decentralized command ever thought of how parents
ultimately deploy their children into the world
and the the parallels yeah and so people been asking me to talk about
parenting mm-hmm since the podcast started
and i really have been avoiding it again one of the things i was considering was
bringing my daughter on possibly and i'm not gonna do it
and you know my oldest daughter she's 16 and i was thinking myself
if i was on a video or a recording when i was 16 years old i would
not want to hear that i would not want to be that you know just wouldn't want
that so i'm not going to do that to my daughter even though she's super mature
smart articulate it would definitely be interesting
but but i'm not going to subject her to that kind of environment
and the other the other reason i don't want to talk about parenting
very much is because my oldest kid is 16.
i have no idea if i've been successful or not i don't
i mean doing great in school great that's cool
but i need another 10 years before i can pass
judgment and actually maybe even more than that because what if they're
successful not because okay if they're successful what's
success that they got into a good college that they got a good job that
they have lots of money that they have kids spouse
house cars whatever what if but at the same time what if they have all that but
they're miserable because that happens all the time i meet
people like that all the time they got a bunch of money they're not successful
because they're they're angry they're upset they're
depressed their life sucks so was i a good parent if i drove them
into that position right maybe not yeah so i'm not
i'm not i don't like to i don't want to talk about something that i'm not
feeling super confident about because i can't pass judgment yet
i can tell you my opinion but even that i don't want to influence you and i
don't have facts you know i can tell you about
leadership because i've been in leadership positions
hard ones and i can talk with at least some some level of confidence that what
i'm saying is true because i've seen it and i've seen it in the military
and i've seen it in the civilian world and i've seen it on teams i've seen it a
bunch of different places so i have a pretty good feeling about it
parenting like it's it's just it's just a little bit different because
i don't know because there's definitely a different interaction
now and for everyone that's been waiting this entire podcast here it comes
that being said
you do absolutely have to use decentralized command with your kids
because you're not going to be there for every decision that they make you're not
going to be there every time they get past a drug disorder
every time they've had some alcohol and they need
to drive somewhere or every time they stumble into a bad
situation or they see someone participating in something that's wrong
or they see someone perpetrating a crime and maybe they could do something
you're not going to be there all the time so
just like decentralized command you have to
set them up you have to put a you have to give them guidelines
that they're going to take out their commander's intent they've got to
understand right and wrong they've got to understand long-term goals they've
got to understand consequences they've got to understand
accountability for their actions
and they've got to understand i think this is one of the most important things
to teach kids is they've got to understand
how what they're doing today is going to affect their lives
in five years in three years in 10 years in
15 years the things that you're doing today and some adults don't even get
that unfortunately that what you're doing
today is going to affect you long term and there were some times you know
where i slid into that you know where you're in the seal teams
you just don't think it's going to last forever
you know so you're going to do what you're going to do
and so that's commander's intent that's giving your
subordinate leadership which is your kids the understanding
just like mao said the understanding of why they're doing what they're doing
why their health matters why their education matters
why respecting people matters why creativity matters all these different
things explaining them why so that they understand so that when
they are out there and they have to make a decision they
have to they have to choose that they
understand why the decision matters and therefore they can act appropriately
and i think that's what you have to do as a parent
who is in fact leading your children
through life yeah whether you like it or not
yeah and then and i think that that's boom okay that's a good move
not getting too deep into specific things about how you specifically parent
because they're like is there even such thing as
perfect parenting everyone like everyone's
desires for the way the kids turn out is different
some people want their you know their kid to be this free spirit travel the
world don't get nailed guess what that kid's gonna do i'm gonna
join the military at 18. right well that because they're gonna rebel
right potentially yes so yeah that depends and
and i think that the the um back to what you're saying about like some
even some adults don't know the consequences of your actions that's that
goes on in the front of your brain here and
that's the last part to develop as a human being it's the last part of
your brain that's why that's why like teenage boys especially right
teenage 16 17 18 they get equipped with basically all
the hardware but the software the part that controls it is all jammed up so
they're physically strong they got hormones
they got a driver's license probably they have rights now
right so they go off and they're just basically shooting off their guns with
no you know no you know you know whatever
the software is to yeah you know so that's when they make
mistakes that's why they make all these these crazy mistakes with their easily
influenced through friends because the part of their brain that
that helps um determine okay this act this consequence is going
to come along with this specific action is underdeveloped and on average and it
gives you know it's give or take but on average it
gets fully developed at about 24-25 years old
well that explains a lot yeah it does it absolutely does
so that's as far as decision making so so yeah that and that that probably
explains why dealing with teenagers becomes harder because they
have all this hardware and the software is still
trying to be updated um but back to the perfect parent thing there's no real
perfect parent people want different things for their kid and everyone's
different everyone has different philosophies do i spank them do i not
spank them i read this i read that so the outcome is going to be different
and those different outcomes are going to
appeal to different people so it's basically like if you have a specific
outcome that you want your kid to have it's going to be determined by a bunch
of things but i think in my in my experience and both
being a parent and having parents so to speak um
is consistency like if you if you have a message
or you know some kind of discipline that you're imposing or some kind of just
idea that you want to you want us to stick with your kids
be consistent on it don't you know don't say hey no jumping on the bed one
day and then the next day you don't feel you're lazy
you're tired or whatever and you don't say hey don't jump on the bed because
they're going to be like oh well is this the day i can jump on the bed or
is it not i want to jump on the bed when you're not looking guess what i'm
going to be doing because i know that's not when you sit but if you're don't
jump in the bed don't know they're just going to sound okay there's
no jumping on the bed because they're going to be influenced by somebody
they're going to get rules and how do i act how do i be what do i say what don't
i say they're going to get that from somebody
and if you're all inconsistent you might as well just be noise on the tv that
comes on sometimes if you're inconsistent with it they're
going to get it from i don't know someone who's more consistent that could
be the neighbor that could be tv that could be the kid
that they look up to in school who's not very smart or maybe he's smart
i don't know there's a teacher you know the drug dealer whoever they're
going to get it from somewhere so i think if you be consistent they'll
get it from you and the more things that you that are
conducive to their success in whatever whatever you consider consists the more
or success the more consistency you display
in regards to those things because you know the outcome you know the outcome
that they want you know that if they act a certain way it's going to facilitate
this certain outcome you know that or you should i hope yeah i hope you do
so if you just can remain consistent on those issues
to shape that yeah that's when it's gonna work
i'm gonna throw one more wrench into your system
i was kind of agreeing with what you're saying but i just wanna throw this out
there for everybody if you got kids in my opinion
your kids are not going to be who you want them to be
they're going to be them and that is the biggest hurdle to get over mentally
i had to get i did i thought that the kids were gonna be what i wanted to be
but guess what they're not they're gonna be what they are
they're humans and i got four kids and every one of them is completely
different from the other one they all came from me but they're all
and they all got raised with the same me and my same wife and yet they're all
radically different yeah why is that it's because they're different humans
and so if you try and impose your vision on your kids it will not be successful
yeah and they will have a meltdown at some point that's my opinion i could be
wrong but that's my opinion and
i am not an expert on parenting and i don't want to
uh people to uh obey my thoughts on parenting but i got asked the question
so i answered it and i'm gonna leave it at that yeah that's true
and so much has to do with their environment in fact it's it's
yeah it's so much has to do with their environment so where each kid like this
is k you have four kids right the first kid coming you know
coming into the world and boom yeah that's the first born the
psychology and all this yeah that's it and i'm not even saying necessarily i'm
not going to go into the psychology part of it i'm just saying boom that's a
different experience all together being the psychiat same
thing he has that one kid and then all these little kids
behind him you know so it's just you're just right out the gate you're a
different person you know so that's where you're gonna
see oh all these crazy different personalities we
were born we were raised in the same house same parents my parents were the
same the whole time but just starting out
it's like you ever ever you ever see prices right that game
um or the game show price is right remember old school bob barker i think
it's somebody else now okay there's a game called plinko and
it's this this is this a long exploding plinko where it's like this
board right and at the end is are these little slots and you drop this kind of
this it's not a ball it's like a little puck
that kind of goes but i get the image it's like these pins so
it goes it look randomly just go it'll go
through this and you can kind of forget if you can
control it or not but yeah so as a parent you can control the
board but there's so many different little things that it can hit and go
this way so if you're consistent and just consistently push one direction
it'll tend to go but then all this all these other factors are in play that
you can't control so eventually that's how it is and that's
true how you say you can't just shape exactly who you want to be
in plinko you don't say hey i'm going to get it in that little slot right there
and then it goes there every time it's really hard to do that you know
play go game bro i'm telling you plinko you look into it
it's the same thing it's exactly plinko parenting they seem to sell jocko
podcast plinko boards on here see now you've gone too far all right
next question be careful with your kids that's all i'm
saying yeah be careful be careful give them the broad guidance yeah that's
what you want to give them why health matters why education matters
why respect matters why creativity matters
let them understand why so that they can make their own decisions because they
are their own people