Giving Your Child The Advantages Of Your Immense Wealth Without Being A Helicopter Parent

One of the best things about being obscenely loaded is that you can ensure your children also enjoy the benefits of immense wealth, thus perpetuating a rock-solid cycle of compounding privilege that will echo down your bloodline for years to come. However, be wary of becoming not just a helicopter parent but the even more hated version: an effective helicopter parent. Of course, you know there’s nothing more fair and square than unfettered capitalism, but some people will be annoyingly prejudiced against your child if they think the little angel grew up with a silver spoon or ten in their mouth. The last thing you want is for everyone else to accuse you of giving your child an unfair advantage with the sheer muscle of your vast riches and your loving attention.

With that in mind, here are some possible strategies for making sure your child has a huge advantage over all of their peers without it seeming like you had too much of a hand in it.

Secretly Sponsor a Rigged Raffle

You want your perfect little one to have the best of everything: best car on their 13th birthday, best champagne at their high school graduation party, best legal counsel to sweep their first DUI under the rug. The trick is to balance that overabundance of material goods without looking like you’re spoiling them. Easy solution: What’s more fair than a game of random chance? Generously sponsor contests that are open to the public, with extravagant giveaways like a luxury yacht or a pair of trained alpacas.

The games will be rigged, of course, but no one needs to know that except you and your child’s excellent legal counsel. That said, this will only work a few times before even they can’t save you, so limit it to the big-ticket items.

Hire Child Geniuses to Befriend Your Child

You know that deep down your little angel is the smartest crayon in the box, and with some quality tutoring time, they could bring up their grades to the point that you won’t have to bank purely on legacy admission to a top-notch college. Your first instinct is to drop a word about it to your buddy on the Harvard Board of Overseers at your next game of golf and have a decent professor placed on permanent paid assignment as your child’s tutor, but think about it. That would be really obvious. Instead, have your staff do a little extra legwork and recruit some certified child geniuses to pretend to befriend your child. They’ll be the same age, and with some training, they’ll be suitably well-matched in personality, so no one will know they’re only in it for the sizable salary you’ll pay them to check your child’s homework and sling in some subtle math pointers between sleepovers and play dates.

Get Dirt on Your Child’s Coach

Sure, your child may not be very talented at soccer, but talent is for poor people. Rich people have something better: power. Flex some of that power and have your agents dig up some juicy blackmail on your child’s coach. Discreetly mention—through an intermediary, of course—that you know about the tax evasion or the tentacle porn, and you’d be surprised at how fast your child becomes the MVP of every game.

Have Your Child’s Arch-Nemesis Assassinated (but Make It Look Like an Accident)

Is Olivia consistently beating your child at the weekly spelling bee? Does Meighson always bring tastier snacks on Sharing Wednesday? Does Bryce, the smug freckled little bastard, have more gold stars on his star sheet because the teacher can’t resist his adorable dimples? It’s nothing a freak “accident” won’t fix. One call to your guy up in Laketon and your child will be stealing audience hearts as they lisp through their classmate’s eulogy.

Fake Your Own Death

This is the ultimate long con. No one will know you’re watching from the shadows, protecting your child and applying a few lubricating dollars or some threatening letters here and there to smooth your offspring’s path to adulthood. Including your child! They’ll grow up thinking they had to make their own scrappy way in the world. And no one can accuse orphans of having everything handed to them on a silver platter. That’s right: On top of wealth and class privilege, your child will have orphan privilege. They’re so lucky (not) to have you.