Do children absorb values from what parents tell them or from the behavior they observe?

Chris Sacca · Oct 11, 2021

Parents do their children an enormous disservice by bailing them out of every situation and handing out participation medals; kids need to be told plainly that they lost

His kids' karate instructor tells each child 'you lose' and, as a result, his kids now take losing in stride and simply ask to play again rather than crying

24:38 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb

Nick Huber · Aug 21, 2023

Stress tolerance is built by practice, so people who have never faced stress are wrecked by small setbacks

Given the same flat tire, someone who runs a company and has handled problems forgets about it by dinner, while a trust-fund kid who has had everything handled for them has their week ruined and lasting anxiety

32:33 20VC: The Biggest Lies of Silicon Valley, Why Entrepreneurship is Not For Everyone, Why VCs are Out of Touch, Why Many Would Be Great Entrepreneurs Will Burn Out, Why You Should Let Your Children Suffer and Why You Will Choose The Wrong Partner with Nick

Nick Huber · Aug 21, 2023

Children should be made to live with the consequences of their poor decisions, including serious ones like a DUI, rather than being bailed out by parental wealth or connections

Living with consequences is how kids learn; the wealthy parent who calls the judge friend teaches nothing, while two nights in jail does

Scope: while still trying to steer them away from life-ruining mistakes

35:12 20VC: The Biggest Lies of Silicon Valley, Why Entrepreneurship is Not For Everyone, Why VCs are Out of Touch, Why Many Would Be Great Entrepreneurs Will Burn Out, Why You Should Let Your Children Suffer and Why You Will Choose The Wrong Partner with Nick

Nick Huber · Aug 21, 2023

Parents today mollycoddle children far too much, and shielding kids from the fact that life is brutal is the single best way to set them up for failure

Everything worth doing — marriage, parenting, building a company, staying fit — is hard, so a bubble leaves kids soft, blaming others and adopting a victim mentality instead of struggling with a positive attitude

38:44 20VC: The Biggest Lies of Silicon Valley, Why Entrepreneurship is Not For Everyone, Why VCs are Out of Touch, Why Many Would Be Great Entrepreneurs Will Burn Out, Why You Should Let Your Children Suffer and Why You Will Choose The Wrong Partner with Nick

Elias Torres · Mar 21, 2025

The best a wealthy parent can do to keep children hungry is to deliberately manufacture adversity for them

Kids of successful parents no longer face natural hardship, so it has to be created

Scope: easier if success came later, once the kids were already older

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Elias Torres · Mar 21, 2025

Modern parents are too soft on their kids — you should be loving and give words of affirmation while still being tough and manufacturing adversity

His own upbringing was far harsher and he values what it made him; affirmation and toughness are not mutually exclusive, it's a paradox you hold

Scope: says he also wishes he'd been more loving early on; 'nothing compares to how I grew up'

52:42 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres

Chad Peets · Jan 9, 2026

Teaching grit to children who will never face genuine hardship is extremely difficult; the best you can do is make them accountable to the world rather than to you

He built grit by having to put food on the table or not eat, an experience his kids will never have; so he tells them the world doesn't care and nobody is coming to save them

Scope: says he still struggles with it a lot

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Mike Lazerow · Aug 2, 2021 · hedged

Values like self-awareness, compassion and work ethic can only be transmitted to children by modeling them, not by talking about them

You can't tell a kid to be a good person; kids want support and guardrails and learn what a meaningful life looks like from what they see

Scope: says it's a work in progress and he doesn't claim to have nailed it

22:57 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them

Brad Gerstner · Oct 10, 2022

Instilling humility in wealthy children depends on how you actually live, not on what you tell them

Kids see the choices you make and how you treat others; telling them to be humble while living in an 18,000 square foot home doesn't work, whereas his sons know the family could afford more and chooses not to

Scope: not a judgment on friends who live in big homes; everyone has agency and choice

52:56 20VC: Altimeter's Brad Gerstner on Why Supercycles and the Powerlaw is the Most Important Thing In Investing, Why Portfolio Diversification is the Opposite of Risk Mitigation and The #1 Question Brad Asks All New Recruits

Harry Stebbings · Jan 9, 2026

The secret to parenting is modeling the behavior you want, because children imitate their parents rather than follow instruction

Like baby elephants following their parents — if you want kids to work hard, work hard; if you want them kind to waiters, be kind to waiters

52:31 20Sales: Why the Best Sales People are F**** in the Head | Why Remote Work is BS | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting Sales Teams | How to Build a Sales Machine | What Everyone Gets Wrong Today in Sales with Chad Peets

Nikesh Arora · Jun 22, 2026

There is no formula for parenting; children learn who you are by watching your work ethic, values and micro-interactions rather than from what you tell them.

There are far too many variables for any model to prescribe outcomes, and his daughter knows him better through observation than anything he could say; what matters is the child believing you had the best intentions for them.

64:17 20VC: Nikesh Arora on the Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth | The Future of Token Costs | Memory Becoming the Moat | Where Value Accrues: Infra, Models, or Apps? | Why Enterprise AI is Not Ready & Systems of Record vs Systems of Intelligence

Harry Stebbings · Jun 22, 2026

Children learn parenting lessons by imitating observed behavior, so parents should model the behavior they want rather than instruct it.

Animal documentaries show offspring simply following the parent — if you want your child to be nice to waiters or work hard, you must do those things yourself.

Scope: relayed from a previous podcast guest

65:06 20VC: Nikesh Arora on the Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth | The Future of Token Costs | Memory Becoming the Moat | Where Value Accrues: Infra, Models, or Apps? | Why Enterprise AI is Not Ready & Systems of Record vs Systems of Intelligence

Roger Ehrenberg · Feb 19, 2024

Raising grounded children amid financial abundance requires parents to visibly live the values they preach rather than just stating them, and it remains an ongoing effort even once children are adults

Kids stay grounded because their parents are themselves grounded — there was no gap between what he and Karen said and what they did: hard work, community investment, humility, and constant presence at games, birthdays and performances rather than absentee parenting

Scope: hardest in an environment like New York City where classmates' parents hold different values; requires constant vigilance, not a one-time lesson

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Kevin Ryan · Apr 10, 2024

Wealthy parents should not hand children luxuries like an expensive car; values must be instilled from day one and children should have to make it on their own after college.

You have to install the expectation from day one and treat them that way; friends who gave an 18-year-old a $75,000 Porsche got it wrong.

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Klaus Hommels · Nov 27, 2024 · hedged

His children's hunger and work ethic came from a deliberately normal, tight family life — being home for supper, homework and bedtime before working again at nine — combined with the home his then wife created

He consciously structured his working day around family during the 2000s, and his then wife gave valuable input and created the home

Scope: family was not affluent in the early years; he attributes it to several factors working together, not one

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Scott Farquhar · Oct 9, 2023

You cannot insulate children from your wealth; the only workable approach is teaching them the value of money and how to treat people well

Even after trying to isolate his kids, his children's school friends discussed how much his Sydney house cost

Scope: says he hasn't cracked the code; won't know if he succeeded for another decade

40:14 20VC: Atlassian Co-Founder Scott Farquhar on The Biggest Lessons Scaling Atlassian to $50BN Market Cap; The Four Roles of the CEO, The Funding Round That Net Accel $6BN, The Regrets of Omission and Commission & The Honeymoon Cut Short

Craig Courtemanche · Dec 4, 2023

Rather than hiding wealth from your children, you should treat them as adults from day one and set categorical guardrails with no leeway in enforcement

Friends who fly private but drive minivans are playing games; he and Hilary instead empowered Henry with clear guardrails and consistent consequences, and Henry grew up well-adjusted, frugal and running a successful business at 25

Scope: based on raising one child

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David Vélez · Sep 11, 2023

The most important thing in raising children in an affluent family is that they not realize they have wealth

If children believe they have wealth they become complacent and lose the need to prove themselves — the single most valuable asset a person can have

53:15 Conceal wealth from children to preserve their drive and hunger

Dave Clark · Jul 17, 2023

If you teach children to treat everyone — from bank tellers and waiters to CEOs — with dignity and respect and to feel responsible to their community, the rest of their development takes care of itself

Character and respect for all people are the foundation; the specifics of ambition and career follow from that

36:07 Teaching respect and dignity for everyone is the foundation for good character development

Harry Stebbings · Dec 4, 2023

Instilling values, hunger and ambition in children who grow up with wealth is the hardest thing founders face

Every one of the 48 multi-billion-dollar founders he has asked said this was the hardest thing, and kids are subliminally shaped by the nice house and nice car

53:41 Instilling values hunger and ambition is the hardest challenge for wealthy founders children