How do I let my kids make their own mistakes while still having their backs?

By giving them permission to find their own way, including the freedom to fail, with a safety net but not without consequences. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, calls this the move that separates the roughly 30 percent of families who succeed from the 70 percent who don't. The Teacher founder doesn't have all the answers. What they have is the willingness to step back and let the next generation try, fail, learn, and try again. The safety net is real. It catches the kid before they hit bottom on something they can't recover from. It does not catch them before they feel the consequences of their own decisions. The distinction is everything. Most founders either let their kids fail entirely without support, or remove every consequence and call it support. The Teacher does neither.