Raising a Billionaire : Six Parenting Principals from Richard Branson’s Mother
Welcome ! I’m Sabrina E.Bouker, a computer scientist with a focus on AI Literacy, lecturer at Open University, and mum of two small children. I write about raising Intelligent humans in the era of Artificial Intelligence.
It was morning, it was winter, and it was dark. Richard Branson’s mum sent him on a 50-mile bike ride to England’s south coast! I had to convert 50 miles into metrics to understand that it is about 80 km… Not to mention that he was just a kid!
Lately I have been stumbling upon Richard Branson’s advertisement about his “Disruptive Entrepreneurship” master class. Probably because I had just bought his best-selling book, “Screw it, Let’s do it” and the internet keeps serving me what I am already keen on! Anyway, I read it in one day. It’s an inspiring and funny book, and now, I wish I could have taken a masterclass with his late mother, Eve Branson, though :-).
I wasn’t expecting parenting wisdom in Richard Branson’s book. It just confirms that for every successful person, there has always been a loved one who has had a tremendous belief in their wildest dreams.
Believe.
‘If there’s an ocean, we cross it. If there’s a disease, we cure it. If there’s a wrong, we right it. If there’s a record, we break it. And if there’s a mountain, we climb it” Eve Branson, Richard Branson’s mother
I found this powerful and quite expressive of a strong, confident mindset. That was the philosophy that Eve Branson lived by. Richard described his mother as “one of those people who never says ‘can’t.’” “She believes anything is possible if you try.”
She trusted her abilities and transferred these skills to her kids. This attitude made him believe that he can achieve anything as long as he is willing to make the effort. Quoting Richard Branson ‘Success is more than luck. You have to believe in yourself and make it happen. That way, others also believe in you.’ An important lesson!
If we believe in our children, in their inner abilities, and that they can achieve success for themselves, they’ll believe in themselves. So, when your child tells you, “I want to be an artist” despite his or her basic current drawing skills, catch their passion and their potential for growth and say, “I believe you will be a wonderful artist one day.”
Insights:
Don’t forget that your child learns by watching you. Believe in yourself and in your child, and he or she will.
Develop the child’s Self-Efficacy.
The second principle, applied by Eve Branson, is also backed by science as well.
Richard’s mum had two aims. One was about finding useful tasks for her children; she thought that there is no good in doing nothing. The other was about finding ways to make money.
She was an entrepreneur herself; she used to make little wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins. She used the garden as her workshop. The kids had the job of painting and stacking them up. One day Harrods, the luxury department store, ordered them, and sales boomed. Clearly, Eve gave a high priority to engaging her children in daily activities; by giving them chores and responsibilities, intuitively she was developing their self-efficacy.
In her excellent TED talk, Stanford’s former dean, Julie Lythcott-Haims, shed light on the concept of self-efficacy and how it is as important or even more important than self-esteem (praise).
“Self-efficacy is developed when one’s actions lead to outcomes; this includes free play and chores, because they need to do the thinking, the planning, the deciding, the doing, the making, the hoping, the coping, the trial and error, the dreaming, and the experiencing of life for themselves.”
Basing her argument on the results of the Harvard Grant study, she stated that the primary role of parents is to strengthen their children’s abilities, first by loving them and then by forging a winning mindset by giving them chores. Indeed, the study found that the happiest adults and the most successful ones have the two following traits:
First, they are able to have happy, long-lasting relationships, which is a direct result of self-love acquired through parents’ unconditional love. Second, doing chores during their childhood gave them the right skill set to move things forward, to initiate solutions, to innovate, and thus to be successful.
Insights:
As parents, we should care more about giving love and chores to our children than about pressuring them about marks and grades to get them into the most competitive colleges.
Build Independence.
Eve Branson always tried to find something for her kids to do. She helped them to be independent, to think for themselves, and to get things done. Her philosophy in life is could be summarised in: “IF YOU WANT milk, don’t sit on a stool in the middle of a field in the hope that the cow will back up to you… Don’t just sit around. Catch the cow.”
She would stop the car a few miles from their house and ask the four-year-old future billionaire to find his own way home across the fields. As he grew older, the lessons and challenges grew harder, like the day she woke him up one winter morning while it was still dark and sent him on a fifty-mile bike ride with lunch to England’s south coast! Honestly, I had to translate the distance into kilometers to be able to understand the trust that she had in her little boy and in humanity: 80 km! This was in the early sixties; I guess life was different back then. For sure, she wanted him to be strong and to rely on himself, and sure, he did.
“IF YOU WANT milk, don’t sit on a stool in the middle of a field in the hope that the cow will back up to you…Don’t just sit around. Catch the cow.” Eve Branson, Richard Branson’s mother
Thanks to his education, Richard Branson grew up, as he said, believing in himself, believing in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love. I quote, “I knew you could do it,’ Mum said. And so had I, and I was not going to give up until I had proved it.”
Prepare Your Child for Real Life.
Childhood is a stage of real life’, even if it was aimed for toddlerhood years, I found this advice to be true for all stages of childhood…
The Branson family used to talk about their mother’s projects and business at dinner. The author, believes that this taught him about the value of money and helped him cope with the real world later in life and taught him “a great sense of teamwork within their family. ”
One of the best parenting advice I have read was from Tracy Hogg in her book “The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems.” Childhood is a stage of real life. Even if it was aimed at toddlerhood years, I found this advice to be true for all stages of childhood. Our role as parents should be to prepare our offspring for real-life challenges, relationships, money, resilience, etc.
This is even more true today, when the world is going through the tremendous revolution of AI. All that they will be learning in schools will not prepare them for an AI future, for the simple reason that, as a society, we do not know what the future implications of this technology are.
For me, preparing my children for an AI future is to give them the right tools to navigate whichever they stumble upon. But, firstly, building a strong spiritual foundation, as that’s what makes us unique, and that’s our unfair advantage against the machines. I have discussed a framework for preparing my children for the future in this post.
Trust Your Child.
If we have to learn one thing from Richard’s mum, it is the sentence “I knew you could do it,” and to keep repeating it over and over to our children. She used to challenge him a lot, so she can say, “I knew you could do it.” At the age of four, he decided to learn to swim before the end of the holiday. she was always supportive: “I knew you could do it,” or when he won an essay contest despite his reading difficulties, when he told her, she said again, as usual, ‘I knew you could win, Ricky.’
It's incredibly powerful what we can do to support our children's personalities by trusting them, having confidence in their current judgment and decision-making abilities.
Later in life, he got in trouble for taxes and, got into jail. His mother put up her home as bail money. “Her trust in me was almost more than I could bear,” he wrote. Instead of judging, nagging, or being disappointed by his behaviour ‘I know you’ve learned a lesson, Ricky. Don’t cry over spilled milk. We’ve got to get on and deal with this head-on.’ What a woman! And what a mother she was!
The question is, will you allow your 12-year-old to take public transport? Do you trust they will follow the safety rules you've taught them and make good decisions if unexpected situations arise?
“Her trust in me was almost more than I could bear,” he wrote. Instead of judging, nagging, or being disappointed by his behaviour ‘I know you’ve learned a lesson, Ricky. Don’t cry over spilled milk. We’ve got to get on and deal with this head-on.’ What a woman! and what a mother she was!
Respect your child’s decisions.
When Branson decided to drop out of school at sixteen to pursue his “Student” magazine business, his parents supported him in his choice. I’m so academic! I don’t know how I will react if one of my children decides to drop out of school.
Such proof of respect at such a young age teaches the child that he or she is important, that their ideas matter, and that they are the master of their own life.
How many parents would freak out at the idea of their kids dropping school at this age? I know I will, but I hope I’ll have the faith and the courage to respect my children's choices in life.
I believe that teenage years are delicate and important; however, they will be the continuity of what we had built before. If we have taken the time to build the foundation for them to be able to take the right decisions by believing in them, guiding them, and equipping them with the right tools.
What do you think about Eve Branson's parenting style? Would you send your nine-year-old on an 80-kilometer bike ride? Would you accept his decision to drop his studies so early? Tell me what you think in the comment section. I would be more than happy to know your opinion and parenting style !
By Sabrina E.Bouker