“I am a product of my upbringing,” said former professional football player Jason Kelce during a teary, 40-minute retirement speech delivered in April in front of his family, coaches and the media. He recapped a 13-year National Football League career with the Philadelphia Eagles that started with being an underdog sixth-round draft pick and culminated in being a contender for the greatest center of all time.
Now a father of three and a first-generation wealth creator who earned over $80 million in his NFL career, Kelce likely hopes to teach his children to be as resilient as he has become. He might also share a concern common to ultra-high-net-worth parents: How to ensure the kids don't grow up feeling too entitled or too lacking in confidence to pursue their own dreams.
As an adviser to multigenerational wealthy families and an Eagles fan, I saw something in Jason's retirement speech that other families can learn from. The good news is that there’s a road map that parents can follow, one that’s based on decades of research on the characteristics of families who raise resilient kids.
Intentional or not, Kelce displayed many of these research-based qualities in his farewell speech.
As we explore their successful behaviors, you might discover that you already engage in many of them. Still, it’s helpful to be conscious of what they are and to be intentional about incorporating them into your life.
Share family stories
"My mother was a part of a generation of females that was largely the first of their families to go to college," Kelce said in his speech. "When deciding to go to college, her father said he disagreed with the idea, telling her she should become a secretary or be a wife instead.
“In fact, the only thing that convinced him into letting her go to college was my grandmother's insistence that my mother would find an educated man to settle down with and that would mean more money for the family. Mom took the opportunity to go to college and graduated from the Ohio University, worked in banking for over 40 years climbing the corporate ladder from teller to a VP, and was largely the breadwinner for our family.”
Family stories help children develop a sense of the intergenerational self, according to research by psychologists Robyn Fivush, Jennifer G. Bohanek and Marshall Duke. “We are who we are because of what we have experienced and what we have been told,” they write.
Reminiscing tends to occur naturally when families share time together. Special occasions where the immediate family or extended family members join in are particularly ripe for shared storytelling.
Not only is it essential for the rising generation to hear about their family's past from those who lived it, but these firsthand narratives set the stage for different relatives to share their unique accounts of the same event. Hearing the same tale told from more than one perspective helps children understand that experience is subjective, which helps foster a sense of one's own singular place in a larger story.
Whether it's a holiday meal, a family reunion or an afternoon at grandma's house, take advantage of opportunities to let your children hear about their family's history. Remember that not every story needs to be monumental to be important. Ask your dad about his childhood pets. Go through your honeymoon photos and tell your kids how their parents fell in love. Make your aunt's pierogi recipe together and talk about how it compares to the family's versions.
Incorporating different voices engages the whole family and prepares the rising generation to be successful wealth stewards. But how?
Create an oscillating family narrative
Family stories aren't always happy. Houses burn down, parents get divorced, and grandparents die too soon. While a parent's first impulse might be to protect a child from these messy realities, recounting family challenges in age-appropriate ways is important.
Sharing both the ups and downs creates what psychologists call an oscillating family narrative. It’s considered more healthful than a purely ascending or descending narrative, perhaps because it’s the most realistic. This type of narrative is so powerful because it helps kids cope with stressful situations. It gives them a multigenerational perspective — an expanded sense of self — to draw on.
Kelce provided an oscillating family narrative when he talked about the challenge of being an athlete in Philadelphia, a city whose fans are known for their, um, intensity.
"I saw firsthand the wrath of the Eagles fans in the 2016 Eagles season, and rightfully so," Kelce said. "I had an awful start to that season where I was often overpowered, had many holding penalties that cost our team and looked like one of the worst centers in the league."
He then portrayed how coach Jeff Stoutland got him through "my darkest hours as a Philadelphian." Through belief and focused off-season training, Stout propelled Kelce to his most successful season, culminating in a Super Bowl championship. "And it meant more because of the struggles and work we had been through," Kelce said.
A family’s values and culture tend to drive their decision-making and create a legacy of failure or success. When Kelce's kids hear about the challenges their grandmother and father overcame when others didn't believe in them, they will learn: "I come from the kind of family that doesn't give up. I can find people who will support me during tough times. Let people doubt me. They have no idea how high I can fly."
Foster the five capitals
While financial capital allows wealthy families to enjoy high-quality health care, achieve Ivy League educations and fulfill philanthropic missions, it's only one of the five types of capital that help families flourish across multiple generations, according to renowned family adviser James "Jay" E. Hughes. Human, spiritual, intellectual and social capital are also crucial.
Kelce exemplifies all five capitals:
- He contributed to his family’s human capital through meaningful work, a positive sense of identity and the happiness his football career gave him.
- The lessons he’s shared about his career growth and achievements are part of his family’s intellectual capital.
- Through his teammates, coaches and fans, he has generated abundant social capital. His family and community contribute to society through his education-focused nonprofit foundation, (Be)Philly.
- He shows his family’s spiritual capital in his recognition of the challenges he has faced, his gratitude for those who have been part of his journey and his shared intention of pursuing charitable work with his wife, Kylie, who supports the Eagles Autism Foundation.
- His success as a pro athlete created his family’s financial capital.
Start young
The eldest of Kelce’s three children was only 3 years old when he launched his foundation and not yet 5 when he announced his NFL retirement. They will likely never know a life without wealth or a spotlight. Anyone can look up their dad's career earnings in a second. To raise resilient kids who can handle the attention and money, develop their own identities and share his intention for their family's wealth, he has no choice but to start young.
Wealthy families with the luxury of relative anonymity may not see the need to explain their family’s circumstances when their children are so young, but not doing so can be a missed opportunity. Children pick up on things whether we want them to or not, and amidst big personalities and multigenerational wealth, a child can feel like a speck in their family’s ecosystem.
Sharing stories, building a family narrative and fostering the five capitals can help kids find some piece of their family’s history that they can relate to and own — as well as areas that don’t resonate with them — and may allow them to carve out their own identities. It can also prevent them from having false beliefs about who their family is or thinking they can’t do something because of their last name and family history.
The stories Kelce shared in his retirement speech and the accounts he will share with his kids over the years will help them build their family narrative, just as Kelce's parents helped him develop his. A narrative like Kelce's teaches children that success is not a straight shot to the top or something we achieve alone. Instead, success is born of embracing an underdog mentality and building resilience one day at a time.