psychologist Suniya Luthar and her colleagues have found that wealth itself does not insulate children from developmental risk. Among the vulnerabilities identified in affluent adolescents are excessive achievement pressure and physical or emotional isolation from parents.

Parents over-index on achievement at the cost of connection and well-being. The messages they hear are to get the best grades in the class, work harder than everyone else, and be the leader. One daughter, suffering from high blood pressure and depression, revealed that it was a sign of weakness for a woman in the family to need a nanny. The mantra in the family was work hard, do your part, no matter what it takes. Her needs and voice were silenced by the fear of entitlement. Ultimately, she recognized her own voice and needs were independent of the family and the wealth, and that she was capable of making decisions that supported herself and her family.

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We see real vs. spoken values play out when parents are not aligned. When one parent continually smooths over difficulty while the other holds the line, children quickly learn which parent to approach to get the answer they want. What appears to be a lesson about boundaries can instead become a lesson about how to work around people.

Looking more closely at the practices of a family, we can see opportunities to actually “live them,” for example, if responsibility matters and your daughter rides horses, perhaps she mucks the stall before or after practice. If generosity matters, a child can choose toys to give away before new ones arrive. If gratitude matters, thank-you notes may be expected. If family connection matters, perhaps Sunday dinner is protected.

Many people ask, “What values do we want our children to have?” A more powerful question to ask, one that reveals the actual values we practice, is: If a stranger observed our family on an ordinary Tuesday, what would they conclude we value? That may show you the values your children are actually learning.

2. Let Them Carry Their Own Backpack

One next-generation family member described a simple childhood rule: “We carry our own backpack.”

At school pickup, other parents or caregivers sometimes rushed to take their children’s heavy backpacks. Her mother waited by the car while she carried a backpack half her size to the car. When adults continually remove what children are capable of carrying, children can receive a message without anyone ever saying it: Someone else will carry what I can’t. Support is not the same as rescue, and not rescuing is one of the hardest things a parent with means struggles with. It starts with having the time to run their homework back to class, or replacing the lost phone without consequence, or caving under pressure to buy the latest fashion. These seem insignificant; however, they set up a pattern that is not. The objective is to preserve the developmental experiences children are capable of handling themselves.

At 5, that may literally mean carrying the backpack, clearing napkins off the table, waiting their turn or taking care of their belongings. At 12, it may mean remembering sports equipment, managing an allowance or experiencing the consequence of forgetting something.

At 17, it may mean talking to the teacher themselves, holding a summer job, managing a budget or paying the ticket they received. At 25, it means the family office stops solving problems the adult child can solve alone.

Before stepping in, ask:

A relatively small amount of money lost through a poor decision at twenty-two can be inexpensive tuition compared with making the first consequential mistake involving family capital at fifty-two.

Children need enough experience and practice in carrying responsibility, and accountability helps them see that they have the confidence and competence to handle more difficult tasks.

3. Bring Them Into the Giving

Consider the structure of a wealthy child’s life. Much of the flow of resources is directed toward them: education, travel, experiences, homes, activities and support. Philanthropy is often used to teach generosity. It is also a great opportunity to teach stewardship if they are given the rest of the responsibility of giving.

One family we worked with asked each of five children to direct $1,000. Their 13 year old daughter chose an organization serving children. The following year, she decided not to support it again. She had volunteered there. She had observed how the organization operated. She concluded that too much of its money was being spent on raising more money rather than directly serving children. At 13, she had begun doing due diligence and learning to make decisions for herself based on what mattered to her. Twenty-five years later, she and her siblings were successfully running the family foundation. Capability requires somewhere to practice, and the more they practice, the better they can handle the load in later years.

An 8 year old can choose a cause and explain why they care about it. A teenager can visit an organization they find interesting, ask questions and conduct research. A young adult can evaluate proposals, read financial information, track outcomes and participate in a grant committee. Eventually, those experiences can become increasingly consequential. Philanthropy gives young people an opportunity to practice three questions pointed more toward :

Those are not simply philanthropic skills. They are stewardship skills. They are the same questions a future owner, beneficiary, trustee, board member, investor or family leader will eventually need to answer.

4. Be Transparent—at the Right Level

Parents frequently ask, “When do we tell them about the wealth?”

Start with a reality many parents underestimate: Their children usually know more than they think. Even young children notice they have a bigger pool, more than one home, and take more vacations than their friends. Research has found that children as young as five spontaneously notice and remember certain cues to wealth and begin using them to make inferences about other people’s possessions. Parents see the solution as either disclosure or silence. It is actually about giving honest and developmentally appropriate responses.

Research on family financial communication also shows that parents deliberately create boundaries around what financial information they reveal to their children, weighing the perceived risks and benefits of disclosure.⁴ Boundaries are required. Practicing secrecy and deception sends a different message and value structure.

One way to think about it is to increase information as you increase responsibility. When the child asks, “Are we rich?” at 12, the appropriate response might be, “Why do you ask?” to learn what they are concerned about, and to plant the seeds of the responsibilities that come with that realization. When the 25-year-old asks the same question, your response might be “Yes, we are considerably better off than most. How do you see yourself contributing to ensuring we are able to pass this wealth on to the next generation?”

Eventually, adult children should understand the structures before they inherit responsibility for them. That does not mean they know how much wealth there is, but they do understand how it is organized and who to turn to if the head of the family is suddenly unavailable. They should know who the advisors are and what they do. They should understand trusts, ownership, governance and the family enterprise. They should understand what roles may exist and what qualifies someone to hold them. And they should have enough experience to ask intelligent questions and enough confidence to challenge an answer. An heir who knows the structure but has never practiced having a voice

From Heir to Steward

The question for parents isn’t simply how much wealth to leave their children or when to tell them about it.

A better question may be: What are our children practicing, and who are they becoming as a result? Aristotle’s famous quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” What are the habits your children are practicing to become capable and prepared heirs?

Two Actions You Can Take Today

First, get aligned with your spouse or partner. Agree on what you are preparing your children for? Where are you rescuing? Where are you sending conflicting messages? Are you both on the same page regarding the purpose of the wealth?

Second, identify one thing your child is capable of carrying that someone else currently carries for them and give it back to them. Look for the places where you are making decisions for them out of efficiency. Where are you uncomfortable watching them struggle? Where are you allowing them to fail? For parents reading this with a 35 or 45 year old child, late is not the same as never.

I have watched adults discover capabilities they had been told, or had come to believe, they did not possess because someone finally gave them something real to carry and stood back far enough to let them carry it. This may be the person who struggled in the family business, but found their stride in dealing art. Or the person who held opposite political beliefs from the family and took the risk to join the political party of an opposing candidate.

Before deciding that an heir lacks motivation, ask how much opportunity they have actually had to practice making decisions, experience consequences, solve their own problems, even if it is different from the family line. Where are they able to recover from mistakes on their own?

Wealth doesn’t have to take away motivation, but it can make it very easy to lose the experiences that help develop it. One question worth asking: “Is the wealth driving your family, or is your family driving the wealth? You can probably answer that question in 30 seconds. What you do with the answer is the work of a lifetime.