Honestly, many parents that run a business over think and do more harm then good. I can only share my experience as a son growing up in my fathers business.
Being told you won’t get anything for free at a young age isn’t useful, and doesn’t teach any useful life lessons. Offering them challenging projects they can tackle builds confidence, work ethic and a taste of success. The failures teaches mechanisms to cope with failure and bruised egos, a skill few second generation kids posses. When they want something, denying them based on not having nice things when you were young, for the purpose of toughening them is silly. Set a price, make them earn it. Once in awhile set the price so high, the task so difficult they can’t attain it. Can’t have everything in life is a great lesson, so is dealing with disappointment.
Education is useful to an extent, but knowledge of the current business is irrelevant. The only thing of real importance is knowing how to learn and self educate. With all the resources available today they can easily learn all the things relevant later on.
Despite popular belief work ethic isn’t taught, simply set the example and it will make a difference.
When the time comes for transitioning them into the company. Don’t just drop them into a role and hope it works out, pro actively plan to make it work. I don’t believe in the non-sense of start at the bottom with a broom, neither do I believe in starting at the top. They’ll most likely make a royal mess of either. Find an isolated role, useful enough to not be a waste of time, but with little interaction with others. When they’ve naturally earned the respect of others, everything will naturally work out from there.
