Introducing the parenting trend that takes after Navy SEALs

Former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb spent years teaching trainees how to control their breathing, quiet negative thoughts and stay calm under pressure.

“If I say to a trainee who’s learning how to use a high-power rifle, ‘You’re flinching,’ that puts it in his head,” Webb told The Independent. “You can’t point out mistakes, especially in front of other people, because then it just spreads, infecting everyone like a virus — setting them up for failure.”

After he left the Navy to focus on his family, Webb not only used the same techniques on himself, but with his three children.

“When we introduced changes to training to focus on positive psychology, our 30 percent failure rate went down to 1 percent,” Webb said about the SEAL program. So he thought: “Why can’t this apply to parenting?”

Now, Webb is sharing those lessons in his new book Puddle Jumpers: Powerful Mental Techniques from a Navy SEAL Performance Coach and Father of Three.

In the book, Webb argues that some parents underestimate how deeply their own words, especially the way they react to the negative, can shape a child’s inner voice for life. He also says that modern parents overprotect and overreact to situations.

“The way we speak to our children becomes their inner dialogue,” he said. “I want to be the cheerleader in my kids’ head. Not the opposite.”

And despite the tough-guy stereotype, Webb insists his philosophy has little to do with yelling, fear or boot-camp discipline.

“I think the immediate judgment … is, oh, here’s this tough Navy SEAL dad being super strict with his kids,” Webb said. “But when you read the book, it’s not the case at all. I’m coming from a very compassionate place on how to parent.”

Be a calm voice

For Webb, the way you speak to your kids — especially in the tough moments — sets the tone for how they’ll talk to themselves for the rest of their lives. He compares parenting during stressful times to a pilot calmly talking to passengers during turbulence.

“As a parent, you are that voice,” Webb wrote in his book. “Kids need three things more than headlines: safety in the present moment, adults who are steady under pressure, confidence that uncertainty is survivable.”

A coach yelling, “Don’t strike out,” only plants failure in a child’s mind, he said – just like telling a sniper he’s flinching makes him focus on flinching – setting them up for failure.

He added that when teaching a beginner, whether it’s a trainee or a child, “it’s incredibly important to positively imprint desired outcomes or behavior — not reinforce the negatives.”

Webb focuses on four principles from sniper training that can be applied to parenting. Visualization, a positive outlook in all situations, self-image management and positive verbal cues.

After leaving the Navy, Webb went through a divorce and a failed company during the 2008 financial collapse, leaving him to “wing it.” But he did have one advantage.

“My SEAL sniper training had given me a mental management system that I applied to parenting,” he explained. “The same four principles that keep a sniper functional under life or death pressure turned out to be the most powerful parenting tools.”

Let your kids jump – in puddles and in life

“Puddle jumpers” are the kind of kids Webb decided to raise.

It began years ago when he nearly stopped his son from jumping into a muddy puddle while on a ski trip.

“By stopping him I wasn’t protecting him,” Webb wrote. “I wasn’t helping him. I wasn’t looking out for him at all. I was projecting my own adult baggage onto a six-year-old who just wanted to jump in a puddle.”

That moment became key to Webb’s parenting philosophy — and inspired the title of his book.

“These are the kids I want to raise,” Webb wrote. “Kids who jump into life, not around it.”

Let kids struggle

One mistake parents make, Webb says, is trying to eliminate hardship from their children’s lives.

“It’s tough to watch your kids suffer,” he said. “But the world is tough. It’s not always fair. They’ve got to learn to deal with this stuff.”

He recalled a time when his oldest son had racked up $17,000 in credit card debt. Instead of bailing him out, Webb told him to figure it out. His son did and was better for it, Webb said.

Like Hell Week, a brutal SEAL training process, Webb says: “You can’t fake it. You have to go through it and earn it.”

Discipline with love

Webb is quick to distinguish discipline from punishment.

“Punishment is just reacting to a situation and handing out a sentence,” Webb said.

He recalled an example of how he disciplined with love. During a family trip to SeaWorld, Webb warned his children to stop fighting. When they didn’t, he made good on his threat and turned the car around.

“When we finally went back two weeks later, they were all quietly reading in the back seat,” Webb said. “They need to know you’re not messing around.”

Still, he says discipline should never come from anger.

“There’s a stereotype that we’re strict,” he said, referring to being a veteran. “If anything, combat veterans are more empathetic. They’ve seen the worst of human nature, and that actually makes them caring parents.”

Spend quality time with your kids

Webb told The Independent that he is proud of his relationships with his now-grown children, something he said they’ve worked to achieve.

His oldest son is 24 and runs his own tech company. His daughter, 22, is graduating with her master’s from the Royal College of Art in London. And his youngest, 19, is finishing his freshman year at the University of Oregon.

He said the words of appreciation from his children are what stay with him.

A heartfelt postcard from his daughter after one of their trips. The note, to him, “represented 20 years of being present.”

“You’ve been making a home in places all around the world my whole life,” reads one line that especially stuck with Webb.

”Parents should want to have this kind of relationship with their grown kids,” he told The Independent. “We have this great friendship and respect, and they come back and they ask for advice. And they feel supported. I mean, that’s the best that you can wish for.”

And then there’s the note his son left for him after their time together when he couldn’t be at school because of COVID.

“I feel like I won the dad lottery,” the son wrote.

“The return on that investment did not come from the sheer volume of time I spent with him,” Webb said. “It came from the quality of the time I spent with him and his siblings. The specific, intentional, undivided time.”

Webb said he wants to be the kind of dad that his kids “look back on and think I was present and loving and the kind of person they’d look up to.”

”Quality time is not a parenting concept. It is the whole game. And why one intentional day with your child is priceless.”