Former Navy SEAL has some surprising advice for…
A former Navy SEAL and elite sniper teacher, Brandon Webb has jumped out of planes, raced vehicles, seen fight in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and skilled people to shoot to kill.
A bestselling writer, he’s written about his exploits in books such as “Mastering Fear: A Navy SEAL’s Guide” and “The eliminateing School: Inside the World’s Deadliest Sniper Program.”
Bestselling writer Brandon Webb was an elite Navy SEAL sniper teacher. Courtesy of Brandon Webb
With his new e-book, “Puddle Jumpers: Powerful Mental Techniques from a Navy SEAL Performance Coach and Father of Three” (Author’s Equity), he presents ideas for a different type of battlefield: trendy parenting.
He thinks many mothers and dads aren’t doing nicely by their troops. Despite their best intentions, they’re raising children who are emotionally fragile, overprotected and unprepared for maturity.
“I see so many successful, career-driven parents, and they love their kids, but they’re just f–king them up,” he told The Post in an exclusive interview.
Drawing on classes from his navy training, his own turbulent childhood, a tough divorce and years raising three youngsters, now ages 24, 22 and 19, Webb says the reply isn’t harsher self-discipline or helicopter parenting. Rather, it’s instructing resilience, trust and accountability before life does it for them.
“My father kicked me out at 16, and the relationship I have with my dad is very complicated still,” he said. “I didn’t want that with my kids. I wanted them to be able to trust me and open up to me, so we all had a very different experience.”
Toughness, he insists, doesn’t imply changing into emotionally distant. “How you talk to your kids is so important because your voice becomes their inner voice.”
It all begins with a stable basis.
Webb has written a new parenting e-book, “Puddle Jumpers.”
“You can’t build resilience on junk food and four hours of sleep,” he writes. “Nutrition, rest, and movement aren’t side notes, they’re the engine.”
He provides, “If your kid is marinating in garbage — bad friends, toxic coaches, half-ass teachers and emotionally bankrupt adults — you’re fighting a losing battle.”
Raising his children, Webb made a level of surrounding them with people who might actually inspire them. “I treated it like I was building a SEAL platoon for a mission,” he said. “No weak links. No energy vampires.”
Encouragement, empowerment and motivation are key, too. “In a world of screens and devices, they have to find real purpose,” he famous. “Because a kid without purpose is like a Formula 1 car with no gas — powerful but going nowhere.”
But it’s more than just the tone you undertake.
The e-book is informed by his experiences as a divorced dad-of-three. Courtesy of Brandon Webb
“Parents immediately need to get better at asking questions,” Webb asserted. “Asking your kid how his or her day was is a bulls–t question and you’re going to get a bulls–t answer.”
Instead ask more fascinating questions. “Try something fun but deeper, like, ‘If today was a movie, what would it be and why?’ It’s much a better way of getting more from your kids.”
Growing up, he said his dad “whooped my ass with a leather belt” to self-discipline him without ever asking him why he’d finished one thing flawed.
With his own children, he’s strived to perceive their motivations.
Years in the past, his youngest son, Tyler, was suspended in seventh grade after ordering pizza for his total class — and sending some to the principal’s workplace, too.
When he discovered his youngest son, Tyler (pictured), was dealing medicine, Webb didn’t rush to punish the boy. Instead, he tried to determine what was actually going on with the kid. Courtesy of Brandon Webb
“At first I wanted to know where he was getting the money from,” Webb laughed. “Turns out he’d been selling pot dummies to high school kids. It wasn’t exactly ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ but still…”
Webb and his then-wife initially mentioned typical punishments like grounding him for a month, but shortly realized one thing deeper was going on.
“He was entering his teenage years and was super vulnerable,” Webb says. “If he didn’t feel supported by us, we risked pushing him away.”
As Tyler’s grades continued slipping, they found the habits stemmed from an ongoing battle with a instructor. Instead of escalating the punishment, Webb and his spouse pulled him out of college quickly, positioned him in impartial research and allowed him to reset with a clean slate.
“The look of relief on his face when he realized we had his back was crazy,” Webb said. “And trust just builds more trust.”
The gamble paid off. Tyler is now thriving at the University of Oregon. “The lesson is teach, don’t punish,” writes Webb. “Correct the behavior, keep the relationship.”
When his older son, Jackson, struggled with credit card debt, Webb told the boy he had to deal with it on his own. Courtesy of Brandon Webb
Sometimes, however, he has had to take a stricter method — even if he didn’t need to.
When his oldest baby, Jackson, determined to get a credit card while in faculty, Webb warned him to pay it off in full each month. A yr later, though, Webb obtained a call. Jackson now had $17,000 of debt on the cardboard “and the interest payments were killing him.”
Webb, however, would have none of it. “It’s yours to deal with,” he told him. “Welcome to adulthood.”
It took Jackson three years to clear the debt but it taught him a priceless lesson. “As a parent, you don’t want your child to suffer, but you have to understand that in some cases, suffering builds strength,” he writes.
“It pained me to see him struggling, but I knew he needed to learn this one the hard way.”
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