People don’t usually equate Navy SEAL training with children. It’s also unlikely that people think parents should take the advice of a Navy SEAL on child-rearing. However, one former SEAL says otherwise. Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL sniper trainer, was still training recruits when the Navy adopted positive psychology rather than punishment-based corrections.
The dad explains to The Independent, “When we introduced changes to training to focus on positive psychology, our 30 percent failure rate went down to 1 percent.” That’s when he had the idea to introduce the same concept to his parenting style. No, he wasn’t teaching his children to be snipers, but his training helped him keep his cool. It also showed him that using negative tools of correction was far less effective than many once believed.
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“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 the realization that using positive psychology decreased the failure rate of trainees, it made sense to translate it to his personal life. After successfully raising his three children, with whom he maintains a close relationship, he wrote a book to help others. Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids.
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In the book, he uses four core principles he learned as a SEAL to parents everywhere. These are the principles he used with his own children: visualization, positive verbal cues, self-image management, and a positive outlook in all situations.
Visualization and positive verbal cues
In his book, he explains that a parent is like a pilot during turbulence. Nobody would feel calm if an airplane pilot started panicking over the intercom every time he hit an air pocket in the sky. The same goes for parenting. According to Webb, “Kids need three things more than headlines: safety in the present moment, adults who are steady under pressure, confidence that uncertainty is survivable.”
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A parent implanting negative thoughts into their child’s head becomes the child’s internal thoughts as they get older, Webb explains in his book. He shares, “It’s incredibly important to positively imprint desired outcomes or behavior — not reinforce the negatives.”
A positive outlook in all situations
Webb details a time when his oldest son had to utilize this skill after the former SEAL refused to help him out of a bind. The adult child accumulated over $17,000 in credit card debt and requested Webb’s help to pay it off. Instead of jumping to the rescue, Webb encouraged him to figure it out. His eldest son figured it out on his own.
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The father of three shares in the book that it’s hard to watch your children go through something hard. However, he later explains that kids have to learn how to go through difficult things in life without always having someone save the day.
What do the kids think?
The kids are all adults now, ages 19, 22, and 24. They’re thriving. His youngest son has just finished his freshman year of college, while his daughter is finishing her master’s degree in London. Webb’s oldest runs his own tech company. All three children have expressed gratitude towards the way their father raised them. One of his sons left him a note after spending time together during COVID that simply said, “I feel like I won the dad lottery.”
