The following is an excerpt from Wealth of Wisdom: Top Practices for Wealth Families and Their Advisors by Tom McCullough and Keith Whitaker (Wiley, 2022). The chapter is entitled Developmental Life Lessons for Grandchildren by William (Bo) and Suzanne Huhn.

“As we all know, wonderful things sometimes grow out of the most painful experiences. In our case the disaster involved a daughter who lost her adolescent years to drug addiction. This was a horrible experience for her and our entire family. Fortunately, she fought her way to recovery, and we are very proud of her professional accomplishments and, even more important, her success as a wonderful mother.

As a result of the nightmare, we pondered a way to help protect our grandchildren. As the idea of developmental life lessons crystallized, we realized that our attitude and the process was more important than the specific lessons. We started with confidence and optimism. We decided to use a lot of humor and personal interaction. We figured this would be a long-term effort, requiring different media and much repetition. The goal was to slowly pound the lessons into the kids’ bones over the course of years.”

More details about this project can be found in the rest of the chapter and the additional resources they provide. We worked with Bo and Zanne to create a video account of their experience over 13 years of teaching their “life lessons” to their 13 grandchildren. All of the videos can be viewed in our Vimeo library.