Secrets behind the very high achieving of families you know?

[Santatree]

How come some families are so high achieving? Is it money? What way they parent? Private schools?

They have a good work ethic
They encourage engagement with education, not sneering or 'too cool for school'
They network or have networks already in the family
They have good health and the money to maintain that or the ability to maintain that
They prioritise experiences and a wide outlook to the world
They have fairly firm boundaries and expectations around achievement, its not ok to just drift along

Based on how DH’s state educated school friend and her DC are doing, I’d agree with @soupfiend .

@soupfiend yes I gathered as much. Money as such doesn't come into it too much, it's more attitudes to life

In my experience money leads to more money. Either directly in the form of financial help for kids to get established or indirectly via giving access to activities, experiences, contacts etc that lead to better outcomes.

I worked with VIPs in a close role (PR/ events) and I saw a lot of high achieving people and their families up close.

Firstly I would take issue with how you are defining high achieving. Some VIPs had amazing careers and parenting relationships but not much going on in their marriages / relationships. Some had stellar careers, seemingly happy marriages but had basically outsourced their home, food and children.

Some people never took time off and ran everything at an exhausting pace, some were secretly quite low and depressed a lot of the time.

Most of them had quite profound status anxiety despite being globally known and respected.

But anyway aside from all that - yes top class education leading to really high expectations, ruthless prioritisation and delegation.

I think it's mostly about values and work ethics tbh. With a significant dose of good luck thrown in.

I think it's a combination of all of those things, but mostly the parenting. It's possible without private schools/money (though probably harder).

DS is a pretty high achiever so far, and I think will continue to be. We've vetoed Private school based on the fact it looked stuffy and out of touch we preferred the local Primary, but the option is there if we ever found state school wasn't meeting his needs. So far his teachers have been really engaging and have recommended things to work on at home with him. He also has LOTS of extra curricular sport/art/language groups (and he seems very driven to learn in them).

But I've set a pretty high expectation at home - that we're always reading/learning/talking about something interesting or he's curious about. We go to a lot of museums and cultural places as days out/holidays, and we have a lot of fun too! I grew up in a very low expectation household, in a community of very low expectation households, and I struggled massively (and still do) to crawl out of that mindset and make something of myself. Definitely a hope to hold for DS (and luckily he's thriving in it and seems to love everything we touch ~ not sure I'd be chasing it quite so hard if it didn't suit him!)

Just with these VIPs whose children were going to be very wealthy anyways .. we're they still very pushy with school work & extracurriculars?

What kind of ‘high-achieving’ are we talking about, OP?

Work ethic
Prioritising education for themselves and their kids
Don't fritter money early in careers so build a financial cushion
Have kids later when careers are established to maximise earning power (women)
Sacrificing some aspects of personal lives

Depends what you mean by high achieving but IMO successful people understand how to play a long game.
they invest money rather than spend it all because they know the value of compound interest, they invest time in education, exercise and cultural activities because they know these will pay off further down the line, they know their strengths and their limits and work with both accordingly.

The parents are open about wanting their children to achieve a lot, and willing to make personal sacrifices (like moving to a worse area) to make this happen. The children are goal oriented and don't need to be pushed much to work towards those goals.

Largely, parents with above average intelligence who value education and expect their children to do well.

I think money has everything to do with it, it may not be the only thing but without it, bettering ones self is a lot lot harder.

I know of v few who has come from a poor background and done really well but i do know of plenty of high achievers who have had a well off back ground.

Of course there will always be exceptions to this but as said, money buys tuition, experiences/travel, access to better areas to live in, private education and children see parents who strive and the lives they live, it gives them hope.

Compare to someone living in a sink housing estate, surrounded by poor schools, little work ethic, limited work opportunities & parents - if you re lucky - who have had the life beaten out of them, sometimes quite literally.

@Santatree to be honest they didn't seem to need to. Once you've enrolled your child in a high end private school the school and the peer group do that for you. The kids were around competitive high achieving peers and so saw themselves as needing to be very rounded, getting high exam results, Oxbridge and Ivy League with extra curriculars.

But, to my original point, they were not happier families or children. They saw achievement in a different way and often couldn't enjoy the fact they had been to Oxford because they only got a 2:1 for eg.

Work ethic plus money.

Health warning: it's not all that glossy though, you might not see the hours of tears practising an instrument, the revision, the travelling to sports training in rain, the physical injuries, the constant pressure, all missed events, some missed friendships, lack of family and personal downtime, having zero choice in own life direction, incompetence in other areas e.g. domestic and mechanic skills, etc.

It's money. it's always money. There might be a handful who have literally pulled themselves up by their boot straps. But, on the whole, people who are very high achieving (and lets face it, we're talking about wealth when we say high achieving) have usually come from money already. Not necessarily ultra wealth but comfortable wealth.

@scandinista Relatives of mine shipped their average intelligent children to a top private school as boarders, out of a failing primary school, when they left, after 6th form, they both had a string of A*'s in a variety of subjects & well done to them all but it took very little input from their parents, who basically handed their kids for someone else to bring up.

I really don't see why they even had kids, its almost like partially giving them out for adoption.

If you're talking about academic and career success (which is not the only definition of success imo) then it's bright children with parents who put a high value on education and have high expectations. It helps if the idea of being "successful" motivates the child in question, hence why you can have 2 children from the same family of roughly equal intelligence, one earning a high salary and the other a happy SAHP.

I think that this depends on what kind of ‘high-achieving’ you’re talking about, though. My parents were illiterate and my siblings and I grew up in poverty, with parents who were suspicious of education, and pressured us to leave school young and thought university, about which they knew nothing, was ‘only for rich people’. Because of local authority grants and scholarships, I got there (I’m the eldest) and helped the others. We have something like fifteen degrees between us, including two doctorates, and all work in professional jobs. I live in a big old house in an old money part of the city, surrounded by consultant medics. This is ‘high-achieving’ for people with our background, but is not at all high-achieving compared to some of my MC friends, who are opera directors, or award-winning architects or well-known novelists, whose children are BBC producers or global CEOs.

Forgot to add - natural intelligence and often looks help...

I think they have high energy too.
They're always active and doing something.

My husband has a really good job, he has worked really hard to get where he is, state school, years of study post university, had no financial help from parents as they couldn't afford it.
I have no qualifications other than average GCSE's and i've worked hard to get my job.
We teach our daughter the value of work and education. Thankfully as things are she absolutely loves school and learning. Hope that never goes away.

How did children of average intelligence get into a top private boarding school? Those entrance exams are not for the faint of heart.

None of the high achieving people I know were privately educated. As pp said - it's work ethic, intelligence and valuing education. I would add to that there is an element of taking risks/making sacrifices and also moving to take up opportunities.