How to Raise Confident Kids | Brandon Webb

29:57I love you so much. Thanks for letting us hang. You're the coolest. Love, Maddie. So that to me is like mission accomplished as a parent. And I posted that on my sub stack. So I was like, that's like to have that relationship with your adult kids is pretty, pretty meaningful. Like, I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to know that, you know, my kids don't want to hang out with me and their mom. Well, I think the swing on the other end of this is confidence is built on praise. And I find myself even doing it with my very young daughter. Like I see her do something exciting and immediately I want to be like, great job.

30:39Amazing. Oh my God, you did this thing for the first time. I'm so proud of you. And we think, oh, if I'm just praising them, I'm building confidence. I'm building them up so that they're not getting that negative voice in their head and they're seeing their dad or their mom is always positive in their lives. yeah no there's there's a good study that i talk about in puddle jumpers and i like i said i i wasn't the perfect parent right i did a lot of things right and made plenty of mistakes the one thing i wish i had have done to your point was one of the questions i asked madison when i was writing the book what had you wished i'd done better and she's like you were this hero to us You know, you seem like just this Navy SEAL expert skier.

31:29You're like the hero dad. But I wish you had have shared more times when you have failed and stumbled and how, you know, these stories of how you recovered. Because she said, I would have felt like it was, I would have been safer to have failure in my own life. And that hit me pretty hard. And when I was writing the book, researching all these different studies, to your point on praise, they did a study in Stanford with a group of kids. The kids that were praised for trying, like trying and failing, were praised around that as opposed to the kids that were just like, oh, wow, you're so good. You're so smart.

32:06As the challenges for these two controlled groups got harder and harder, the kids that were praised didn't want to, they didn't want to try harder because they didn't want to seem like they were dumb. They're like, oh, well, they say I'm so smart. Well, I don't want to take a risk and do something bad. Where the kids that were praised on, they would try and fail. Like, hey, that's a good effort. Keep going. Those kids are the ones that ended up really excelling in the long run. So it's your point. Yeah, there's a time for praise for sure. But I would say false praise. You're not doing your kids any favors.

32:42is putting them in situations where they're going to experience adversity, whether that's sports. I tell a story of my daughter. She failed her Purple Belt test. And again, this could have been one of those over-advocating moments where I went up to the Rex Quando guy, right? It was like, what are you doing to my daughter? No, it's like I pulled her and she had to stand up in front of the class her brother got his belt. She had this in front of all the students and the parents, the instructor critiqued her and says, hey, you did this right, but these things you didn't get correct. You need to work on that.

33:25So come test next month. She held it together. And then I told her mom, like, I'll drive her home. And she just broke down. And it's like, well, my brother, and she started crying. And I was like, look, this is a good moment for you to kind of think think about right now, take the critique seriously, do the work, and you're going to get your belt, and you're going to feel like you're going to feel so good because you're going to have known that you've earned it. And two weeks later, her mom sent me the text with the big smile, her with a big smile on her face holding a purple belt. And I was like, yeah, she knows she earned it you know and that's such a good lesson for kids um these little tiny moments that really make up a difference one of my questions to my son um the same three questions i said all of them he when he said one thing i really appreciated that you did as a father was you trusted me to take the subway by myself in new york city when i was 16 he's like i knew my parents or my friend's parents would never let them do that.

34:33The fact that you trusted me and gave me this card and freedom to kind of go do that on my own was huge. He's like telling me this as a 24-year-old tech entrepreneur. And like, you don't think, I'm like, really? That time I remembered it, but I didn't think it was that impactful, but it showed you how powerful those simple moments can be in the child's life. Yeah. Having that belief in them that they can get to their destination, they can navigate the subway, they can have the street sense to stay safe in those moments. That autonomy is, I think, what so many of us crave, even if we don't have kids and we're just managing team members.

35:11I think it's very easy to bark orders, micromanage, say you have to do this or that exactly this way. We don't create the space for them to earn it, for them to see their way through failure, to build the resilience, to build the self-trust that they need to navigate life's challenges. A hundred percent. Another story I tell when I flew to Oregon to take him to see my dad, we're at the Portland airport, which is a funny airport there. Have you guys been to Portland? Yeah. Yeah, there was, when they replaced the carpet in Portland airport, it was a huge drama because they were selling the carpet on eBay.

35:50It was crazy. If anyone's watched Portlandia, you'll get it. But we were all three of us in the airport flying to Spokane. And my youngest was a huge soccer fan. So he saw the Timbers, which is a Portland MLS team. And he was like, Dad, he's like, that's my favorite player over there. We're in the food court and the whole Timbers team was there. And he's like, can you go ask for an autograph for me? He was maybe 10 years old at this point. and I was like buddy you gotta ask like come on like I it's like these are the moments that I love seeing because I'm like I knew how there's going to be a learning moment and he was super you know shy especially the shyer much shyer than his older sibling and then his sister started coming in come on buddy you can do it and the brother started chiming and then he got up the nerve and he walks you know 30 feet over to the players next thing you know the cameras are out or taking selfies.

36:52And he walked back with this huge smile on his face. I'm like, I was like, see, it wasn't that hard, was it? And it's like those kind of moments, it's easy for a parent to go, yeah, no problem. Let me go over there and do that for you. But these moments are what add up over time and build confident and resilient kids. I landed in New York last week and I was reading an article in the New York Times about this finance guy. He bought a farm in upstate New York, retired, living the dream. But he said, I cannot believe how many parents call me to ask for summer jobs for their 18, 19-year-old kids.

37:33He's like, I would never hire a kid coming from this parent request because I know the kids are going to be a freaking nightmare to deal with. they can't even pick up the phone and call themselves, like the parents calling to ask for a summer job for their 19-year-old. I would be terrified. But he was like, I was like, that's an example of a parent that has just not set their child up for success. They're going to call on behalf of their 18, 19-year-old to get a summer job. Yeah, that's an F in parenting in my book. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready Because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition 100 % whole grain oats And a good source of fiber To fuel the rhythm of your morning And kickstart your day And that sounds absolutely delicious Fuel to start whatever's next Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26 I, O, let's go Tomorrow morning is knocking stock your fridge now how about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe or white chocolate mocha whichever you choose delicious coffee awaits find starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries well one thing we can control is the environment that we're setting for our kids and for our team and i think many of us believe that willpower is the key to success.

39:06And we don't think about all the ways that environment actually strengthens our willpower, especially for kids who are so impressionable. And we talk a lot about social media and the toxicity online and how easy it is to get caught up in what everyone else is doing and not recognizing the impact that you can have and how to set up that environment.

39:34so are you asking me is there a question in there about the environment yeah i'm i'm very interested around the ways that you set up this environment for your kids to develop willpower yeah so and i think it's important to also mention i'm i'm a divorced dad who co-parented with my ex. And I feel like a lot of people, John was mentioning earlier about the kids weaponizing the parents against each other. But my point is we've been through a lot as a family. And the fact that I hope my book gives inspiration to other parents who may be divorced or if they're still married, that's great too. But I'm a perfect example of a father that had to rebuild his life after the Navy SEALs, went through divorce, lost my first business, and was still able to be present and create good environments for my kids to develop into happy adults.

40:49So that's something I think parents need to hear. But your point on environments, environments are everything. And in the extreme case, which I mentioned earlier, the middle school example, we knew that we had to change that environment. He was in a bad friend group, bad relationship with this homeroom teacher, just getting into trouble. I mean, he was, my second question when I flew up to Oregon was like, how the hell did you get money to order pizza? Turns out he was selling pot gummies that him and his buddy were stealing from the guys, from his friend's dad, right? So we've seen it all. We've seen it all.

41:36But we knew we had to change the environment because environment is everything. Even at a cellular level, right, you can see how small things affect a single cell. And in a developing child, environment is so important. So the thing that I did was always pay attention to the environment. And when I would bring the kids to New York, when their mom remarried, and she says, hey, I want to move from California to Portland. Because, you know, when you're divorced, you have to give permission to move across state lines. And I said, look, my philosophy always was happy mom, happy kids. and I said look if you're and your husband Bob if that's good for you go ahead and do it and I'll figure it out so I had to re and I had just rearranged my whole life around them and now I had to reshuffle everything but turned out that I ended up moving to New York City but when the kids would visit me in New York I took extra time to curate their experience and be present I wasn't on my phone when they visit, they still to this day say, Dad, you always brought us around the coolest people in New York.

42:51Because I would bring my daughter to meet Sally, the head of Macmillan Publishing, who is a legendary woman in the publishing industry, is always trying to put them in really positive environments and around positive people that they would identify with. And for sure, that's made an impact because they still, when we go, we were just skiing together. we did a spring ski trip in the Alps, which sounds very fancy, but I'm telling you, 30 euro a day lift pass in Oron in the French Alps, not a bad gig. But they were saying on the ski lift, they're like, yeah, we just remember we always had these positive environments and surrounded us with really interesting people.

43:36And that really made an impact on them. So to your point, the environment is very important. And I always tried to create these positive environments. The one thing that I wish I had, if I had a do-over to my daughter's point, I wish I had had more conversations about the failures in my life and the struggles and the challenges. Because at the time, I'm like, I just need to be this exemplary dad and show them perfect. But in reality, I could have done a better job of sharing my own shortcomings because obviously that was putting a lot of pressure on my daughter. She thought she had to be perfect and make sense why she was also a 4.3 GPA and, you know, so focused on her academics.

44:23But I, you know, thankfully, I have the relationship with my kids where they can give me that honest feedback. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think many parents listening have the thought that they must be perfect. They remember all of their parents' imperfections and all the ways that that scarred them, harmed them, frustrated them. So then they go into parenting and I feel the pressure too of like, I have to be perfect. I don't want to screw this up. Now I understand the impact that I could have on this child. I want to do the best that I can. And high performers will then hide the cracks and never share those failures and try to make everything look smooth sailing and super easy for them only to create a narrative in their kids' minds where, well, I can't live up to heroic dad or how could I possibly fail if my parents have never failed in front of me?

45:13Yeah, no, exactly. That's so important, I think, to share these stories with our kids and, you know, also to the point on apologizing you're going to make mistakes you're going to screw things up and i think the best thing you can do is if you've done something like that is be honest with your child like look you know we your mom and i and that in the case of the prom story we told him it's like look we we love you we care about you we're just scared you're gonna throw away this like amazing accomplishment that you've you've created in high school you're just gonna like throw it all away and get arrested for dealing drugs, you know?

45:54So, you know, and sharing that and, you know, especially I think, I don't know how old your kids are, but when they get into that kind of high school age, your parents, you're realizing that your kids are becoming adults and you're going to have to change your parenting style to one more of, you can't be a dictator anymore. It's really hard to tell a 17-year-old, you can't go out to your friend's party on a Friday night. Like they're just going to figure out a way to do it. Right. And so you have to transition to more of a role of mentor and give your kids the leash. And hopefully if you've done your job, right, that's okay.

46:37Like your kids that I talk about, I talked about this. I had a wall street journal interview a few weeks ago and I was like, they were asking, what do you do with this? What do you do with that? I'm like, look, I think the main thing you can do as a parent is raise resilient, confident kids who make good decisions on their own. Because then that deals with everything, right? Boys, girls, drugs, alcohol, whatever. It's like if they're good decision makers, then you've done your job well. Because I remember my daughter's boyfriend in high school followed her to London. And my guy friends who had younger kids are like, oh, aren't you worried about your daughter and this?

47:17I'm like, look, she's good. She's got this. Like, yeah, I'm not worried at all because I know she makes good decisions. Maybe not always get it right. That's part of the process as well. And the thing that I'm grateful for is the kids who are older now still call dad when they want advice. They can share things with me openly, like deeply personal stuff and be vulnerable in ways that I think that is an amazing gift as a parent of grown kids. Like that should be what every parent should want. And again, I see so many, my friends, they're like, no, I told my son he can't come. He can't bring his girlfriend on this trip or his friend.

48:04And his mom and I just don't like their friend or don't like their girlfriend. I was like, really? How is your kid going to feel welcome if you're dictating who they can and can't bring? Because my thing is you bring plus one whoever you want. I don't care. And yeah, there's a few, especially when they were younger. I was like, oh man, I can't stand that kid. But I'm like, I'm not going to tell them they can't come because of it. Because I talk about the forever family in the last chapter of the book. how to create an environment where your grown children will want to will respect you will seek your counsel and want to hang out with you and that that is for me was important that I maintain that connection and relationship with with the kids as they're grown adults and one of the best things I've had because I'm at a point in my career where I'm kind of semi-retired.

49:04But I would say what I'm most looking forward to this year is the summer trip with my kids in Italy. We do it every year. I think many of us, when we think about the dictator, largely we just feel the discipline should be about punishment and consequences. And that's what we remember from our own upbringing. Oh, the punishment. Oh, this is what was going to happen. Grounded, lose access to the phone. And so much of discipline is tied to that. But in actuality, discipline is about leading and creating an opportunity for them in the future to make better decisions, not to fear you, not to evade you, not to hide from you more because they fear the consequences of those poor decisions.

49:48yeah no that's such a good point that you make and when you have these conversations with your children you realize that often in most cases i would say they're harder on themselves for the behavior and just having the conversation knowing that that you're supporting them and want what's best for them you know sometimes that's it that's that's all you need and to your point like I was raised, you know, I lied. My dad shoved a bar of soap in my mouth for an hour. Irish Spring, I still can't use that stuff. You know, but yeah, it's crazy. You know, like I said earlier, I never thought I would write a book on parenting.

50:31And as I'm going through this journey and learned a ton doing research for the book, I'm shocked. It's one of the most important jobs we have in our lives. And there's no manual. There's no class. we could take we used to have this village you know the tough auntie down the street or the parents were next door you know which are the grandparents that's gone like we're we're kind of cut off from the world with the social media and everything's online and there's just like i feel like a lot of modern parents are are lost so i think the more resources out there for parents the better because you know the world has changed as even in the last year right with ai it's crazy well i'd love to double click on something you shared earlier around visualization and what you learned in the military and and how you've brought that into your family because i think some of our listeners are like that kind of sounds woo woo what am i visualizing here and how does that really create the mental management loop that we need to be successful yeah no so on the visualization so the core principles of any good mental management program, and this was taught to me, again, by a guy that had used this, developed this as an Olympic team member for the U.S., used it to win the gold medal after he had won silver four years previously, is visualization, right?

51:56So visualization is mental rehearsal. And usually you want to rehearse for, let's just say, my son's speech in class. So I was like, okay, describe the classroom. Okay, what do you have to do? He's like, well, I got to walk up. I got to grab my thing and put it on the board. And I was like, okay, go through all the steps. And I was like, well, what's the worst thing that could go wrong? He's like, well, maybe I forgot this. It's like, okay, well, you know, make a contingency plan for that. And kind of rehearse this over and over. And your brain doesn't know the difference between whether this is a real happening in real life or not.

52:36And that's been proven over and over. There's a story I tell in the book about a prisoner of war who was captured at Vietnam, a pilot who was shot down, captured four years in this terrible prisoner of war camp. I spent four days in one as a SEAL doing training. It's not a pleasant experience. I lived in a concrete box for four days and went to the bathroom in a Folgers coffee can. So I can't imagine four years, right? But this guy, he was playing golf in his head. Now the war is over. He's coming back to San Diego. They're taking him on a bus with the other prisoners of war to get evaluated at the Balboa Naval Hospital.

53:21They drive past the back gate. There's a golf course. He's like, stop, pull over. So he went to the golf course. They're like, you're crazy. What are you doing? We've got to take you to the hospital. He's like, no, let me out of here. he's like, I want to play golf. And so he shoots nine rounds and he shoots par, having not touched a club in over four years. And the people are shocked. And he was like, I've been playing perfect golf in my head for four years. Like I haven't hit a bad shot. And that's the power of visualization. The other thing, positive self-talk versus negative self-talk, understanding when that voice gets in our head.

53:57And that's like self-image management, we call so you can think of uh you know when you're learning anything it takes a lot of effort like conscious mind effort to build that subconscious like we've all driven a car home had a call and we end up in our driveway and we're like how the hell did i get here right because that's your subconscious mind you you're so good at it your subconscious mind just takes over and and that's the goal of uh as we're training snipers to get them to that point right But in the beginning, you know, it's the subconscious part is very small. If you look at the three circles as self-image, conscious mind, subconscious mind, you want all those things, those circles equal.

54:43And that's kind of like an expert flow state. But this positive self-talk, negative self-talk is huge. And showing kids how important language is, because we see this in adults. Adults put their own limiting factors on themselves all the time. that shows up as I'm not good at numbers. I'm a klutz. I'm not good at this. I'm not good at that. We carry around these conversations with ourselves, right? And not all of them are productive conversations. So showing kids how to deal with that, that's something we taught the snipers, emotional regulation. And this is all part of a solid mental management plan.

55:26One thing I learned that made a huge impact on me, on how I talk to my students. We learned and were told, look, when we got audited how we were teaching snipers, one of the coaches we were using says, look, you cannot point out the mistakes to these students because their heads are like blank canvases and you're just painting all these mistakes all over them. And put that in a kid's perspective. If you tell a kid that's going up to bat at a Little League game, hey Johnny don't strike out now what's the kid thinking about right all he can think about is striking out as opposed to like hey Johnny go swing for the fences or hit it out of the park you know the the intent is the same but the picture you're painting in the kid's mind very different and what we realized as instructors we were pointing out all the mistakes like hey you're doing this wrong you're screwing this up we're we're yelling at these sniper students like they were SEAL trainees when they weren't.

56:26And so he said, look, don't say the mistake. Tell them the corrective technique, right? So how you talk to the students really matter. And that, so when we started doing this stuff, our failure rate in the sniper course is one of the hardest courses in the SEAL teams. One of the few courses you can fail as a SEAL and not get sent back to the regular Navy because the SEAL teams know how tough it was, we would fail 30%. When we put this mental management principles in place, our failure rate went to almost zero. And if anything, it got harder and we started passing everybody because we're teaching better.

57:06And that made a huge, to see that when I was in charge of the sniper program at 27, I was like, to your point, this visualization and all this stuff sounded a little like a Tony Robbins, rah, rah, jump up and down. I was like, this is bullshit. But when I saw it, I'm like, okay, this works. This clearly works. And I started using it in my own life. And I started using it as a parent. And like I said, we don't get a manual with our kids when they're born. I feel like I was lucky to have this mental management toolkit to fall back on as a dad and knew that it had worked because I'd seen it worked in the sniper school.

57:49But how we talk to our kids, because I talk about this in Puddle Jumpers as well, our voices to our kids become their inner voice. And think about that as a moment, let that land. How do you want your kid to listen to you when they're older? Do they want that voice to be a voice of positivity and encouragement or one just nagging at them all the time? Like if you ever remember that movie, Throw Mama from the Train with Danny DeVito. That freaking nightmare mom is, you know, yapping in the back of the head. So how do you want your kids to, what do you want that inner voice to be? It's a haunting idea, but it's true.

58:35So as we wrap, I think what I'd love to hear is now that you've got feedback from your kids and also the book has been out there. What do you think people mischaracterize or misunderstand the most around the points you're trying to make? I think generally the biggest pushback I get from people, they think they have all these assumptions around what a Navy SEAL dad is about, right? They think, oh, this guy's going to be like grabbing his kid by the hair and dunk him in the pool. No, that's not the case. Because I have so many, even when I coached Little League, the president of the league in San Diego, he's like, hey, can you send an email to the parents?

59:20Like, I'm getting some calls. Like, the parents on your team are really nervous of what, like, you're going to bring to the table as a coach. It's like, okay, okay. So I think the parents were shocked when I unleashed this kind of, you know, I had the kids visualizing and doing all this crazy stuff. They were pleasantly shocked. But I think that that's a big misperception they get around me personally as a sealed dad, that I'm just this super strict disciplinarian, which is not the case. I was always very thoughtful. And I don't want to take credit from their mom, who's an amazing mom. We've been through so much.

1:00:04Like I said, she had my oldest when I was in Afghanistan. in 2001 after the 9-11 attack. So it's, and she did an amazing job. We were young kids having kids. And, but the one thing that kept us really together as a team and as co-parents was this shared love for our children. And we really wanted what was best for them. And like, again, I'm proof that you can be divorced and go through a lot of challenges and still find the time to raise really happy adult kids. Well, I appreciate you stopping by as a relatively new parent. I love the checklists and I thought they were just so helpful as that mental model to run through to your exact point of if it's in a checklist, we're not going to miss it in these key moments where we're ourselves feeling the stress.

1:00:55Where can our audience find out more about the book and the checklist? so my author page just brandontylerwebb.com everything my social is the book book is anywhere books are sold amazon probably the easiest and and the audio is cool too because all the kids and my ex are on the audiobook so i think oh that's a lot of yeah a lot of bonus content in there but you can hear it in their own words so yeah love that thank you for joining us Brandon. Thank you, Brandon. Yeah. Thanks guys. Yeah. Appreciate it.

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