The Price of Privilege: Parenting Consultant Alicia Eaton On The Challenges Of Raising High-Net-Worth Children
Psychotherapist Alicia Eaton specialises in helping the children of UHNWIS with their unique set of challenges
“Teenagers say to me, ‘I know I come from a privileged background, I know I shouldn’t complain.’ But houses and money are a great disguiser,” says Alicia Eaton, a children’s psychotherapist and parenting consultant, who’s been based in London’s Harley Street for 20 years.
Alicia has helped children of billionaires, celebrities, CEOs and those from well-known families, and says that the offspring of UHNWIs have to tackle different challenges to children from more conventional backgrounds. “There’s a sense of guilt, so they don’t want to complain or talk about it… [But] there’s an extraordinary amount of pressure on these kids and the parents feel isolated too because they can’t easily discuss their children’s problems with other parents at school. There’s a need to look perfect and often problems get swept under the carpet.”
Even the simple question of ‘where is home?’ can be a complicated one. As Alicia points out, most high-net-worth clients have several homes around the world, so it’s not unusual for children to travel around, spending each school holiday in a different country. For many, boarding school is where they spend most of their time and so it can feel like the closest thing that they know to a home.
Often, these children are also apart from their parents for significant periods of time, keeping in touch over video calls and only seeing each other physically in the holidays. If they’re educated in a different country, there might be a cultural disconnect with their parents when they return home. “At a British boarding school, for example, there’s an English sense of humour,” says Alicia. “Teenagers are constantly growing and developing. When you spend time apart, you have to get to know each other again and they might be a different child in the summer to when you last saw them at Christmas.”
It’s also expected that many children of UHNWIs will take up the reins of the family business someday. “Barron Trump is a good example of this. You can see the way he is going and how he is growing up. In some families, the dad might be a CEO and maybe the son doesn’t want to do that, maybe he has dyslexia. There’s a pressure on them about where they go to school and then onto university.”
For children with parents in the spotlight, there might be additional stresses to navigate. “It’s hard when you’re 10 and reading about your parents’ divorce online, with lots of mudslinging going on. There’s an embarrassment in such families and communication is less open because everyone stops talking,” Alicia says, flagging that where there is a huge amount of attention on their family, the children will become timid “because they feel like they can’t blemish the family’s reputation… Wealth and privilege don’t produce confident children – often it’s the opposite.” Anxiety is common among the children of UHNWIs, as are nightmares, insomnia, bed-wetting and eating disorders, including obesity, and children as young as eight have come to Alicia’s clinic.
Thankfully, there are things that can be done. “I do more than just conventional therapy, I look at behavioural change and emotional wellbeing,” says Alicia of her techniques that include guided meditation, designed to remove stress and anxiety, and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). The idea is that, as well as removing the issues, children are being taught methods to build their self-confidence too. “It’s not just techniques, it’s personal development coaching. I help them become more successful and confident, so the other negative things drop off.”
Parents are often crucial in this process and Alicia teaches them the best way to support their child, even if it means being straightforward. “I always say to the parents that this is teamwork… I need to coach the parents as they are the ones with the child most of the time. If there are relationship problems [with them], I look at how to improve them.”
More recently, Alicia, who devoted a chapter of her book, First Aid For Your Child’s Mind, to social media, has helped young clients navigate the online world. “There is a phase that teenagers go through called ‘In The Spotlight’. It’s where they all dress the same and want to fit in. They get this real sense of self-consciousness, which is part of their development. On social media, it’s been made 10 times worse. If you have kids from different backgrounds, they feel it more keenly.”
She cites the example of one boy who, unbeknown to his school friends, was from a famous family. Then, someone found a video online and, for two days, everyone talked about it. Fortunately, as is often the case with social media, everything quickly died down but, “for those two days, the boy felt like he was on high alert”. When things like this happen, Alicia teaches her clients how to visualise and then delete the negative comments they have read about themselves. “But you need to also create a positive message so they can see something different.”
Many of Alicia’s earliest clients, themselves now in the press, are still using the techniques she taught them. “As a therapist, to feel that you played a small part in their success by helping to iron out a few problems, is immensely rewarding.”
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