(Photo: Gretchen and I with our youngest son at his high school graduation in Oregon. Yes, he’s tall! 6’ 3” and still growing!)

Over twenty years ago, Gretchen and I stood in front of a television and watched the second tower fall. I turned to her and said, “I have to go.”

We were married then. We are not now. But we raised three kids together through deployments, distance, a divorce, and plenty of hard times, both emotionally and financially. And somewhere in all of it we built something that outlasted the marriage: a real partnership as parents.

So when I finished writing Puddle Jumpers, there was only one person I wanted to write the foreword.

Foreword

As we stood there watching the second tower fall on TV, Brandon

looked at me and said, “I have to go.”

I was shocked, yet I knew in my heart exactly what he meant.

This was what he, and all of the SEAL Teams, had been training for.

Not even twenty-­ four hours later, we had named our soon-­ to-­ be-born

son, and Brandon was off to war. I was seven months pregnant

with our first child, unsure of when I would ever see my husband

again.

Life tends to test you in ways you could never imagine—­ tests

that push you to your breaking point but also free you when you

rise stronger from them. Parenting—­ and co-­ parenting—­ tests you in

similar ways. It takes patience, communication, and above all, respect.

Brandon and I have a deep appreciation for each other as co-­ parents.

This book comes from a place of wanting to help other parents

be their best, no matter their circumstances. It’s honest, practical,

and rooted in lived experience, not theory. If you are a parent,

I hope you take what you find here to heart. And if you are a

divorced co-­ parent, I hope it reminds you how vital it is to lift each

other up along this lifelong journey we call parenting.

-Gretchen Maybee

Introduction

We’d just come off the mountain after a great, long day on the

slopes, legs smoked, everyone ready to chill out. While slogging

through the parking lot back to my car, gear dangling off every

limb, the youngest of my three kids, Tyler, spots it: a half-frozen

puddle of slush and mud, so gnarly it looked as if it had its own

ecosystem. I can still picture his face lighting up as he started run-

ning straight for it with the delight of a dog chasing a tennis ball.

Tired, cold, and looking forward to getting home in front of the

fireplace, my default parent mode kicked in, ready to shut it down.

I opened my mouth to snap, “Don’t even think about it, T-Man!”

But I suddenly stopped myself.

Why? Because in that split second, I realized something. By

stopping him, I wasn’t protecting him. I wasn’t helping him. I wasn’t

really looking out for him at all. I was projecting my own adult

hang-­ ups—­ the inevitable mess, the inconvenience of a drenched

six-­ year-­ old on the drive home, the extra laundry, him looking

ridiculous. Instead, I had to ask myself an important question all

parents must ask themselves at times: Why the hell not?

So as he looked over his shoulder, I took a deep breath, smiled,

and said, “Get after it, dude!” He launched in full send mode.

Whooouush! Muddy ice slush all over his clothes and face, laugh-

ing like the little maniac he still is today. And that’s when it hit me:

These are the kind of kids I want to raise. Those who jump into

life, not around it. I want to raise puddle jumpers, kids who ­ aren’t

afraid to get dirty in pursuit of a joyful life.

As parents, we’ve got to check ourselves. Too often, we’re shutting

down our kids, not just out of our unfounded concerns or personal

bias, but because we’re dragging around our own baggage: fear of

judgment, need for control, leftover perfectionism from childhood.

That day, I almost stomped out my kid’s curiosity. But I caught

myself. I let him jump into the mud, and boy am I glad I did,

because this wasn’t just about letting a kid be a kid—­ it was about

clearing the runway to land. I’ve had some incredible jobs in my life,

from Navy SEAL to entrepreneur, but being a dad tops them all.

It’s the one role that humbles you, teaches you, and pays you back

in moments like this—­ muddy boots, wide smiles, and a reminder

that you’re the luckiest guy on earth.

Clearing the Runway

At twenty-­ eight, I became the head instructor of the US Navy

SEAL sniper course. But over the next few years, even as I achieved

the peak of my SEAL career, teaching the next generation of elite

snipers, I started to feel the cost of that life. My marriage was on

the rocks, and I could see the distance growing between me and my

kids. After living on adrenaline during thirteen years of go-­ go-­ go

deployments, followed by demanding ninety-­ hour work weeks as a

sniper instructor, I had to face a hard truth: If I wanted any kind of

future with my children, I needed to make a change. So I made the

most difficult call of my life—­ I left the T eams. I chose my family

over the Navy, knowing that no mission, no matter how critical,

was more important than being there for my kids.

What I never expected was that the same mental management

techniques I’d learned and used to teach deadly SEAL snipers would

also apply to my transition to civilian life, along with all the land

mines I’d encounter on the way: the loss of my first business, my

entire life savings destroyed, divorce, and all the time spent trying

to be a good father to my three children.

The core principles of being a great sniper align with those of

any effective mental management program for performance, such

as with sports: visualization (or mental rehearsal), a positive outlook

in all situations, self-­ image management, and positive verbal cues.

(The big difference, of course, is that missing a shot in, say, basket-

ball is not a life-­ or-­ death situation.) As a dad, I’ve used these prin-

ciples, along with my background as a former helicopter crewman

and later pilot, to develop my own style of parenting. This proved

to be an incredible tool and parenting hack for me as a divorced

father of three.

My children are all different in their own ways. The oldest,

Jackson, has always been interested in computers, math, debate club,

music, and chess. He’s more calculated and thoughtful in his deci-

sions. Madison is in the middle, the creative one of the family and

brave in everything she does. Tyler is the youngest; he’s also great

at math, though not very interested in academics, and sportier than

his siblings. Like his dad, he wants to act without overthinking and

contemplating every detail.

We are not a perfect family, and I’m not a perfect father. I’ve

made plenty of mistakes, but regardless of my missteps, I can say

I’ve been consistent with my love and support. And though we’ve

been through a lot of tough times as a family, we’ve come out the

other side better for it.

I deployed to Afghanistan right after the September 11, 2001,

terrorist attacks as a Navy SEAL with Team 3 ECHO platoon. My

wife at the time, Gretchen, was seven months pregnant with Jack-

son, and everything felt clouded in uncertainty. I later went to Iraq

as a defense contractor, which was no cakewalk either. After losing

my first start-­ up in 2008, my wife and I divorced, and a cascade of

events followed: moving cities, and schools, multiple times; leav-

ing friends behind; losing people my children were close to at a

young age, particularly my friends in the SEALs; dealing with issues

around drugs and alcohol; and handling the other typical challenges

we all contend with as parents. Of course, those challenges are

growing: On top of death, drugs, alcohol, sex, and family drama,

we now have social media, the internet, and artificial intelligence

changing the fabric of our society, not to mention our existence.

We’ve also entered a new era as parents. All of the tightrope-walking,

shark-­ dodging, and dream-­ protecting we do for our kids

often takes place without the village our grandparents took for

granted. According to Pew Research, fewer than 30 percent of US

parents live near most or all of their extended family, and many

report feeling isolated in their parenting role. Further, academic

findings show that modern parenting support is becoming increas-

ingly individualized, meaning fewer hands in the fight, less shared

wisdom, and more solo struggle.

The extended family used to live down the street—­ now they’re

a time zone away on FaceTime. Neighborhoods once raised kids

shoulder-­ to-­ shoulder; now, most of us are winging it behind closed

doors in big cities or isolated suburbs, searching for answers on the

internet at midnight and hoping we don’t screw up the one job

that matters more than any other. That gap, the space where wise

uncles, tough aunties, and watchful neighbors used to stand, needs

to be filled.

There is little in the way of practical tools and advice (from

actual parents, not academia) on how to raise kids in today’s crazy

world. Like most, I didn’t take any parenting classes; I just started

winging it. But I had an unfair advantage: my SEAL sniper training.

No Greater Mission

I’m not here to hand you an encyclopedic manual of parenthood.

Hell, nobody could do that. What I am doing is laying down the

parts that count, the lessons that left scars and the ones that saved my

ass: a guide to parenting with intention, so you’re not just reacting

to fears, but shaping your child’s future with purpose. This isn’t the-

ory; it’s blood, sweat, and the kind of trial by fire that only raising

kids can deliver. I’m filling the foxhole with every lesson I learned

the hard way: self-­ taught, parent-­ tested, and refined through raising

my own three kids with my co-­ parent and ex.

My hope is simple: that somewhere in these pages you find a

tool, a phrase, or a mindset you can carry into your own battles at

home. From one parent to another, I’m giving you what I’ve learned

in the arena, because while we can’t cover everything, we can damn

sure focus on what matters most.

In recent years, as my kids grew into young adults and started col-

lege, I found myself being asked for parenting advice. The questions

came from my circle of friends, new parents, and peers from business

school and alumni communities, often after they’d spent time with

my kids and walked away genuinely impressed by how they carried

themselves. I’d even get asked for advice at conferences where I was

the keynote. People were curious—­ especially when I told them my

parenting system was based on techniques I developed as a Navy

SEAL—­ and would always dig deeper, asking more questions.

So I finally decided to write this book and share my experience

as a father. I’m not a parenting academic. Through most of my kids’

early lives, I was a divorced dad. But as my kids developed into

capable young adults, it became clear that their mom and I had done

something right. I felt like I had something to offer other parents

on their journey, sharing my own messy parenting experience and

all the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

There’s no greater mission as a parent than raising a child who

knows who they are and has the tools to thrive and become the cap-

tain of their own life. It’s an amazing feeling when your kids grow up

and blossom into happy adults, and you realize they are truly prepared

to handle the world on their terms. And that’s the real goal: You must

prepare your children for the world, not protect them from it.

I still remember my daughter Madison visiting me in 2024 dur-

ing her summer break from Goldsmiths, University of London,

where she was a design student. Over dinner at my favorite French

restaurant, Grenache, in Lisbon, she told me, “Dad, I just want you

to know I am exactly where I want to be in my life, and I appreciate

you allowing me to be myself.”

What an amazing thing to hear as a parent.

It’s these moments that powerfully reveal the return on our

investment for all those years of being a consistent parent who

shows up every day.

By guiding our children to become happy adults, we’re not just

shaping their future either—­ we’re contributing to a stronger, more

compassionate humanity. I think we can all agree that, considering

the state of the world, this is a good thing.

What I’m going to teach you forever changed my life for the

better. The principles in this book have helped me greatly, and if you

commit to them, they will remain with you for years to come. You’ll

be a better parent, grandparent, spouse or partner, and person for it.

If you’re thinking, “My kids are too old, and I’ve missed the

boat!” I want to stress that “No, you ­ haven’t.” It’s never too late to

learn these lessons in mental management. I didn’t learn them until

I was close to thirty years old. These techniques have also helped

me deal with my own father-son dynamic with my dad, Grandpa

Jack to my kids.

Having kids is not easy, especially in the ultraconnected world we

live in today, where negativity is just a click away, but there’s hope!

At the core of this book, my primary mission is to equip you

for the rewarding yet demanding journey of parenthood. I want to

help you raise kids who are not just happy by their definition but

also kind, curious, and independent doers. Or as I like to describe

them, puddle jumpers.

The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday

Just as I’m not a perfect father, nobody is a perfect parent; we all

struggle with the hands life deals us. However, the imperfections,

mistakes, and stressors, when handled correctly as parents, make our

children blossom into beautiful adults. In most cases, it’s all neces-

sary. We went through hell as a family, and my kids still turned out

to be joyful, bold, and resilient.

In the SEAL Teams, we have many sayings, but the one that

most applies to being a parent is the same creed I still live by: “The

only easy day was yesterday.” As parents, we must bring our best

effort every day, even on our bad days, which we all have. I’ve seen

too many SEALs get comfortable, even cocky, and then get sent

back to the regular Navy for not bringing their all to the job daily.

Yesterday’s challenges are gone, in the rearview, and there’s no use

focusing on the past, only the present and what’s coming.

Parenting is one of the most rewarding jobs. If done right, it is

about being consistent, and consistency is the enemy of part-­ time.

It’s up to you what kind of parent you want to be: a part-­ time par-

ent or a full-­ time parent who is a constant force in your child’s life.

Your kids will remember your parenting legacy forever, and how

they turn out, good or bad, is largely up to how you parent.

Every chapter here outlines a clear theme and ends with a fam-

ily challenge and an actionable parenting checklist. These ensure

that you’ll always have a battle plan for handling life’s toughest

moments as a family. There’s also a whole section of parenting

resources in the back of the book, full of reminders, tips, and sug-

gestions to help you throughout your journey. With these tools,

you won’t just raise kids who can weather the storm; you’ll raise

self-reliant

leaders, capable of charting their course and thriving

in a world full of challenges. If you are consistent in using the fol-

lowing methods, you’ll end up with incredible children who are

independent, happy, and living a life filled with purpose.

And what parent wouldn’t want that for their kids?

Thx for listening. -Brandon

*Please order the book here, and I appreciate you sharing this with a parent who could use some practical advice on how to raise kids in this crazy world. You can order Puddle Jumpers here.

Writing it, I realized that the same can apply to parents with incredibly demanding careers, or the single mom working two jobs and holding everything together. So when you read it, just replace military deployment with demanding job/schedule, and you’ll figure out the rest.

Hope you find it helpful.

-Brandon

I had just come off an intense combat mission hunting terrorists in the caves of northern Afghanistan. It was November 2001, not long after my deployment with SEAL Team 3 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When we returned to base, I got the message that my first son, Jackson, had been born. Excitement hit me at the same time as fear. All I could think about was surviving this deployment long enough to make it home and meet my new family.

A few months later, in February 2002, our SEAL platoon landed at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. Stepping off that cargo plane after months in the dust-choked mountains of Afghanistan felt surreal. One minute I was living out of a backpack in the dirt, the next, I was surrounded by running water, clean streets, and a Starbucks on every corner.

For the first few weeks at home, Gretchen wouldn’t leave me alone with our new tiny redheaded baby boy for fear I’d break him. She’s always been a very protective mama bear, and I respect her for this. Gretchen is a great mom. -Excerpt from, Puddle Jumpers

That homecoming taught me something that shaped the next twenty years of my parenting.

The bond with your kids is not automatic, and it is not permanent.

It is built, and it can erode, and the distance deployment creates is real. But this doesn’t mean you have to lose closeness and connection with your children. Like anything in life, you just have to be deliberate about it, before you leave, while you are gone, and especially when you come home.

Here is what actually works.

Before deployment: build the anchor and be honest about your job and why you have to go away.

The connection your kid holds onto while you are gone is built before you leave. Children do not process absence well in a vacuum. They fill the vacuum with whatever their imagination produces, which is usually worse than the truth. Your job before you go is to give them something concrete to hold onto.

Record yourself reading their favorite books. A young child who can press play and hear your voice at bedtime is getting something real, a piece of you they can access on their own terms while you are gone. Make enough for the whole deployment.

Remember those holiday calendars with the pop-open windows? Create a visible countdown they can control. A jar of marbles they move one at a time, a paper chain they tear a link from each day. Kids have no sense of an abstract timeline. Give them a physical one they can touch so the absence has a shape and an end.

Leave letters to be opened on specific days. Birthdays. First day of school. A random Tuesday when they miss you. Write them before you go so your presence shows up in their life on the days that matter even when you cannot.

Have the honest conversation, at their level. Tell them where you are going and why, in terms they can handle, and make sure they understand the most important thing of all...that the leaving is not about them.

Say it directly. Say it more than once. Kids respect honesty, and they can see through BS, even at a young age.

During deployment (or demanding work schedule), consistency beats intensity.

This is the principle I want every deployed parent to internalize, because it is the one that matters most and the one most people get backwards. When it comes to staying connected across distance, consistency beats intensity every single time.

A brief, reliable check-in does more for a child’s sense of security than a rare, dramatic one. Kids do not need the grand gesture. They need the reliable signal. They need to know you are still there, still thinking about them, still interested in the small ordinary details of their days even when your days look nothing like theirs.

When you do connect, stay interested in the small stuff. Ask great questions. “If this week of your life was a movie, what would it be titled as and why?”

Get specific, most parents I meet don’t ask good enough questions, they just recycle the usual plastic, “How was your day?”

Great questions get great answers, and the same applies in reverse.

The specificity of the question tells them you were actually listening, that they live in your mind even when you are on the other side of the world.

“It’s these moments that powerfully reveal the return on our investment for all those years of being a consistent parent who shows up every day.”

That line is in Puddle Jumpers, and consistency across distance is the deployed parent’s version of showing up every day.

Coming home, this is the part nobody prepares you for...

Reintegration is the hardest and least discussed phase of the whole cycle. You come home changed. The family adapted without you. Everyone is quietly pretending it is seamless and it almost never is.

(Photo: My oldest son, Jackson, on his graduation day at St. Andrews. A long way from him being born while I was chasing bad guys in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL sniper!)

Go slow. Gretchen would not leave me alone with baby Jackson for the first few weeks, and she was right to be cautious. I had been living in the dirt for months. Reentry into the rhythm of a family takes time. Do not force it. Do not expect the closeness to snap back on day one. Let it rebuild at the pace the kids and your spouse set. Ease into it or as we say in the SEAL Teams, crawl, walk, and then run.

Be present, not just home. There is a difference between being physically back and actually being there. The reintegrating parent who is home but still halfway in the operational headspace is not fully present, and kids feel that gap immediately. The hours you are physically there need to be real ones. Phone down. Head home. All the way home.

A helpful tool, visualization. 

There is one technique from my SEAL sniper training that I used at every phase of the deployment cycle and that works just as well for a nervous kid as it does for an operator under pressure. Visualization.

Before a deployment, help your kid picture your return. Have them close their eyes and imagine the homecoming in detail, the airport, the hug, what you will do together first. It gives the absence a concrete, hopeful endpoint their mind can hold onto.

I write in Puddle Jumpers about teaching this to Jackson before a school speech he was terrified of, and to my daughter before a downhill ski race. The same tool that helps a kid rehearse success on a stage helps a kid rehearse the reunion at the end of a long absence. What the brain rehearses, it treats as familiar. Familiar is less frightening.

The closeness checklist.

Before: Record bedtime stories. Build a physical countdown. Write letters for specific days. Have the honest, age-appropriate conversation and make clear the leaving is not about them.

During: Prioritize consistent contact over dramatic contact. Ask about the small specific details of their life. Keep the signal reliable even when it is brief.

After: Go slow. Do not immediately reclaim your old role. Be fully present, not just physically home. Let the closeness rebuild at the kids’ pace.

Throughout: Use visualization to help them rehearse the reunion and hold onto a hopeful endpoint.

Protect it

Deploying for 6-12 months or more will strain the bond with your kids. The parent who is deliberate about connection before, during, and after can come home to children who know that they were held in your mind the entire time you were gone. That is mission success.

I came home to a four-month-old baby who did not know me. Twenty years later, that same son graduated from St. Andrews University, found me in the crowd, and told me he won the dad lottery.

The distance at the beginning did not decide the ending.

You can do the same. Whatever the mission takes you away from, the bond is worth protecting, and it is protectable.

I hope you found this useful, and if so, please share this with someone who could use it and consider buying my book here.

Over and out,

Brandon

noun | [pud-el jum-per]

Brave, joy-seeking souls, especially children, who leap into life’s messy, muddy moments with full-hearted abandon.

They see a half-frozen mud puddle and run for it, not from it. They’re not scared of getting dirty, falling down, or looking like a lunatic while chasing what lights them up.

They live fully, laugh loudly, and remind the rest of us that true happiness isn’t found in the clean, controlled parts of life. It’s found mid-jump, covered in mud, grinning like a little maniac.

That’s a Puddle Jumper. And I’d take a team full of them any day.

***Note: Ebook is on sale today here.

INTRODUCTION

We’d just come off the mountain after a great, long day on the slopes, legs smoked, everyone ready to chill out. While slogging through the parking lot back to my car, gear dangling off every limb, the youngest of my three kids, Tyler, spots it: a half-frozen puddle of slush and mud, so gnarly it looked as if it had its own ecosystem. I can still picture his face light up as he started running straight for it with the delight of a dog chasing a tennis ball.

Tired, cold, and looking forward to getting home in front of the fireplace, my default parent mode kicked in, ready to shut it down. I opened my mouth to snap, “Don’t even think about it, T-Man!” But I suddenly stopped myself.

Why? Because in that split second, I realized something. By stopping him, I wasn’t protecting him. I wasn’t helping him. I wasn’t really looking out for him at all. I was projecting my own adult hangups: the inevitable mess, the inconvenience of a drenched six-year-old on the drive home, the extra laundry, him looking ridiculous. Instead, I had to ask myself an important question all parents must ask themselves at times: Why the hell not?

So as he looked over his shoulder, I took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “Get after it, dude!” He launched in full send mode. Muddy ice slush all over his clothes and face, laughing like the little maniac he still is today. And that’s when it hit me: these are the kind of kids I want to raise. Those who jump into life, not around it. I want to raise puddle jumpers, kids who aren’t afraid to get dirty in pursuit of a joyful life.

As parents, we’ve got to check ourselves. Too often, we’re shutting down our kids, not just out of our unfounded concerns or personal bias, but because we’re dragging around our own baggage: fear of judgment, need for control, leftover perfectionism from our own childhood.

That day, I almost stomped out my kid’s curiosity. But I caught myself. I let him jump into the mud, and boy, I’m glad I did, because this wasn’t just about letting a kid be a kid. It was about clearing the runway for purpose to land. I’ve had some incredible jobs in my life, from Navy SEAL to entrepreneur, but being a dad tops them all. It’s the one role that humbles you, teaches you, and pays you back in moments like this: muddy boots, wide smiles, and a reminder that you’re the luckiest guy on earth.

Clearing the Runway

At 28, I became the head instructor of the US Navy SEAL sniper course. But over the next few years, even as I achieved the peak of my SEAL career, teaching the next generation of elite snipers, I started to feel the cost of that life. My marriage was on the rocks, and I could see the distance growing between me and my kids. After living on adrenaline during 13 years of go-go-go deployments, followed by demanding 90-hour work weeks as a sniper instructor, I had to face a hard truth: if I wanted any kind of future with my children, I needed to make a change. So I made the most difficult call of my life. I left the Teams. I chose my family over the Navy, knowing that no mission, no matter how critical, was more important than being there for my kids.

What I never expected was that the same mental management techniques I’d learned and used to teach deadly SEAL snipers would also apply to my transition to civilian life, along with all the land mines I’d encounter on the way: the loss of my first business, my entire life savings destroyed, divorce, and all the time spent trying to be a good father to my three children.

The core principles of being a great sniper align with those of any effective mental management program for performance, such as with sports: visualization (or mental rehearsal), a positive outlook in all situations, self-image management, and positive verbal cues. As a dad, I’ve used these principles to develop my own style of parenting. This proved to be an incredible tool and parenting hack for me as a divorced father of three.

We are not a perfect family, and I’m not a perfect father. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but regardless of my missteps, I can say I’ve been consistent with my love and support. And though we’ve been through a lot of tough times as a family, we’ve come out the other side better for it.

We’ve also entered a new era as parents. All of the tightrope-walking, shark-dodging, and dream-protecting we do for our kids often takes place without the village our grandparents took for granted. According to Pew Research, fewer than 30 percent of U.S. parents live near most or all of their extended family, and many report feeling isolated in their parenting role. The extended family used to live down the street. Now they’re a time zone away on FaceTime. Neighborhoods once raised kids shoulder to shoulder. Now most of us are winging it behind closed doors, searching for answers on the internet at midnight and hoping we don’t screw up the one job that matters more than any other.

CHAPTER ONE: CULTIVATING MENTAL STRENGTH

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” — Bruce Lee

Let’s talk about Bruce Lee. He wasn’t just a martial arts icon and cinematic legend; he was a philosopher in motion, a man who taught discipline, grit, and the power of self-awareness through every punch he threw and every word he spoke. He was also a father. The teachings he passed on to his students, fans, and kids weren’t just about fighting; they were about living with purpose and confronting hardship with strength. His own daughter, Shannon Lee, remembers him as strict but loving and warm. Raising kids can feel like facing off in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, surrounded, outnumbered, and one wrong move away from defeat.

What keeps our kids steady when the world tilts is mental toughness. Mental toughness is the ability to choose calmness and clarity when everything erupts around you. In the SEAL Teams, especially as snipers, we trained our minds before we ever touched a firearm. Mental preparation was paramount. Parenting’s no different: you either lead with calm clarity, ready for any situation, or you freak out amid the inevitable turmoil. It’s a conscious choice, and whatever you choose, you’re modeling behavior for your children.

Mentally tough, emotionally sharp kids don’t fall apart when life punches them in the mouth. And as we all know by now, life rarely pulls punches. Kids need independence, resilience, and the ability to stand strong in a world that won’t always be kind to them when we’re not around. Sure, we want to protect them from danger: bullying, mental health struggles, bad influences, violence, addiction, and the endless pull of digital screens. The weight of those fears can keep us parents up at night, wondering if we’re doing enough, if we’re getting it right. Worse, though, is when we default to overprotection.

(Photo: The Webb kids getting their SCUBA certification in 2020 in Puerto Rico)

In the early ‘90s, the University of Arizona created a biosphere project to mimic space colonization on Mars. Scientists lived and studied in a closed environment to learn how to exist on other planets. One of the most shocking discoveries was that the trees in the biosphere grew tall, but after a time, they would just fall over. Scientists found that, in order to build a firm foundation, the trees actually needed the stress from wind, which was absent inside the biosphere. Just as trees need stress to grow strong, so do our children. Remember this the next time you’re afraid to let your kid go on that overnight trip with friends or ride the subway by themselves. Kids also need to be prepared to weather the storm of negativity in their everyday lives, especially in the age of social media and internet clickbait, where it flows like the Nile.

The antidote? Positivity. Positive teaching, positive self-talk, and positive reinforcement. This trait can be developed through the same tools I learned and taught in sniper school: visualization, debriefs, and mindset drills. The same tools I’ve used to raise kids who don’t crack under pressure.

A Life-Changing Call

I had just come off an intense combat mission hunting terrorists in the caves of northern Afghanistan. It was November 2001, not long after my deployment with SEAL Team 3 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When we returned to base, I got the message that my first son, Jackson, had been born. Excitement hit me at the same time as fear. All I could think about was surviving this deployment long enough to make it home and meet my new son...

Read the rest in Puddle Jumpers.

***EBOOK ON SALE TODAY***

The full mental management system, the family stories, and the practical tools that raised three confident, resilient kids. The ebook is on sale today only. Grab your copy before the price goes back up.

→ Get the Ebook Here.

Thx for reading. If there’s any topics you want me to write about please share in the comments below. If you think this book could be useful to a new parent, please share.

Brandon

Before we implemented performance psychology (aka mental mgmt) into the brutally challenging Navy SEAL sniper program, we had a 30% failure rate.

And these were highly trained and motivated Navy SEALs but, 30% were doomed to pack their bags, heads held low, in the walk of shame back to their SEAL Teams.

What happened after?

We started graduating everyone!

Yes, there were exceptions, and the few who couldn’t make the cut, but that was rare.

I had my hair blown back by the results.

After leaving the SEALs and becoming a young father, I realized these techniques can be applied to parenting.

The core principles of any effective mental management program for performance sports (or being a great sniper) are visualization (mental rehearsal), embracing a positive outlook in all situations, self-image management, and using positive verbal cues.

I’d encourage you to start having these conversations with your kids before they go back to school this year.

Here’s a cheat sheet I created for you (but please read my book, Puddle Jumpers for more).

1. VISUALIZATION (Mental Rehearsal)

Have your kid picture success in vivid detail before the moment arrives, including how they’ll handle it if things go sideways. Have them rehearse for these contingencies as well.

Before a big game or recital: have them mentally run through the perfect performance start to finish, then rehearse recovering smoothly from a mistake.

Before a hard conversation (a teacher, a coach, a friend): have them picture themselves speaking clearly and staying composed.

Before the first day at a new school: have them walk through the day in their mind so it feels familiar instead of frightening.

This includes being confronted by bullies. My oldest son was afraid of starting high school because of the bullying stories he was hearing in middle school. Martial arts and these techniques fixed that concern.

2. EMBRACING A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

Teach them to find the useful angle in ANY situation, especially the hard ones. Not fake cheerfulness. A deliberate choice to look for what they can control and learn.

After a loss or bad grade: ask “what did we learn and what do we do differently next time?” instead of dwelling on the outcome.

When plans fall apart: model it yourself out loud. “Okay, this isn’t what we wanted. What’s the opportunity here?”

When they say “I can’t do this”: reframe it to “you can’t do this yet.”

When something goes wrong on a trip or a day out: treat it as an adventure or a story rather than a disaster.

3. SELF-IMAGE MANAGEMENT

Protect the story your kid tells themselves about who they are. Their identity drives their behavior more than any single event.

After a bad day, don’t let it harden into a label. Never let “I failed the test” become “I’m bad at math.”

Praise the identity you want to grow: “you’re the kind of person who doesn’t quit” rather than just “good job.”

Protect it after a rough patch the way champions do. On a bad training day they stopped early to avoid imprinting a negative self-image. Let your kid reset and come back fresh rather than pushing through a spiral. *Parents…don’t reinforce negativity if they are having a bad day…take a break and come back to it.

Surround them with an environment and people that reflect the image you want them to hold of themselves.

4. POSITIVE VERBAL CUES (Becoming Their Own Coach)

Give them the words to replace the negative loop in their head. What they say to themselves becomes their inner voice.

Learning how to manage self-talk is so important.

Swap “I don’t know if I can make this shot” for “it’s like me to make this shot.”

Coach the action, not the fear. Instead of “don’t mess up,” say “take a breath, exhale, and go.”

Give them a personal mantra to reach for under pressure, something short they can repeat.

Watch your own words to them, because your voice becomes their inner voice. What you say on the sideline is what they’ll say to themselves for years.

THE ONE THING TO REMEMBER

These four tools work together. Your kid pictures the win (visualization), chooses the useful angle when it’s hard (positive outlook), protects who they believe they are (self-image), and talks to themselves like a coach instead of a critic (verbal cues). Practiced together, they turn a nervous kid into one who can perform under pressure, in a classroom, on a field, or anywhere life pushes back.

If this helped, please share with another parent you know.

Thx for listening,

Brandon

For a more in-depth look at how I parented kids to happy young adults, check out Puddle Jumpers here.

(Photo: The Webb kids getting their SCUBA certification during COVID)

First things first…be kind. I’m a little behind this week’s post because of my ortho procedure, but I am firmly back in the cockpit and firmly at the controls as of today.

Now onto this week’s parenting chat…

There is a name for the parent who clears every obstacle out of their kid’s path before the kid even reaches it. Snowplow parenting.

It evolved from helicopter parenting, which merely hovered. The snowplow goes further.

It runs ahead and removes the friction entirely.

The hard teacher gets an angry email.

The lost spot on the team gets a phone call to the coach.

The failing grade gets negotiated.

The kid never encounters resistance because a parent is out front, engine running, plowing it all away.

I get it; it comes from love.

No snowplow parent is a villain. They are terrified, and the terror is understandable. But it is producing a generation of young adults who arrive at their first real difficulty with no evidence that they can survive it, because they never once have.

Here is what most parents get backwards.

They confuse protecting kids from danger with protecting them from difficulty.

Those are completely different jobs.

Danger is bullying, addiction, genuine harm, the things that should keep us up at night.

Difficulty is the lost game, the hard class, the friendship that fell apart, the failure that stings. Danger you shield them from. Difficulty you let them walk straight into, because difficulty is the only thing that builds strong roots.

I write about this in Puddle Jumpers using an experiment that stuck with me for years. In the early nineties, the University of Arizona built a sealed biosphere to study how humans might one day live on Mars. Inside that controlled environment, the trees grew tall and then, strangely, kept falling over. Scientists eventually figured out why. The trees needed wind. Without the stress of wind pushing against them, they never developed the root structure required to hold themselves up. The thing that looked like an obstacle was the exact thing they needed to survive.

Your kid is that tree.

The snowplow parent removes all the wind and then cannot understand why their eighteen-year-old crumbles the first time life pushes back.

The answer is simple. You cannot build strength in the absence of resistance. This is not a parenting philosophy. It is biology.

The fix is not to abandon your kids or manufacture cruelty (I’ll talk about manufacturing difficulty later). It is what I call the winning formula: provide a great, loving environment and deliberately allow adversity so their roots grow strong.

Be the steady base they return to. Then let them go on the trip, ride the subway, lose the game, fail the test, and feel the full weight of it while you stand close enough to catch a real fall but far enough back that they learn they did not need catching.

That is the whole job. Love them enough to let them struggle.

Raise puddle jumpers. Not kids who never fall, but kids who know they can get back up.

I put all of it in Puddle Jumpers. Link below.

[Amazon link]

(Photo: Tyler and I having lunch in Soho, NYC.)

I recently had a medical procedure in New York. An old night parachute training injury that finally came to collect its due.

It also forced me to accept the hard truth, some things you cannot do alone. You need help. Actual help. The unglamorous kind that involves someone getting you from point A to point B when your body is not cooperating and your pride has to be checked at the door.

My youngest, Tyler, showed up.

This is the same Tyler from my book, Puddle Jumpers, who was nearly failing eighth grade. The same kid I worried about more than once, who once orchestrated a revenge plot involving twenty pizzas delivered to a school administrator, who kept me up at night wondering whether he was going to find his footing. That Tyler. Now a young man studying finance at the University of Oregon, who dropped what he was doing and came to help his dad through a rough stretch without being asked twice and without making me feel like a burden for needing it.

I am not going to pretend that did not wreck me a little bit, in the good way. Because I know what the statistics say about how this usually goes. And they are genuinely bleak.

There is a quiet epidemic in America that nobody wants to name.

The part of American family life that does not make it into the holiday card photos.

Research from Karl Pillemer at Cornell University, who conducted one of the largest studies ever done on the subject, found that roughly 27 percent of Americans are estranged from a close family member. That is more than one in four. Around 25 percent of that estrangement involves a parent. Do the math on that across the population and you are talking about tens of millions of people who no longer speak to the mother or father who raised them.

I have been on and off with my father for years and we haven’t spoken for over a year. I’ll excavate that situation another time.

The numbers get sadder the closer you look. A significant body of research shows that adult children initiate the majority of these estrangements, and that once the distance sets in, it tends to calcify. Years go by. Then decades. Then a parent dies and the reconciliation that everyone assumed would eventually happen simply never does, and the surviving child is left holding a grief with no clean edges, the particular ache of mourning someone you were technically still angry at.

How many reading this can relate?

And this is happening in a country that is, by every technological measure, more connected than any society in human history. Everybody has a phone. Everybody can reach everybody instantly. And yet the actual human bonds, the ones that matter, the ones that determine whether a kid shows up when their father needs help getting across a hospital lobby, are quietly dissolving in millions of homes and that’s a sad thought.

It’s not a technology problem. It is a relationship problem.

And it starts long before the estrangement does. It starts in the accumulated small moments across a childhood, the thousand tiny signals a kid receives about whether they actually matter, that eventually harden into either a bond strong enough to survive adulthood or a politeness thin enough to abandon the moment it becomes inconvenient.

Why the phone in your pocket is not the connection you think it is

I want to be brutally honest here, because candor is uncomfortable but necessary on our life path to growth.

We have confused contact with connection.

We think that because we can text our kids and follow their lives on a screen and send them a birthday meme, we are close to them. We are not biologically wired for this. Proximity through a glowing rectangle is not the same thing as the kind of bond that makes a twenty-year-old drop everything and travel to take care of a parent who cannot manage the stairs.

That bond is not built through the phone. It is built through the decades of showing up before the phone was even relevant. And the terrible irony of the ultra-connected age is that the constant low-grade contact can actually fool a parent into thinking the relationship is fine right up until the moment they need it and discover it was hollow the whole time.

I have so many of my business network in this situation, and it was a big motivation for me to write Puddle Jumpers.

Having kids is not easy, especially in the ultra-tech world we live in today. The connection tools are everywhere and the actual connection is evaporating. Those two facts are related. The tools give us the illusion of closeness while quietly replacing the harder, realer, slower work that closeness actually requires.

“If we want our kids to be strong, they need to see where our cracks are, too.” I wrote that in Puddle Jumpers before I had any idea I would end up demonstrating it quite so literally, lying flat in a New York recovery room with my youngest son handling the things I could not handle for myself.

What actually keeps a kid close

Tyler did not show up because he owed me. He did not show up out of obligation or guilt or the grim sense of duty that produces the kind of resentful caretaking that eventually curdles into estrangement anyway.

He showed up because we have a relationship. A real one. Built over twenty years of me choosing him and his siblings over the cleaner, easier, more professionally convenient option more times than I can count. Built through hard moments tackled together. I have watched too many good people in my business network love their children genuinely while never quite placing them on equal footing with their careers, and I know how that story ends.

Their kids figure it out. They always figure it out. Children are extraordinarily precise readers of priority, and the conclusion they reach about whether they genuinely mattered to you becomes the foundation of how much they choose to show up for you when the roles eventually reverse and you are the one who needs help.

That is the part that should keep parents up at night, in a productive way.

The relationship you have with your kid when they are twenty and thirty and forty is being built right now, in the unremarkable Tuesday decisions you are making about whether they are a genuine priority or a line item you will get to once the more urgent things are handled.

There are no more urgent things. That is the whole point. There never were.

It’s a strange and humbling moment when we realize the direction of care will flip.

For decades you are the one who shows up. You are the one who handles it, who makes the calls, who stays calm when everything is coming apart, who gets the kid from where they are to where they need to be.

And then one day you are flat on your back in a recovery room in New York and your kid is the one handling it. Getting you where you need to go. Staying calm. Making it okay.

That moment is either one of the great gifts of a life well-lived or one of its quiet tragedies, and which one it turns out to be is determined almost entirely by the work you did decades earlier when the stakes did not feel nearly so high.

I got the gift version. My youngest son showed up.

You can build the kind of relationship that produces a kid who shows up. It is not luck. It is not personality. It is the compounding result of decades of small decisions about whether your child is a genuine priority in your life or something you will get to later.

I put everything I learned about building that kind of bond into Puddle Jumpers. If it resonates, share it with a parent who needs to hear it, and grab a copy for yourself. The relationship you build now is the one that shows up for you later. There is no more important investment you will ever make.

(Photo: My daughter and her bestie graduating last year from Goldsmiths in London)

I am going to tell you the single most useful thing I learned about predicting how your kid turns out, and, hold onto your coffee mug, it is going to make some parents uncomfortable.

Grades? Mildly important but not a main factor in outcome.

What is?

Check their group chat or their core friend group.

You can hire tutors. You can set curfews. You can run a military-style calendar of structure and values at home. You can read every parenting book ever published and prep trendy organic meals, pay a fortune for private schools, and do everything the experts tell you to do.

But, if your kid is marinating in a digital junkyard, bad friends, toxic people (including coaches and teachers…been there with both!), and emotionally bankrupt adults (including parents of friends), you are fighting a losing battle.

Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future is not just a catchy line. It is a parenting truth. And it is one of the most underrated forces in all of parenting because it operates almost entirely outside a parent’s direct control and most parents refuse to take it seriously until it is too late.

Environment beats willpower every single time

Here is the part that most parents get wrong. They believe that if they just raise their kid right, instill the right values, have the right conversations, that the kid will rise above a bad environment through sheer force of character.

That is a comforting story. It is also mostly false.

I write about this in Puddle Jumpers with an example that tends to stick. Drop a monk in Vegas for a year with ten million dollars and see how that plays out. This is a person who has spent decades training their discipline to a level most of us cannot imagine. And you would still bet against him. Because environment is stronger than willpower. Not sometimes. Almost always.

The same applies to your child, except your child has a fraction of the monk’s self-regulation because their prefrontal cortex is not even finished building yet. I do not care how good they are. If their peer group, their coach, their teacher, or their school culture is toxic, they will not rise above it. Hoping they will is lazy parenting dressed up as optimism.

That is a hard sentence and I stand by every word of it. Because the alternative to saying it plainly is watching good parents lose their kids to mediocrity, or to something more insidious, because they were too polite or too afraid to make a bold move when the environment demanded one.

“Environment isn’t just important. It’s everything. If our kids are placed in the right environments, around people who do hard things, they’ll start to believe they can do hard things too.” That is the core of it. Belief is contagious. So is its absence.

My ex (and amazing co-parent) and I pulled our 12-year-old out of a bad school environment, a horrible homeroom teacher and bad influence friends and put him on home school for the rest of middle school. He went from failing out of school, to a B average, a better friend group, and just finished his first year at U of Oregon studying business and finance (GO DUCKS!).

What the research actually says

This is not just a Navy SEAL Dad’s hunch. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University published a working paper titled “Place Matters: The Environment We Create Shapes the Foundations of Healthy Development.” The finding was clear. The environments where children live, grow, play, and learn, encompassing both physical surroundings and social relationships, profoundly influence their development. Kids raised in safe, supportive, and stimulating environments are more likely to thrive. Kids in adverse settings encounter more obstacles that actively hinder their growth.

If you still doubt me, ask Darwin how important surroundings are.

Adaptation does not happen in a vacuum. It happens in response to the environment. The stronger, healthier, and more stimulating the ecosystem, the more potential your kid has to evolve and thrive. This is not theory. It is survival mechanics as old as biology itself.

Your kid is adapting to their environment every single day whether you are paying attention to it or not. The only question is whether the environment they are adapting to is one you chose and curated deliberately or one that assembled itself by accident while you were focused on their grades and your career.

Why I treated my kids’ peer groups like building a Navy SEAL platoon

I was relentless about surrounding my kids with people who inspired them. Mentors. Coaches. Trusted friends. Whether it was picking the right school or steering them toward high-caliber peers, their mom and I treated it like I was building a SEAL platoon for a mission. No weak links. No energy vampires.

That sounds intense. It was intentional. Because I understood something that took me years in the SEAL Teams to fully internalize, which is that the people around you during the formative moments do more to determine your trajectory than almost any individual choice you make on your own.

Living in New York through my kids’ middle and high school years gave me an edge here. Manhattan is a pressure cooker of ambition, creativity, and execution. I was surrounded by an eclectic group of friends. Founders, artists, financiers, authors, coders, dancers, musicians, stylists, and executives. And every chance I got, I brought one of my kids along to a dinner, an important meeting, or an event if I thought it would leave a mark.

This was deliberate. I was not just introducing them to cool people. I was curating their exposure to high-functioning, positive adult role models. People who were doing their thing and doing it well. I wanted my kids to have a front-row seat to what excellence actually looks like in the wild, so they would recognize it, be drawn to it, and eventually reproduce it.

Here is where this philosophy demands something hard from parents.

Sometimes the only solution is to change the pond. Different school. Different coach. Different zip code. I know that sounds extreme. But so is losing your kid to a peer group that is quietly pulling them toward the lowest common denominator while you tell yourself it is just a phase.

I am not saying you uproot your family every time your kid makes a friend you do not love. Kids need to learn to navigate a range of people and some friction is healthy and part of the point.

What I am saying is that when the dominant gravitational pull of your kid’s environment is downward, when the pack they are running with is oriented toward apathy or worse, that is not a situation you can values-lecture your way out of. The environment will win. It almost always does.

The bold move, the school change, the different team, the harder conversation about which friendships are actually serving them, is sometimes the single most important parenting decision you will make. And it is the one most parents avoid because it is uncomfortable, disruptive, and forces a confrontation with the fact that their kid’s trajectory is being shaped by forces they have been ignoring.

The audit worth running this week

Look honestly at the five people your kid spends the most time with. Not the ones you wish they spent time with. The actual five.

Ask yourself: is the gravitational pull of this group upward or downward? Are these kids doing hard things, or are they teaching your kid that hard things are for suckers?

Does your kid come back from time with them energized and inspired, or diminished and cynical?

You do not need to panic over one friend you do not love. You need to look clearly at the overall direction of the gravitational pull. Because that pull, compounded over years, is doing more to shape your kid than almost anything you say to them at the dinner table.

This is not about controlling your kid. It is about the environment you curate for them (or not).

I want to be clear about the distinction here because it matters. This is not a call to micromanage your kid’s friendships or to treat every relationship as a threat assessment. Kids need autonomy. They need to make their own choices, including some bad ones, and learn from them. That is the whole philosophy of Puddle Jumpers. You let them jump in the mud.

But there is a difference between letting your kid navigate their own social world and abdicating any responsibility for the environment that world takes place in. Your job is not to pick their friends. Your job is to build an environment, a school, a neighborhood, a set of activities, a home culture, in which the odds of them finding good people are dramatically higher.

You are not choosing the individual relationships. You are stocking the pond. And what you stock the pond with determines, to a degree most parents underestimate, what your kid pulls out of it.

I did not choose Madison’s friends in London. But I spent her younger years teaching her what good people look like by surrounding her with them. So when she got there, she knew exactly what to reach for. She left me a postcard after a recent visit that said, “You’ve taught me to find good people.”

That is the whole thing. Right there. I did not find the people for her. I taught her to find them herself, by controlling the one thing a parent actually can control, which is the environment.

The bottom line

You can do everything else right and still lose the battle if you ignore the environment. And you can be an imperfect parent in a hundred ways, as I have been, and still give your kid an enormous advantage if you get the environment right.

Pay attention to the right one.

Build the pond deliberately. Surround them with people who do hard things. Be willing to make the bold, uncomfortable move when the environment turns toxic. And teach them, by example and exposure rather than lecture, what good people actually look like so they can find them on their own for the rest of their lives.

That is the highest-leverage thing you can do as a parent.

I put all of it in Puddle Jumpers. The environment framework, the research behind it, and twenty years of watching it play out with three very different kids. Link below if you want the whole picture.

Please share this with someone and check out Puddle Jumpers now.

(Photo: My youngest son and I at dinner in Lisbon, Portugal. He’s also the tallest, 6’ 3”, which he reminds his older brother of often! Have to love the sibling rivalry.)

Your kids are looking for leadership.

Nature does not tolerate empty space.

Neither does your kid’s brain.

If you do not fill that gap with solid leadership, something else will crawl in and make itself comfortable.

An algorithm. A stranger online. A peer of theirs with worse judgment than a drunk uncle at a wedding.

Kids are not blank slates waiting patiently for wisdom. They are wet cement. Whatever steps in first leaves a print, and you’d be wise to remember that.

Leadership is not a speech. It is not a motivational poster on a wall.

It is someone who shows up early, does the dishes without being asked, and sets an example with phone usage around the family. This is what we call exemplary leadership in the military.

Kids read behavior the way sharks read blood in water.

They know the difference between a parent who talks about discipline and a parent who lives it when nobody is watching.

And it’s backed by research.

Decades of psychology studies, going back to Diana Baumrind’s original work and confirmed again and again since, point to the same conclusion: kids raised by authoritative parents, meaning warm, consistent, and firm with high expectations, come out ahead on nearly every marker that matters, including maturity, happiness, resilience, self-esteem, and academic performance.

Research has found that authoritative parenting directly lowered the odds of delinquency and even lowered the odds of the kid becoming a crime victim later on.

That is a measurable shield you build with your own behavior, one ordinary day at a time.

Translation for the folks who skipped the footnotes: the way you act in your kitchen is doing more work than any lecture you will ever give your kiddos.

I wrote about this exact gap, the leadership void and what rushes in to fill it, in Puddle Jumpers.

Not theory. Real stories, real mistakes, real fixes, built from lessons I did not learn in a classroom but in the trenches of parenthood.

If this hit home, send it to a parent who needs the reminder today. And if you want the full playbook, grab a copy of Puddle Jumpers. Your kid is watching whether you like it or not. Might as well give them something worth copying.

(Photo: Right before departing Lithuania)

There is a moment somewhere over northern Poland, dodging rain showers low enough that you can see individual cows getting nervous about the weather, when you start asking yourself serious questions about your life choices.

I was not asking those questions because I was scared. I have been in worse spots than a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza skimming under a gray ceiling near the Belarusian border. I was asking them because somewhere around that point our GPS started lying to us, and there is nothing quite like watching your own navigation system develop a drinking problem at 1,500 feet to make you reconsider the whole concept of trusting machines.

But I have been here before. Not over Poland specifically. In the general territory of things going sideways. And every time I end up there, I usually think about my kids.

On my mother’s side of the family there is a piece of aviation history that still makes me laugh every time I tell it. A relative of ours named Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan became one of the most gloriously defiant figures in American aviation when he flew solo across the Atlantic in 1938 without official permission. He filed a flight plan for California, took off from New York, and somehow ended up in Ireland.

The authorities were not amused. The public absolutely was. He claimed the whole time it was a navigational error, a story nobody believed for a single second. The papers called him Wrong Way for the rest of his life and he wore it like a badge of honor. You can read it all here.

I have always wanted to fly since watching Star Blazers, Tales of the Golden Monkey, and Baa Baa Black Sheep as a young boy.

Eventually I got my pilot’s license and instrument rating in my late twenties. Then aerobatics, a seaplane rating, and my Formation and Safety Team (FAST) card. I couldn’t get enough and still can’t.

I’ve always treated aviation as a professional hobby and have been fortunate to learn from some of the world's best pilots. Especially during my time flying air combat with my Yak 52. My hangar neighbor, “Condor”, was one of the original Top Gun instructors and flew the F-4 Phantom in Vietnam. Then there was Bill who had hundreds of hours flying the space shuttle, and another Top Gun pilot, “Moto”, and many more.

My daughter was barely out of diapers when I started taking her up for touch and go landings. Car seat strapped into the back of the plane, binkie working overtime, completely unbothered by the fact that her father was practicing his circuits at a general aviation field while most parents were pushing strollers around the neighborhood. She did not know what any of it meant. She just trusted that wherever we were going, I had it handled.

Years later I taught her to roll my RV6 upside down over New York. She was 12!

“That was pretty cool, Dad.”

I wrote about this in Puddle Jumpers because it applies to parenting the same way it applies to aviation. Kids do not need a perfect flight. They need a pilot they believe in. Someone who stays calm when the turbulence starts, and the plan needs to change in real time.

The kids and I had many flight adventures as they were growing up.

(Photo: Left to right. Talisa my daughers Bestie, my daughter, Me and Apollo after a day flying in Portugal)

So when my friend Bastian asked me to help him ferry his new Bonanza 3,735 kilometers from Pociūnai, Lithuania to Cascais, Portugal, I said, “Hell yes!”

Bastian is a new pilot, and his insurance required him to fly with an experienced pilot with retractable time. I’ve flown the Bonanza before and owned a Fuji LM-2, which is basically a four-seat aerobatic Beechcraft that the Japanese used as a military trainer. Bottom line, I was comfortable to roger up for the job.

What followed was one of the strangest, most human, most unexpectedly instructive trips I have taken in a long time. Not because anything went according to plan. Because nothing did.

We left on a partly cloudy afternoon in Lithuania, and as soon as we hit the border of Poland we encountered low ceilings and scattered showers. I made the call to land at a local field and we decided to stay the night and get up early to try and push south into improving weather.

The next morning we were off with good visibility, but we still had to dodge the occasional rain shower but air traffic control in Poland was very helpful.

Flying VFR means you live and die by what you can see and what your instruments tell you, and for a stretch near the Belarusian border my instruments told me a story that had nothing to do with reality. Russian electronic warfare units along that border have a habit of jamming GPS signals for drones, and apparently somebody decided that morning was a good morning to scramble everything within range.

Your position on the screen starts drifting. Not crashing. Drifting, like a guy at a party who has had four drinks too many and is still convinced he is doing fine.

We adjusted, and just flew visually on our compass heading, radar vectors from Poland control, and old-fashioned pilotage, and pressed on toward the Czech border where we had a planned gas and snack stop.

As we got closer to the Czech Republic low clouds shut that door, so we diverted into Lubin, Poland for fuel.

(Photo: Lubin field, Poland)

It turned out to be one of the strangest airports I have ever set wheels on. Massive runway. Full infrastructure. Built for serious traffic and not a single human being in sight. It was like a scene out of some zombie movie after the world ends.

So much for coffee and a snack. I took a quick bathroom break and then helped Bastian fuel up the bird.

The weather was starting to get much better, but now we had afternoon thunder showers to dodge, and a huge black cloud was rolling over the aerodrome as we fired up the engine for take-off.

From Lubin we pushed west, dodged one more serious rain cell with the help of the Polish controller. "Bonanza, turn 30 degree turn, right. Weather coming. No good."

Roger that!

After that cell the skies cleared as we ran the line along the German, Czech, and Swiss borders. For the first time in hours flying actually felt like flying instead of negotiating.

The Alps showed up on the distant horizon to the east, catching the afternoon light like they had been placed there specifically for our benefit. It was a beautiful sight.

(Photos: Me somewhere over Germany. 2nd, Alps in the distance as we entered France.)

Getting closer to the French border, I kept thinking about my pilot friends who’d told me that in France, the aviation culture and camaraderie were among the best in Europe.

Say what you want about the French, but I can tell you, as soon as Germany handed us off to the French ATC, it became obvious we were flying in a country that loved aviation. The controllers in France were some of the most helpful I’ve encountered outside of America.

(Photo: Pilot talk over a glass of wine with our new friend.)

We landed at this little airfield near Mâcon, France, tired and ready for the ground to stop moving.

Rolling off the runway, I turned to maneuver the Bonanza and found a soft patch of grass, and we dug in. An easy move in my lighter RV6 but the A36 had other ideas. We were briefly stuck in the soft grass. Not dangerously, just embarrassingly, the kind of stuck that makes you grateful nobody is filming.

A French pilot wandered over, assessed the situation without drama, and offered to help. No judgment, no lecture, just the quiet competence of someone who has clearly been the guy stuck in the grass before. He offered a ride into town and then, in the way these things happen at small airfields everywhere, handed us off to another pilot who had just landed.

His name Anton, and we connected immediately. We helped him push his little red and white Robin, registration F-GDKX, into the hangar for the night, tucking it in under a corrugated metal roof where the late afternoon light came through the skylights in long dusty strips. He had converted the aircraft into a sleeper for overnight camping trips, which told me everything I needed to know about how he spent his weekends and what kind of person he was.

Then we sat with a bottle of wine between us, trading stories in broken French and broken English, three people from different countries (Bastian was Dutch) who happened to share the same obsession. Pilots have a language that does not require fluency.

It was magic, and in this moment I was reminded that humanity is capable of great and compassionate things.

I thought about all the times I had sat in a cockpit with my kids and tried to give them some version of this. The understanding that strangers who share a passion are never really strangers. That the world is full of people willing to help if you show up without pretense and with enough humility to accept it.

Anton drove us into town in a 1979 BMW 7 Series was meticulously cared for but was the kind of car that looks shabby on purpose because anything too polished would be embarrassing by French standards. The seats needed attention, but the engine purred.

Bastian and I checked into the hotel, showered up, and walked into town to find a spot to eat.

Dinner in Mâcon was everything you want from rural France. Escargot. Dover sole that dissolved at the touch of a fork. Wine that made you question every bottle you had called good before that evening. We ate slow, debriefed things that went wrong, and right and shared a few laughs. It was the kind of satisfaction that only comes from a hard earned adventure.

Morning brought a short hop to Pau in the foothills of the Pyrenees for fuel, and we finally got the autopilot working, which reduced the workload dramatically and let us actually look at the world instead of fighting the control trim every minute.

The giant Pyrenees rose up fast and serious, sharp ridgelines standing guard over the Spanish border and the Atlantic coastline like they took the job personally.

After cutting through the pass over San Sebastian we ran into a cumulonimbus the size of a small continent parked between us and Madrid, Spain.

I made the call to turn west, and watched the great plain of Spain open up gold and wide beneath us, and pressed through scattered showers toward the Atlantic coast.

The coast into Portugal greeted us with coastal summer fog. Portugal ATC vectored us on top at 3,000 feet and then the fog opened up right when we needed it to. We approached runway 35 for final and put wheels down into Portugal fourteen hours and twenty-four minutes of flying time after leaving Lithuania.

(Photo: Escargot in Macon, France)

Jammed signals. Ghost airports. A plane stuck in the grass. A French stranger who became a friend over wine and pilot talk. That is what the trip became. Not the flight plan we wrote. The one the universe handed us instead.

My kids learned to see the world from small cockpits before they could fully articulate what they were looking at. I am convinced that is part of why they turned out the way they did. Not because aviation is special. Because being raised by someone who treats the unknown as navigable rather than threatening changes how you move through your entire life.

Madison in that car seat, binkie in, completely trusting the process.

That is the whole lesson right there.

The rest is just weather.

(Photo: The Webb family crew)

He issued one about parenting itself.

The advisory was titled “Parents Under Pressure” and its central finding was both obvious to every parent reading it and somehow still shocking to see stated in an official government document: parents in America are not okay.

They are reporting higher levels of stress than any other adult demographic in the country. They feel more isolated, more overwhelmed, and more unsupported than parents in virtually any comparable developed nation. And the system that was theoretically built to support them, extended family networks, community institutions, accessible mental health care, affordable childcare, has been quietly dismantling itself for decades while the demands of parenting have simultaneously increased.

Murthy’s advisory cited data showing that 48 percent of parents report being so stressed that on most days they cannot function as well as they want to. Nearly one in three say they are so stressed they struggle to make basic decisions. And the isolation statistics are genuinely alarming. Parents today spend far less time with friends and community than any previous generation of American parents, and the structures that used to distribute the load of raising children across a broader network have largely disappeared.

The village is gone. And nobody told us we were supposed to build a new one.

Before I give you my take on this I want to be clear about what Murthy actually said and did not say, because this is the kind of story that gets flattened into a headline that loses the most important part of the argument.

He did not say parents are failing. He said the system is failing parents.

Can any of you relate?

That is a completely different statement with completely different implications for what needs to change.

The advisory identified several structural factors driving parental stress.

Financial pressure, which is real and worsening, with the cost of raising a child in America now estimated at over $300,000 from birth to age seventeen, not including college. I decided against sending my daughter to NYU because it would have cost me over $400,000! Even with the $100,000 scholarship she received. That’s insanity to me, especially that lenders are lining up to loan it to our kids.

Then there’s the missing village…

The collapse of extended family proximity, with Pew Research data showing that fewer than 30 percent of American parents live near most or all of their extended family. The inadequacy of the childcare system, which is simultaneously unaffordable for most families and inaccessible in most communities. The erosion of community infrastructure, the neighborhood associations, the informal networks of mutual support that used to absorb some of the load and have been replaced by nothing, nada.

And running underneath all of it, the particular cruelty of a culture that tells parents their job is both the most important thing they will ever do and something they should be able to figure out entirely on their own without complaint.

Murthy called for systemic change. More paid family leave. Affordable childcare. Community investment.

Policies that recognize parenting as a social good rather than a private choice with private consequences. Those are political conversations that will take years to resolve if they get resolved at all.

But he also said something more immediately useful. That parents need to stop treating their own stress as a personal failure and start recognizing it as a rational response to genuinely impossible demands. That the guilt and shame that accompany parental burnout are making everything worse. That the first step toward actually helping parents is getting honest about what is actually happening to them.

I write in Puddle Jumpers about a reality that Murthy’s advisory confirmed with federal data. The village that previous generations of parents took for granted is gone. According to Pew Research, fewer than 30 percent of American parents live near most or all of their extended family. The extended family used to live down the street. Now they are a time zone away on FaceTime. Neighborhoods once raised kids shoulder to shoulder. Now most of us are figuring it out behind closed doors in big cities or isolated suburbs, searching for answers on the internet at midnight and hoping we do not screw up the one job that matters more than any other.

That gap, the space where wise uncles and tough aunties and watchful neighbors used to stand, needs to be filled. The question is what fills it when the organic version no longer exists.

I have watched this play out in my own life and in the lives of parents across my business network, my YPO.org community, and my HBS alumni connections.

People who are accomplished by any external measure, who have built successful companies, and professional careers, who are genuinely good people who love their children deeply. They walk around quietly destroyed by the combination of professional pressure and parenting pressure with no framework for managing either and no community around them that understands both.

The isolation is real.

The exhaustion is real.

And the cultural message that you should be grateful because at least you have healthy kids, at least you have a job, at least you have a roof over your head, is doing enormous damage because it teaches parents to swallow the thing that is actually killing them rather than address it honestly.

“There is little in the way of practical tools and advice from actual parents, not academia, on how to raise kids in today’s world.

Like most, I didn’t take any parenting classes.” That line is in Puddle Jumpers and it is the most honest sentence I wrote in the entire book. Because it describes exactly what Murthy’s advisory confirmed. We are sending people into the most important job of their lives with essentially no preparation and then wondering why the burnout rate looks like it does.

When parents believe their burnout is a personal failure, they respond by trying harder. They add more to their already impossible load. They take another course, read another book, implement another system, and when that does not fix the underlying problem they conclude that they are simply not good enough at this. The guilt deepens. The isolation increases. The burnout accelerates.

When parents understand that their burnout is a rational response to a structural problem, they respond differently. They stop looking for the personal deficiency that is causing the problem and start looking for the structural supports that could actually address it. They build community deliberately rather than waiting for it to appear. They ask for help without treating the asking as evidence of inadequacy. They make the practical changes that are actually within their control rather than torturing themselves over the ones that are not.

That shift in framing is not a small thing. It is the difference between a parent who spends five years trying to optimize their way out of a structural problem and a parent who spends those same five years building the actual support system their family needs.

I have a close friend, a brilliant entrepreneur and a deeply devoted father, who spent three years believing he was failing his kids because he could not be as present as he wanted to be while building his company. The guilt was eating him alive. When he finally talked about it honestly, what became clear was that the problem was not his commitment to his children. It was that he had no support structure around him.

Research points to several evidence-based interventions that actually reduce parental stress and improve outcomes for both parents and children. None of them are surprising. All of them are underused.

Community connection is the most powerful single intervention.

Not therapy.

Not self-help.

Not optimization systems.

Actual human beings who know your name and your kids’ names and show up when things get hard.

The research on social connection and parenting outcomes is consistent across decades of study. Parents with strong social networks report significantly lower stress levels, better mental health outcomes, and better parenting behavior even when all other variables are controlled for.

The problem is that community does not build itself anymore. It used to. The neighborhood, the church, the extended family network, these were structures that generated community as a byproduct of their existence. They are gone or diminished for most American families. Which means community now has to be built deliberately, which requires time and energy that burned-out parents do not have, which is the particular viciousness of the trap.

The second intervention the research supports is accurate information about what normal parenting stress actually looks like. Most parents have no calibration for this. They are comparing their internal experience, which includes all the doubt and exhaustion and frustration that parenting produces, against the external presentation of other parents, which includes none of it. The result is a systematic underestimation of how hard this is for everyone and a systematic overestimation of how well everyone else is managing it.

Parents need to know that what they are feeling is normal, that it is not evidence of inadequacy, and that the parents around them are mostly feeling the same things and not saying so.

The third intervention is the one I have spent the most time writing about. Practical, evidence-based parenting tools that come from real experience rather than academic theory. Not because theory is wrong but because theory without application is useless at eleven at night when your kid is in crisis and you have nothing left and you need something that actually works right now.

When I started getting approached at events, I’d take my kids to, by parents asking what I was doing differently with my children, I noticed something consistent about the conversations.

These were not parents who lacked love or commitment or the desire to do this well. They were parents who lacked practical tools and honest information and the sense that anyone around them was being real about how hard this actually was.

They were isolated in exactly the way Murthy’s advisory described. Doing it largely alone. Surrounded by a culture that celebrated the highlight reel version of parenting and made no space for the honest version.

I am not a parenting academic. I am a divorced dad who was in the arena every single day for twenty years with three very different kids in circumstances that were often far from ideal, and who paid close attention to what actually worked. I taught mental mgmt in the SEAL sniper program and then applied it to my own parenting style.

Visualization, positive self-talk, emotional regulation, self-image management turned out to be the most practical and portable set of tools I had ever encountered for the actual daily reality of raising kids.

Not because it made parenting easy. Because it made the hard parts manageable. Because it gave me something concrete to reach for when I was exhausted and uncertain and the easy option was to react rather than respond.

That is what I put in Puddle Jumpers. Not a theory. A toolkit.

What you can actually do right now

The hardness is real. The isolation is real. The exhaustion is real. And none of it means you are failing. It means you are human, doing a hard job, in a system that was not built to support you adequately.

Get practical tools. Build your village.

You are not alone in this. You just need to find the people who will say that out loud with you.

That is what I put in Puddle Jumpers. Everything I learned about showing up, consistently and practically, in circumstances that were not designed to make it easy.

Link below if you want the whole picture.

Puddle Jumpers on Amazon

(Photo: My son and I in New York watching the historic Knicks finals in May.)

Puddle Jumpers came out on May 12th. I was in New York for the launch, running the kind of schedule that book releases produce. Back-to-back podcast interviews, some in-person appearances, the particular exhaustion of talking about yourself for ten hours straight, and trying to make it sound fresh every single time.

I had a book signing scheduled at Words Bookstore in Maplewood, New Jersey on a Wednesday night.

Great store. Amazing community. The kind of intimate independent bookstore event that actually matters for a book like this, where the whole point is the conversation, not the spectacle.

My son Tyler and I talked and agreed to meet up in NYC and get last-minute tickets to Game 5 of the Knicks-Cleveland playoff series at Madison Square Garden. When I purchased those tickets I didn’t check my calender and realized afterwards I had my signing on Wednesday at Words book store, the same night. Ahhh, crap.

I want to be transparent about what the math actually looked like in that moment, because I think the honest version of this decision is more useful than the cleaned up version.

The book signing was not optional in any casual sense. It had been promoted. People were coming. Moving it was going to create logistical headaches and disappoint the bookstore on a suboptimal rescheduled date. Wednesday was the right night for foot traffic. Friday, where I eventually moved it, was not.

The professional case for keeping the Wednesday signing was real and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

And then I thought about something I read in Bill Perkins’ book Die With Zero, which I come back to regularly and recommend to anyone who will listen.

Perkins makes a case that sounds almost offensively simple until you actually sit with it. Your life is not measured in dollars or achievements or LinkedIn endorsements.

It is measured in the memories you collect and the experiences you actually have. And more specifically, it is measured in the memories you create with the people you love at the precise seasons of life when those memories are available to be made.

Tyler is 19. He is at the University of Oregon studying business and finance. He is building his own life with his own schedule and his own priorities and his own gravitational pull toward his future.

The windows when we can both be in New York, when the Knicks are in a playoff series (1999!?), when there are two tickets sitting in my pocket, do not stay open indefinitely.

That particular combination of circumstances will not reassemble itself on demand. It existed on that Wednesday night and would not exist again.

The book signing could move. The game, and time with my son could not.

I moved the signing to Friday and decided my son was more important.

Game 5 actually never happened because the Knicks swept in 4 but the signal my decision sent to my son did happen.

What your kids actually remember

I write in Puddle Jumpers that consistency is the enemy of part-time parenting. That it is up to you what kind of parent you want to be. A part-time parent or a full-time parent who is a constant force in your children’s life.

Your kids will remember your parenting legacy forever, and how they turn out is largely up to how you parent.

That is true. And it is worth understanding what the word consistent actually means in practice, because I think it gets misread as a call for quantity when what it is really describing is reliability.

The question your kids are always asking themselves, even when they are at college and have their own full lives, is whether you are going to show up when it counts.

Not every time. Nobody shows up every time. Life is complicated and demands are real and sometimes the job has to come first because the job is what keeps the lights on and puts the kid through college in the first place.

But there are moments when the choice is clean. When it is not actually complicated. When one option is the one that generates a memory and the other one is the one that generates a line item on a schedule that nobody will remember in six months.

In those moments, the decision you make is a signal. And your kids receive it clearly even when you think they are not paying attention.

Especially when you think they are not paying attention.

“It’s these moments that powerfully reveal the return on our investment for all those years of being a consistent parent who shows up every day.” That line is in Puddle Jumpers and I mean it about the big moments like graduation crowds and Lisbon dinners. But I also mean it about standing in Madison Square Garden next to your son watching the Knicks in the playoffs because you moved a work commitment to be there.

Bill Perkins’ central argument in Die With Zero is that most people systematically over-invest in the future at the expense of the present. They defer experiences, defer time, defer the things that actually constitute a life, in service of a future security that often arrives too late to spend on what mattered most when it was available.

“The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

For parents this argument lands with particular force because the windows for specific experiences with your kids are genuinely time-limited in a way that almost nothing else in life is.

You get one version of your child at eight years old. One version at fifteen. One version at twenty, standing next to you in a playoff crowd at the Garden, screaming at a referee call with the specific uninhibited joy of a young person who is exactly where he wants to be in this moment and knows it.

That version of my son at 19 does not last. It will shade into the next version and then the next one and each version will be its own gift. But this one, the 19 in New York with his dad at a playoff game (we actually hung out in the city and watched the finals at night together), was available on that Wednesday night and would not be available again in quite the same form.

These are memory dividends.

The idea that experiences, particularly experiences shared with people you love, pay returns over time in the form of the memories themselves. You spend an evening at a playoff game and you get the evening, which is worth something.

But you also get every subsequent conversation that references it, every time it comes up at dinner, every time Tyler tells someone about it, every time you both laugh about something specific that happened in the third quarter. The memory compounds. The experience was not a cost. It was an investment with a return that keeps paying.

The book signing on Friday was fine. The bookstore was gracious about the change. The people who came seemed genuinely engaged with the conversation about Puddle Jumpers. Was it as well attended as it would have been on Wednesday? Definitely not.

The deathbed test and why it works

I have a simple framework I use when I am not sure which way to go on a decision like this. I call it the deathbed test and it is exactly what it sounds like. I ask myself: lying in a bed at the end of my life, which version of this decision would I wish I had made?

I have never once run that test and come back with the answer that I wished I had worked more.

I have never imagined myself at the end of my life and thought, you know what, I really regret choosing my kids over work.

In Puddle Jumpers I write that sometimes life drops a fork in the road right in front of you and you do not even realize it is happening until years later when you reflect on where you ended up. That is true of the big turning points. It is also true of the small ones. The Wednesday night decisions that do not feel historic when you are making them but accumulate over time into the story your kids tell about whether they were a priority.

Tyler knows I moved the signing. I told him. Not to make him feel guilty about it or to bank the sacrifice for future use. Just because it was true and I thought he should know. He looked at me for a second and said, “You didn’t have to do that, Dad.”

I said, “I know. That’s the point.”

Children are extraordinarily sophisticated readers of priority.

They do not process it as an abstract concept. They experience it as a series of data points that accumulate over time into a conclusion about their own worth. About whether they are the kind of person whose presence commands the full attention of the adults who love them. About whether they matter enough to compete with a work commitment on a Wednesday night in May.

This is not a guilt trip directed at parents who are doing their best under real constraints. Most parents are. The constraints are real and the demands are relentless and anyone who tells you that you can always choose your kids without professional consequence is not operating in the same economy as the rest of us.

But there are clean decisions. Moments when the tradeoff is genuinely not that complicated if you are willing to absorb a small professional cost in exchange for a memory that will pay dividends for the rest of both of your lives. In those moments, the decision you make is a signal. And your kids receive it. Every time.

I talk about this in Puddle Jumpers…that your kids need space to fail but you should never abandon them in the wreckage. That same person who stands by during the hard moments is also the person who shows up for the Knicks game instead of the book signing. The consistency between those two things is what builds the relationship. Not any single heroic gesture. The pattern over time. It stacks up.

The pattern says: you are the priority. Not in theory. In practice. On a Wednesday night in May when I had two tickets and a choice to make and I chose you.

A question worth sitting with this week

Think about the last time you had a clean choice between something professional and something with your kid. Not a genuinely impossible tradeoff. A clean one, where the cost of choosing your kid was real but manageable.

Which way did you go? And if you ran it through the deathbed test right now, how does that decision look from the other end?

Not asking to generate guilt. Asking because the answer tells you something useful about the pattern you are building. And the pattern is what your kids remember.

I put all of it in Puddle Jumpers. The framework for these decisions and the philosophy behind them and the twenty years of evidence that the pattern of choosing your kids, consistently and visibly, is the single most powerful thing you can do as a parent.

Link below if you want the whole picture.

Puddle Jumpers

Gretchen wrote the foreword to my parenting book.

We have been divorced for over ten years. We raised three kids together across different cities, different schools, different seasons of life that neither of us planned for.

(Photo: Gretchen and I at our youngest son Tyler’s high school graduation)

She’s an amazing mom and co-parent.

When I finally finished writing Puddle Jumpers she was the first person I asked to write the opening pages.

She said yes.

Her foreword opens like this: “As we stood there watching the second tower fall on TV, Brandon looked at me and said, I have to go. I was seven months pregnant with our first child, unsure of when I would ever see my husband again.”

My oldest son was born while I was deployed. I came home to a baby boy who had been alive for months without me. Gretchen had done the whole thing alone. She’s a hero. That is where our parenting story starts. Not in a hospital room with both parents present. At a naval base in San Diego, California, where I stepped off a cargo plane and walked into a house with a tiny redheaded baby who had absolutely no idea who I was.

What followed was twenty years of figuring it out. A divorce. Losing a best friend in Libya. A business failure. Three kids moving through childhood in circumstances that were often far from ideal. And somewhere in all of that, using a mental management system I learned, and brought home from the Navy SEAL sniper program, then applied to parenting almost by accident, but it worked.

My daughter Madison came to visit me in Lisbon last year. We had dinner at my favorite French restaurant, “Grenache”. She looked across the table and said, “Dad, I just want you to know I am exactly where I want to be in my life, and I appreciate you allowing me to be myself.”

My son Jackson graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and found me in the crowd afterward and said, “I kinda won the dad lottery.”

That is the return on twenty years of showing up. Not perfectly. God knows I’m not perfect but I was a consistent and present father.

Consistency.

Puddle Jumpers is the book I wish I had at the beginning. The mental tools that actually work, written by a father who learned them the hard way and used them every single day. It is practical, honest, and grounded in real stories from a real family that went through real things and came out the other side intact.

If you want to climb Everest, find another climber who’s done it successfully.

The dads who read it will recognize themselves in it immediately. The love, the uncertainty, the specific fear of getting it wrong with the people who matter most.

They will finish it with something they did not have before. Not a list of rules. A framework for the moments they do not know what to do with.

Father’s Day is Sunday. If you are looking for a gift and for something that will actually get read, underlined, and talked about at dinner, this is it.

Puddle Jumpers is linked below. Grab it today.

Amazon link

(Photo: Flying in NYC is something I miss most and will always cherish. Hat tip to NYC Air Traffic Control, the best in the World. In the pandemic, I got to land at JFK and LGA in my little plane. Will cherish this always.)

I want to tell you something about New York City that I have never said out loud before.

When I lost my best friend Glen Doherty in 2012 (Navy SEAL/CIA Operative KIA Benghazi, Libya), I realized I was not okay.

I had buried a lot of trauma of what I’d seen in war, the friends I’d lost, and when I lost Glen, the weight crippled me, and I fell to my knees.

Before that, I was functional in all places except fatherhood. This was my one escape, and where I used trauma to grow. I became a better father because of it, but there were still many voices in my head. We all deal with this at some point in our lives.

The war was over for me, but it was not done with me. That is not a complaint. It is just the truth.

Then I moved to Manhattan in 2014.

New York did not ask me any questions about my past.

It just embraced, and absorbed me.

The city and its people hit me like a wall of sound and exhaust and a thousand different languages all talking at the same time and for the first time in a long time, I felt something close to normal.

Because in New York nobody is looking at you.

Not because they don’t care. Because everyone around you is also carrying something, also from somewhere else, also in the middle of their own improbable story, and there is a silent agreement on every sidewalk in that city that says we are all in this together, even when we are strangers.

I think this is why it’s home to a lot of celebrities who can just be themselves because the city doesn’t gawk.

New York was a crucial part of my own personal traumatic growth story and I’ll never forget what the city did for me and my family.

(Photo: Another New York moment for me, when I got to meet the incredibly talented actor, Jeffrey Wright. We later surfed together along with his son in Puerto Rico.)

One of my favorite dad memories is getting to show this to all my kids firsthand. They got to see what NYC looks like unlocked.

I had spent a decade and a half working alongside men and women from every corner of America and every branch of service and every background you can imagine.

What this taught me is that when people decide to share a mission, identity stops mattering. We all saw this in high definition with what the New York Knicks just accomplished behind the king of New York who never asked to be king but just was. And usually the people that don’t want it are the best suited for it.

(My Puddle Jumpers in NYC with one of my best friends, Maria Emma. Maria is like a sister to me, and she is the reason my daughter got a Puma artist collab at Saks 5th as a 16-year-old young woman.)

Performance and showing up for each other are all that count.

New York runs on that same operating system.

It is the most military city in America and it has never fired a shot.

So when the Knicks made their run this spring, I was all in with them like many of you reading this.

We all needed what that story was actually about. This is something I have been writing and talking about for years now, as a parent, as a coach, and as someone who watched his own kids navigate a world that constantly tells young people the gap between where they are and where they want to be is too wide to cross.

The Knicks were down. The analysts had already written the eulogy. The talking heads were doing the statistical math out loud on television like it was some kind of public service, laying out probabilities the way a doctor lays out a diagnosis that ends with the word terminal.

They didn’t fit the 40-game win statistic, the great Phil Jackson said was critical…

There is an entire industry built around explaining in great detail why things are not going to work out.

It is well-funded and it is relentless and it shows up in sports, in politics, in classrooms, in doctor’s offices, and in the conversations we have with our children about what is realistic.

We need to remind ourselves that the impossible IS possible.

Here is what I know about realistic.

I know what it looks like when a kid gets told he is not a fast enough runner, not smart enough, not from the right pedigree, not the right fit for the program.

I know what happens in those moments because I lived them when as a young man who was kicked out of the house at 16 by his father.

I wrote about it in Puddle Jumpers because I think it is the most important thing a parent can understand, because that world is coming for your kids, and you need to teach them how to deal with it.

The voice that says you probably shouldn’t gets planted early. It grows in the dark. And if nobody teaches a child how to recognize that voice for what it is, which is fear dressed up as common sense. It’s also why I talk about the importance of giving your children positive psychology tools at a young age.

That dark voice, the nay-sayers, we all deal with it at some point in our lives.

The Knicks told that voice to sit the F down.

Nike gets the NY moment with this incredible AD…

And here is where I want to get real with you, because this is not just a basketball post. This is a post about America, and I am going to need you to stay with me for one more minute.

(Photo: My friends Kamal and James on the town before the Pandemic.)

(Photo: Another NY moment with friends at my Flatiron apartment.)

We have some serious work to do in this country. Not in a divided way. In a human, in the “All of us on the same team” way.

The kind of work that does not belong to one party or one ideology because it belongs to all of us.

Education in this country is not delivering for the kids who need it most. Healthcare is still something a family can lose everything trying to afford. The gap between the people at the top of the income ladder and everyone else has gotten wide enough that it has started to feel like a permanent feature of the landscape rather than a problem we are actively solving.

An entry-level World Cup ticket shouldn’t cost $4,000.

I am not an economist. I am not a politician. I am a guy who grew up in a working class family, joined the Navy at 18, spent years in some of the worst places on earth trying to be useful, came home, left the navy for my family, built a new life as an entrepreneur and author, raised three kids as a divorced father, and wrote a book about what I learned along the way.

What I learned early in my life is that none of this gets better if we decide it is too far gone.

Tyler jumping into that parking lot puddle at six years old is still the image I keep coming back to when I think about what it means to raise a child who is not afraid. My instinct in that moment was to stop him. I am glad I didn’t. That impulse to protect kids from anything messy or uncertain or uncomfortable is exactly the impulse that produces adults who freeze when the game gets hard in the fourth quarter.

I shared a story in my book about what the Mars Biosphere researchers learned with trees.

Grown without wind resistance, the trees couldn’t support their own weight. They collapsed from the inside because they need wind stress to grow strong roots.

Our kids are not trees but the principle holds. You cannot prepare them for the world by removing the world from their path. You prepare them by teaching them to handle it.

We need to teach our kids that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Always hope when life seems too hard. It’s darkest right before the light starts to creep over the horizon.

Back to the Knicks…

(Photo: Chess in Union Square. If you’re a New Yorker, you are just that, regardless of race or religion.

The Knicks just reminded the whole country of what most of us who’ve lived in New York understand. NY teaches us all that the underdog is never out. We know this because we see examples all around us in the city every minute of every day.

When it seems like the numbers are against you, when the analysts have moved on to the next story, when the reasonable people are telling you to manage your expectations, that is precisely the moment to decide what you are actually made of.

This country has incredible people in it. Teachers who stay late. Nurses who drive forty minutes each way for a shift that pays them nowhere near what they are worth. Parents working two jobs who still show up to the school play. Veterans who came home from places most people will never see and rebuilt their lives from scratch, in cities that absorbed them without asking too many questions.

We are not a country that has run out of good people. We are a country that has run out of patience for the idea that good people making good choices together cannot actually move the needle.

They can.

They do.

The Knicks just played that game in front of everybody.

My book Puddle Jumpers is about raising kids who grow up knowing this. Not kids who are immune to difficulty. Kids who are built for it. Kids who look at a deficit in the fourth quarter and stay calm because they were raised by parents who didn’t flinch because they know better.

Brunson’s parents know this. Just look at the lengths (and the reason behind it) Jalen’s mom went through to see his game 5 in Texas.

Start there. Start in your house. Start with your kid. Start tonight.

Because here is what I know about the people who say it can’t be done.

They are not the ones trying.

New York never waits for permission to be great. It just keeps going. Loud, busted, beautiful, stubborn, broke and brilliant all at once.

It took me in when I needed it most and asked for nothing back. It reminded me that a city, like a team, like a country, like a family, is just a collection of people who decided to keep showing up.

I wrote Puddle Jumpers because I want my kids to be those people.

I want your kids to be those people.

And I want us, all of us, to stop waiting for the right moment and start being the reason somebody else believes the right moment is now.

New York already knows this.

The Knicks just proved it again.

Your move.

xx Brandon

PS-”Go Knicks…New York or Nowhere.”

(Photo: My daughter on our annual pilgrimage to Lake Tahoe)

She was only eight years old.

The taekwondo studio in Paso Robles smelled like sweat and dirty socks.

Black mats on the floor, an American flag on the wall, a room full of parents sitting in the back watching their kids get evaluated one by one for the next belt level.

Her older brother Jackson had gone first. He ended up getting his purple belt, walked back to his spot on the mat to sit down, composed and proud.

Then it was Madison’s turn.

The instructor explained what she had done well. Then he explained what she had missed. And then he told her, in front of the entire class, that she would not be receiving her purple belt that day. She could re-test in a few weeks.

She was 8. She nodded. Sat back down. Kept her composure in a way that honestly impressed me more than the kids who got their belts.

I was standing in the back, watching this unfold and my first instinct, the raw parental one, was pure protective fury.

How could they embarrass my little girl in front of EVERYONE?

She worked so hard. She deserved it. This was wrong.

Then I caught myself.

This was not an injustice.

It was a gift.

A real one, delivered without softening, in front of witnesses, at 8 years old.

The world had just told my daughter that effort does not always equal outcome, that sometimes you fall short in public, and that you do not get to fall apart about it.

Not here. Not now. Not in front of everyone watching to see what you are made of.

Parents should be thoughtful before they risk overadvocating for their kids in these situations.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen overprotective parents yelling at coaches for some injustice delivered upon their kid. In most cases, their kids are embarrassed because they know better.

I’m not saying you can’t stand up for your kids; I did this plenty of times, but you have to be thoughtful about it because, in some cases, it can cause harm.

Damage to the process of preparing them for how life really works once they are out of your sight line.

(Photo: The Webb kids. In middle school, their mom and I started all of them in jiu-jitsu. This helped my oldest with his fear of getting bullied in high school.)

My daughter held it together until we were seated in my truck in the parking lot, then the emotions came on like a Texas thunderstorm.

“But my brother got his purple belt and I didn’t get mine, Dad.”

I was so proud of her for holding it together as long as she did.

Then I said something along the lines of, “Not everyone wins the first time. Sometimes we fail. And how we handle that failure is what defines everything that comes after it. Work hard, come back, earn it and I you will know what it’s like to earn something.

She did.

She earned her purple belt a few weeks later and I still remember the text message her mom sent me with Madison’s big smile.

And the lesson she took from that experience was not about any belt. It was about what she was capable of when things did not go her way.

For her high school graduation, I gave her a watch and had “She thought she could, and she did” on the back case.

When Madison was twenty, finishing her design degree at Goldsmiths in London, I asked her what she wished I had done differently as her father.

She said she wished she had heard more about the times I had failed.

The real stuff. The screwups and the setbacks and the moments I doubted myself. Not the medals. The bruises.

Her answer hit hard. I’d done a lot of good things as a father, but I wished I’d shared more of my own failures with my kids. I realized they were measuring themselves against the false pretense that I was perfect and always succeeded.

A few months later, she came to visit me in Lisbon. Over dinner, on a small patio overlooking the cobblestone streets, he looked across the table and said, “Dad, I just want you to know I am exactly where I want to be in my life, and I appreciate you allowing me to be myself.”

That is twenty years of showing up. Not a perfect record. An honest one.

I put all of it in Puddle Jumpers, the framework and the failures, and what actually worked.

Link below if you want the whole picture.

Puddle Jumpers.

I have been shot at in two countries (one I can’t talk about). I have finished Hell Week (5 1/2 days with no sleep). I’ve eaten bugs in survival school. Went to the bathroom in a Folgers coffee can in prisoner of war training (after getting beaten and stuffed in a black box).

None of this prepared me for the intellectually challenged and aggressively un-self-aware Renfreds of the literary world.

Renfred found my book on Amazon. Renfred had hard feelings. Renfred typed those feelings with what I can only imagine were very intense fingers, possibly while wearing a bathrobe, definitely while his coffee got cold, absolutely while his family quietly watched TV in the other room, wondering what dad was doing in there.

Renfred left me a 1-star review, dragging down my review score.

And honestly? I want to send Renfred a basket of bullets. Because this man wrote the funniest thing anyone has ever said about me, and I have been in a great mood ever since.

Let us examine Renfred’s work closely.

EXHIBIT A: Amazon CENSORED Renfred’s First Review

Renfred’s opening line.. his thesis statement, his first impression, is that Amazon deleted his PREVIOUS review for containing inappropriate content.

Amazon.

The company that will sell you a flamethrower, a medieval crossbow, and forty-seven different varieties of beef jerky (I hope that’s beef in there!) at 3am with no questions asked.

THAT Amazon looked at Renfred’s review of a parenting book about puddles and said: “No. Not here. Not today. We have standards.”

I want to meet the Amazon moderator who made that call. I want to shake their hand. I want to know what exactly Renfred wrote the FIRST time that made a trillion-dollar corporation tap out.

Whatever it was, Renfred considered it RELEVANT CONTEXT for reviewing a book about raising resilient children.

I have been thinking about this for three weeks and I am no closer to an answer. I sleep fine. But I think about it.

EXHIBIT B: The Puddle Jumping Allegations

Renfred’s core legal argument, and he presents it like a legal argument, with a list, formatted, itemized, like he is entering evidence, is that my book encourages children to “jump in the puddle” regarding, and I am quoting directly:

Sex. Pornography. Gender ideology. Drugs. And screens.

Renfred. Buddy…

The puddle is a metaphor.

For LIFE.

For hard things.

For the mud and the mess and the beautiful chaos of being a kid who is actually allowed to be a kid.

For building the kind of resilience that means your child does not have a complete psychological collapse the first time something doesn’t go their way.

I did not write a parenting manual encouraging your nine-year-old to go feral on the internet. I have three children of my own. Jackson, Madison, and Tyler. They have become functional adult humans.

That is the ENTIRE PREMISE OF THE BOOK RENFRED.

The fact that Renfred read “jump in the puddle” and his brain immediately generated that specific list, in that specific order, is information about Renfred that Renfred may want to sit with quietly for a while, perhaps with a licensed therapist, perhaps over several sessions.

I am not a doctor. I am just a former Navy SEAL writing for my next meal. But even I can see that something is happening there.

EXHIBIT C: The Hillary Clinton African Proverb Situation

Renfred is extremely upset about a proverb I used.

Specifically, “it takes a village,” which he correctly identifies as having been popularized in American political discourse by Hillary Clinton.

Here is what I need Renfred to understand: That proverb is THOUSANDS of years old. It predates Hillary Clinton by roughly the same amount of time that the wheel predates the Tesla.

Oral traditions from across the African continent were discussing communal child-rearing long before any American politician was a glimmer in anyone’s eye.

EXHIBIT D: “Painful Repetition” AND “Awkward Military Jargon”

Now we arrive at the literary criticism portion of Renfred’s review, and this is where I need everyone to pay close attention because Renfred has accused me of two things that are DIRECT OPPOSITES and presented them as a unified complaint.

The writing is terrible AND too military.

Renfred. I need you to pick one. I cannot simultaneously be a bad writer AND sound too much like someone who spent too much time in the Navy.

Those are not the same critique. That is like saying a steak is both overcooked AND too rare. That is like saying someone drives too fast AND too slow.

You know what. I’ll stop. The point is, Renfred is out here doing literary criticism with the internal consistency of schizophrenia, and I respect that, I guess?

EXHIBIT E: The Closing Insult That Accidentally Became a Compliment

Renfred concluded his masterwork with this sentence, delivered with the confidence of a man who has never once doubted himself:

“I’m sure some progressive Moms will like it.”

Renfred.

THOUSANDS of people have now read this book.

Mothers of every political persuasion imaginable. Pediatric therapists. School counselors. A guy in Montana who told me he read it on a hunting trip. A grandmother in Florida. A single dad in Ohio who emailed me at midnight saying it was the first parenting book that gave him hope.

But yes Renfred. Sure. Some progressive moms probably liked it too. Because being a good parent is not a political party.

Children do not care about your voter registration.

Puddles do not have an ideology.

You came here to insult me and accidentally described a book with broad cross-cultural appeal. Thank you, Renfred. I am adding your masterpiece of literary criticism to the back cover of the next edition.

NOW. HERE IS WHERE I NEED YOUR HELP.

Renfred is still out there.

AND there are MORE Renfreds.

They have Wi-Fi and opinions and nothing but time, and they are absolutely not going to stop.

The only thing that stops a Renfred is a real human being who actually read the book, understood that the puddle is a metaphor, and takes forty-five seconds to say so on Amazon.

If this book or my writing ever meant something to you, if it gave you one real conversation with your kid, one moment of clarity at 2am when parenting felt impossible, one laugh, one gut punch, one thing you underlined and came back to, I need you to go to Amazon right now and write that down.

Not for me. My feelings are structurally reinforced.

For the exhausted parent scrolling Amazon at midnight who is one Renfred away from buying a different book entirely. That parent deserves to hear from you more than they deserve to hear from Renfred.

Report Renfred’s review and write a sincere Puddle Jumpers review here.

Go. Now Please. Before Renfred finds the Goodreads page.

What Smart Parents Are Saying about Puddle Jumpers

"Brandon Webb has cracked the code: real resilience isn’t built by pushing kids harder, but by giving them the space and support to trust themselves, discover what lights them up, and grow through challenge. Puddle Jumpers is the practical guide for building the kind of inner confidence that helps kids withstand whatever pressures come their way—from school, from peers, from a culture that tells them they’re never enough." -- Jennifer Breheny Wallace, author of New York Times bestseller Never Enough

“Puddle Jumpers is the rare parenting book that doesn’t preach — it equips." -- Kristina Partsinevelos, CNBC Nasdaq Correspondent & Mom

“Puddle Jumpers is a powerful reminder that resilience is not innate but taught, day by day, in the small moments that shape a life. Brandon Webb brings the precision of an elite operator and the honesty of a devoted father to the hard, necessary work of raising capable, grounded kids in a chaotic world.” -- Elliot Ackerman, New York Times-bestselling author, Marine veteran, recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart

“Years ago, I told Brandon to write a book about parenting. I wanted to see lessons from such a fantastic parent shared with the world. What he shares here will not only make you a better parent but a better version of yourself.” -- Kamal Ravikant, author, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It

“Part SEAL toughness, part entrepreneurial ingenuity, and all wrapped in fatherly love—Puddle Jumpers offers a fresh approach to parenting. It’s about raising kids who embrace challenges, grow resilient through adversity, and discover the confidence to chart their own path." -- Dr. Chloe Carmichael, PhD, Licensed Clinical Psychologist and USA Today Bestselling Author

"Brandon Webb has a rare gift for turning life’s toughest lessons into wisdom we can all use. His new book isn’t just a story; it’s a masterclass in resilience, leadership, and living with purpose. If you want to learn what it takes to thrive when the stakes are high, this is the book to read." -- Jairek Robbins, Performance Coach & Bestselling Author

5-Star Review on Amazon…

Be the Captain they want to sail with

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2026

Verified Purchase

My children are already young adults, but this book proved that it is never too late to learn something new, reflect on your parenting journey, and think about how you can continue showing up for your kids. Brandon combines practical parenting advice, personal stories, and leadership lessons into an engaging and thoughtful read.

The central idea of raising “puddle jumpers” rather than overprotecting children really resonated with me. The book reinforces that our job is not to protect children from the world, but to prepare them for it. It gave me a lot to reflect on, offered several useful strategies, and reminded me that nobody is perfect and growth never stops, for parents or children.

Highly recommended for parents with children at any age along their journey..

(Photo: Sailing away from home at 16, bound for Hawaii)

I believe that a lot of parents who have been through the most often raise the most resilient kids.

I was sixteen years old in Tahiti, with a few hundred dollars, a half-packed bag, and the particular kind of existential dread that arrives when you realize your safety net just evaporated completely, and nobody is coming to help you figure it out.

My father had put me off the family boat during a family sailing trip halfway around the world. Not my boat. His boat.

That distinction, delivered with the terrifying calm of a man who had already made up his mind, landed like a physical thing.

I was sixteen. I was in the middle of the South Pacific. And I had to get myself back to the United States, and I had no idea what I was doing beyond getting my old job back and thinking about an uncertain future.

I hitched a ride on a 40-foot catamaran called the Shilo, bound for Hilo, Hawaii, 3,000 miles away. A couple with a toddler needed extra crew for the night watch.

I needed a lift. I stood midnight shifts under a cathedral of stars, sailing alone with my thoughts, trade winds blowing warmly across my face while I wrestled with fear and grief and the slow, clarifying realization that my childhood was suddenly over.

I’m not ashamed to admit I broke down in tears those first few nights.

But somewhere between fear and freedom, something shifted.

I write about this in my first book, The Red Circle, and in Puddle Jumpers both, because it is the foundational experience that shaped everything that came after it.

The moment I stopped waiting for rescue and started figuring out what I actually had to work with. That was the moment I stopped being a kid and started becoming whatever I was going to become.

Hard times can break or you can choose to learn from it and grow stronger.

We all have this choice and most of us have seen the outcomes of both sides.

You die a victim or you sharpen into something harder and more useful than what you were before.

That trip to Hawaii was the first time I understood, at a level below thought, that the hard thing was not the obstacle. The hard thing was the curriculum.

What post-traumatic growth actually means

Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun at the University of North Carolina developed the concept of post-traumatic growth in the mid-1990s after noticing something that the prevailing trauma literature was almost entirely ignoring.

A significant number of people who went through genuinely terrible experiences did not just recover to their previous baseline. They grew beyond it.

They came out the other side with stronger relationships, a deeper appreciation for life, new possibilities they had not previously considered, a greater sense of personal strength, and a spiritual or philosophical depth that was simply not there before the experience broke them open.

Post-traumatic growth is not the same as resilience. Resilience is bouncing back. Post-traumatic growth is bouncing forward.

It is not returning to who you were before the hard thing happened. It is becoming someone the hard thing made possible that the comfortable version of you never could have been.

The research is clear that this outcome is not automatic. Trauma does not produce growth on its own.

What produces growth is the way you process and integrate the trauma. The meaning you make from it. The decision, conscious or otherwise, to treat what happened to you as information rather than identity. As something that happened and taught you, rather than something that happened and defined you.

That distinction is everything. And it is learnable. Which is the thing most people who are sitting in the wreckage of something terrible need to hear and almost never do.

The wreckage I have worked with personally

I have had the following happen to me in the span of my adult life and I want to account for all of it honestly because the sanitized version helps nobody.

I lost my first business. Not a small setback. A real failure, the kind that costs you sleep and dignity and the particular confidence that comes from having built something. I lost my entire life savings in the process.

Then I went through a divorce that uprooted three kids from the stability they had known and sent all of us into a reorganization of everything that took years to fully settle. I moved cities. My kids moved schools.

We lost friendships and communities and the rhythms that make a family feel like a family rather than a collection of people navigating the same disruption.

I still remember the neighbors in San Diego asking me, “Where’s your family?”

It’s hard to answer that simply when you’re in the fallout of a fresh divorce.

I write about all of this in Puddle Jumpers without softening it because I think the softened version is a disservice to the parents reading it who are sitting in their own version of these situations and wondering if it is possible to come through them intact. It is. But not because the hard things were not hard. Because of what I decided to do with the hard things while they were happening and after they were over.

In Mastering Fear I write about fear as the fundamental human operating system. Every decision we make, every risk we take or avoid, every relationship we build or protect ourselves from, runs on the fuel of fear in one form or another.

The question is never whether you are afraid. The question is what you do with the fear. Whether you let it make you smaller or use it as the navigation system it was designed to be.

The Tahiti moment was fear. The business failure was fear. The divorce was fear. Coming home from Afghanistan to a baby I had never met was fear. Losing friends, and a best friend, Glen Doherty, in endless wars that followed post 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Every single one of those experiences tried to tell me something about what I valued, what I was made of, and what I needed to do next. The ones I listened to made me better. The ones I tried to outrun or numb or ignore cost me more than the original experience did.

“We went through hell as a family, and my kids still turned out to be joyful, bold, and resilient.”

That line is in Puddle Jumpers and it is the most honest summary of our family’s last twenty years I have ever managed to write. Hell was the input. Joyful, bold, and resilient was the output.

The distance between those two things is the whole story.

What does this have to do with parenting?

Everything. Completely everything.

The parent who has processed their own hardship and extracted meaning from it is a fundamentally different parent than the one who is still carrying it unexamined.

Not because the processed parent is tougher or more stoic or less affected. Because they have a framework for difficulty that they can pass on. They have a living example of what it looks like to go through something terrible and come out the other side not destroyed but changed. And their kids watch that. Every single day they watch that.

Some of the best parents I know have incredibly traumatic pasts.

In Puddle Jumpers I write about what the Hindus say. Gold becomes pure only after being forged in fire. Our children are no different. The parents who try to shield their kids from every difficulty are not raising resilient children. They are raising children who have never had the chance to discover what they are made of, which means they arrive at the first real difficulty of their adult lives without any evidence that they can handle it.

The parent who has been through something and processed it honestly is the parent who can sit with their kid in a hard moment without flinching. Who can say I know this feels impossible right now and mean it from a place of genuine understanding rather than sympathetic distance. Who can model, in real time, what it looks like to be in difficulty and still be functional.

(Photo: The Webb kids getting SCUBA certified in 2020)

That is what post-traumatic growth looks like in a parenting context. It is not a therapy concept. It is a transmission. You lived through something. You made meaning from it. And now your child watches you carry that meaning in the way you move through the world and files it away as evidence of what is possible for them.

My business failure taught me that identity and outcome are different things.

I had built my sense of self around being someone who built successful things. When the thing failed the identity threat was worse than the financial one. Learning to separate what happened from who I was took time and deliberate effort and produced a clarity about values that I could not have gotten any other way. I am a better parent because of it. More honest about failure with my kids. More willing to say I got that wrong and here is what I learned from it. Less invested in appearing infallible and more interested in being real.

The divorce taught me that two people can fail at a marriage and succeed at everything that came after it.

My ex, Gretchen, wrote the foreword to Puddle Jumpers. That is not a small thing. It is the product of years of choosing our kids over our grievances, of building a co-parenting relationship that required both of us to operate from values rather than feelings on the days when the feelings were not particularly cooperative. What I learned about communication, about putting the mission above the emotion, about the difference between what I wanted in a given moment and what actually mattered long term, came directly from navigating that experience. I carry it into every relationship and every difficult conversation I have now.

The Tahiti moment, which I have written about in The Red Circle and return to in Puddle Jumpers, taught me the most foundational thing I know. Which is that confidence does not come from being told you are capable. It comes from discovering it yourself in a situation where the alternative to figuring it out was genuinely bad.

That lesson shaped how I raised my kids. I did not protect them from difficulty. I let them encounter it with enough support nearby that they could survive it, and I watched them discover the same thing I discovered on that catamaran in the middle of the Pacific. That they were more capable than they thought. That the hard thing was not going to kill them. That they could be afraid and functional simultaneously.

That is the lesson.

Three thousand miles of open ocean and I had it before I was seventeen years old.

Post-traumatic growth does not happen by accident. It requires a set of deliberate choices about how you relate to what happened to you. Here is what that has looked like in practice for me.

The first choice is refusing the victim identity.

Not because the hard thing was not real or unfair or genuinely painful. Because the victim identity is a ceiling. It explains everything and changes nothing. The moment I stood alone in Tahiti and said I am not a victim was not bravado. It was a survival decision. The victim story would have kept me on that island. The growth story got me to Hawaii and beyond.

Every failure I have had, and I have had real ones, contained information.

The business failure told me something about the decisions I had made and the people I had trusted and the assumptions I had not questioned. I also realized I’d learned so much in the process. Business financing, how to read financial statements, legal, partnership structures and so much more.

The divorce told me something about communication and about what I needed to work on as a person to be a good father and coparent.

The Tahiti exile told me something about what I was actually made of when the structure was removed. None of those lessons arrived automatically. I had to go looking for them.

The third choice is making the lesson useful to someone else. This is where parenting comes in most directly.

The experience only compounds in value when you share it with your kids at the appropriate time.

This is something I wish I’d done more of as a father.

When you sit with your kid in their hard moment and tell them the true story of your own hard moment. When you model the processing rather than just the outcome. When you let them see the work rather than just the result.

From Puddle Jumpers: the reframing that changes everything

Every time a child fails is an opportunity for them to grow. Shield them from failure and you steal their chance to learn that they are capable of surviving it.

However, you should never let them believe that failure means they are broken. That is where the parent’s job is most important. Not to prevent the fall. To be present in it and help them find the frame that turns it into fuel rather than identity.

The parent who has done this for themselves is the only parent who can do it convincingly for their child.

Let’s Bring it all together

I want to be direct about something that tends to get lost in conversations about resilience and growth. Refusing the victim identity is not the same as minimizing what happened.

It is not about performing strength or pretending the hard thing did not hurt. It hurt. All of it hurt. The hard leather discipline from my father. Being alone in the Pacific. Losing my first business. Losing friends in the war as a Navy SEAL. Divorce, and learning how to be a different kind of dad.

The distinction I am drawing is between using the pain as information and using it as a permanent address.

Between processing something and moving through it versus parking in it and calling it home.

The victim identity makes the hard thing the most important thing about you. The growth identity makes the hard thing one of the things that made you. Read that again and let it settle.

That shift does not require you to forgive anyone who does not deserve it or to pretend that circumstances were fair when they were not. It only requires you to decide that what happened to you is not the last word on who you are or what is possible for you next.

My kids watched me make that decision in real time across some genuinely difficult seasons. They watched me lose the business and rebuild. They watched the divorce and the co-parenting that followed it. They watched me start over in new cities with new communities from scratch. And what they absorbed from all of it was not that life is easy or fair or reliably kind. What they absorbed was that a person can go through hard things and keep moving. That the moving is what matters. That the direction of travel, even when you are not sure exactly where you are going, is more important than the speed.

That is post-traumatic growth in its most practical form. Not a therapy outcome. A parenting philosophy. A way of moving through the world that says the hard thing is not the end of the story. It is, if you let it be, the most interesting part of it.

Gold becomes pure only after being forged in fire.

So do kids.

So do parents.

The fire is not the enemy.

It is the forge that produces better things in all of us if we choose it.

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

My oldest son graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2024. He walked across that stage, came outside in the sunny centuries-old courtyard among the crowd, found me, and hugged me.

It was an amazing moment in time.

I still remember the good heaviness of his words to me in high school, “Well. I kind of won the dad lottery.”

I am not going to pretend that it did not hit me somewhere deep. It did.

Standing there with him in Scotland after his graduation was special.

Twenty-two years of showing up, of making calls, of being the parent who cleared his entire schedule when something went sideways, of choosing my kids over the cleaner option more times than I can count.

Remembering his words to me when he was a senior in high school.

Five words made it all worth it.

The return on that investment did not come from the sheer volume of time I spent with Jackson.

It came from the quality of the time I spent with him and his siblings.

The specific, intentional, undivided time. The trips we took that were one-on-one.

The conversations that only happen when there is nowhere else to be and nobody else in the room.

Recently, I was surfing some dad accounts on Instagram, and one of the young fathers was debating quality over quantity.

The quantity myth is quietly destroying family connections IMO.

Parents who are physically present for enormous amounts of time and emotionally absent for most of it are going to lose the long game.

They are in the house but on the phone. They are at the dinner table but mentally somewhere else.

They are driving the carpool but conducting a conference call through the car speakers while their kid sits in the back seat absorbing the message that whatever is on that call is more important than whatever is in that seat.

Your kids are always watching, learning, and modeling your behavior patterns.

I wrote in Puddle Jumpers about the career-driven parents I know, good people who genuinely love their children, who consistently do not place their kids on equal footing with their careers.

I get it, the pressure is real, and the demands are relentless, and nobody tells you when you are doing it because it happens so gradually you barely notice.

But fair warning, you’re going to find yourself with your kids all grown up, and the realization that you were in the house for most of it, but not actually in the room.

Your children know whether they are a genuine priority. They figure this out not from what you tell them but from the thousand small signals you send every single day about where your attention actually goes when you have a choice. And they file every one of those signals in a place that does not get cleared out.

It accumulates into a story they tell themselves about their own worth. About whether they are the kind of person whose presence commands full attention. About whether they matter enough to compete with a phone screen.

That story follows them into adulthood. Into relationships. Into the way they parent their own kids someday.

This is not a small thing. It is the whole thing.

I started taking each of my kids on individual one-on-one trips when they were young, after my divorce, and I have never stopped.

Not when they left for college.

Not when they moved abroad.

Not when their lives filled up with their own plans and their own people and their own reasons to be somewhere else. I kept doing it because I watched what happened in those trips that did not happen anywhere else.

Something shifts when it is just you and one kid with nowhere specific to be and no audience.

The performance drops. Both of yours. You stop being the parent running the household and they stop being the kid managing your expectations.

You become two people who actually like each other, which is what you were aiming for the whole time and what the noise of daily life conspires to bury under logistics and schedules and the general weight of just getting through the week.

Tyler put it better than I could in Puddle Jumpers when he said this, and I am quoting him directly because it deserves to be heard in his words: take your kids traveling when they are young, even if it is just to new cities or unfamiliar settings. It helps them get comfortable being uncomfortable, which builds the resilience they will need when life throws them curveballs. New places teach kids how to adapt, adjust, and grow.

He said that. My youngest. The kid who was nearly failing eighth grade, who once sent twenty pizzas to his principal’s office as a revenge move after a teacher ate his lunch order, who I genuinely worried about more than once.

He grew into a great young man at the University of Oregon, studying finance, and he understood instinctively that travel and connection were very important.

Our trips taught my kids that I would show up for them specifically, not just generically.

Kids understand the difference between presence as a default and presence as a choice. Read that again to let it settle at the bottom.

Quality time with your kids is EVERYTHING.

“It’s these moments that powerfully reveal the return on our investment for all those years of being a consistent parent who shows up every day.” That line is in Puddle Jumpers and Jackson’s graduation hug is exactly what I was describing when I wrote it.

Why I kept doing it after they grew up

Here is where most parents stop. The kids leave for college, life reorganizes itself around their absence, and the individual trips feel harder to justify. They have their own lives now. Their own friends. Their own plans. You do not want to be the parent who guilts their adult child into spending time with them.

We kept going anyway.

The relationship you have with your adult child is a completely different relationship than the one you had when they were growing up, and it requires completely different investments to maintain.

When they were kids, proximity did a lot of the work. You were just there. Now you have to choose each other deliberately, the way any two adults choose to maintain a relationship. Which means you have to show up in ways that make the relationship worth maintaining.

The one-on-one trip is how I do that. It says, without any ambiguity, that I am still interested in who you are right now. Not who you were at twelve or fifteen or the version of you I have already figured out. The current version. The one studying in London, or working through a complicated season of life, or figuring out what they actually want to build. I want to know that person. And I want them to know I want to know them.

My daughter visited me in Lisbon recently with her friend from grad school.

When she left, she put a postcard on the end of my guest bed.

She wrote, “You’ve been making a home in places all around the world my whole life. You’ve taught me to find good people.”

That is not the product of a thousand hours of being in the same house. That is the product of specific, intentional, chosen time. The trips. The dinners. The conversations that only happen when there is no agenda and no audience and enough space for a person to say the real thing instead of the polite thing.

There is a line of research on what psychologists call attachment that is worth understanding because it reframes the whole quantity-versus-quality debate in a way that most parenting content gets completely wrong.

Secure attachment, the kind that produces resilient, confident, well-regulated adults, does not require a parent to be present constantly. It requires a parent to be reliably available and genuinely responsive when they are present.

The research is actually quite clear that it is the quality of the attunement during contact, meaning how fully present and attuned the parent is during the time they share, that predicts outcomes.

Not the raw hours.

Consistency is important. I am not dismissing the daily work of showing up at home. But consistency without quality is just proximity. And proximity, by itself, does not build the kind of relationship you are going to want when your kid is twenty-three and standing in a graduation crowd in Scotland.

We still love our trips.

Three kids. Three completely different trips. That is the point. The trip is tailored to the person, which sends a message that the person has been paid enough attention to warrant tailoring. That message lands. Every time.

That is the practice. One trip. One kid. One year at a time. For as long as they will have me.

Which, based on current evidence, is going to be a while.

And I could not be more grateful for that.

PS-Hope this got you thinking! Please consider grabbing a copy of my new book, Puddle Jumpers here.

Below is an excerpt from the NY Post’s Sunday edition. -BW

With his new book, “Puddle Jumpers: Powerful Mental Techniques from a Navy SEAL Performance Coach and Father of Three” (Author’s Equity), he offers tips for a different kind of battlefield: modern parenting.

He thinks many moms and dads aren’t doing well by their troops. Despite their best intentions, they’re raising kids who are emotionally fragile, overprotected and unprepared for adulthood.

“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 interesting 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 discipline him without ever asking him why he’d done something wrong.

With his own kids, he’s strived to understand their motivations.

Years ago, his youngest son, Tyler, was suspended in seventh grade after ordering pizza for his entire class — and sending some to the principal’s office, too.

Read the full interview for free here.

I wanted to share my recent Wall Street Journal Interview with Pamela Paul (also a great mom)…I’ll share some other great podcasts and interviews in the coming weeks.

Thank you all for buying or gifting my new book, Puddle Jumpers, and please share this with someone you think it would help.

Full Interview from the Wall Street Journal

By Pamela Paul

Brandon Webb is talking the way parents do when their kids aren’t around—tallying their strengths and foibles, failures and wins, and the extent to which his own shortcomings as a father may have contributed.

Much of this self-appraisal is detailed in his tenth book, “Puddle Jumpers: Powerful Mental Techniques from a Navy SEAL Performance Coach and Father of Three,” which comes out next week.

About halfway into the conversation, over Zoom from an Airbnb in the French Alps, it becomes clear that two of those kids, Jackson, 24, and Madison, 21 (both pseudonyms used in the book), have been flitting in and out of the room the whole time. They occasionally pop on screen to fact-check or elaborate on their father’s responses to questions.

“This was the most fun and fastest book I’ve ever written,” Webb, 51, says. The author of the memoir “The Red Circle” and “The Killing School: Inside the World’s Deadliest Sniper Program,” never imagined he’d write a parenting book. “I cried three or four times while writing.”

What made him cry? “Just these vulnerable moments with my kids,” he says. Madison failing to pass her purple belt test in Taekwondo. His son Tyler (also a pseudonym), now 19, getting kicked off the basketball team. The letter Jackson wrote to his parents explaining why he was going to the prom despite being grounded over an incident the family dubbed “Operation Weed.”

“They were like, ‘Oh no, my friends’ parents are going to read this! But they’ve been really good sports about it,” Webb says.

What is a puddle jumper?

One of my early memories as a father was when Tyler was five or six and wanted to jump in this nasty, dirty mud puddle just as we were coming off a day on the slopes in Tahoe. I was like, ‘Don’t you dare!’ But then I realized, What do I care? So I have to do an extra load of laundry? I realized I want to raise kids who are going to jump in mud puddles. That’s a joyful confident kid who wants to jump into life.

You were an elite sniper with The Navy SEALs. Can you explain how those principles align with child rearing?

A lot of it is about mental management and self-talk. When I was teaching snipers, I realized you can’t point out mistakes, especially in front of other people, because they spread like a virus. A common one is flinching on a high-power rifle. If I say to a trainee, “You’re flinching,” that puts it in his head. When we introduced changes to training to focus on positive psychology, our 30% failure rate went down to 1%. When I left the Navy, I said, why can’t this apply to parenting?

(Photo: Brandon Webb, second from left, and his children, in Lisbon, Portugal.)

What would you think of one of your kids going through Hell Week?

Hell Week is just a personal journey of suffering. You can’t fake it. You have to go through it and earn it. But there are times I wish they had experienced more hardship because I think it builds character. When Tyler got kicked off the basketball team, for example. There are a lot of parents who would go to the coach and say, ‘How dare you?’ but we took the feedback seriously and it was brutal. It’s tough to watch your kids suffer. But the world is tough. It’s not always fair. They’ve got to learn to deal with this stuff.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about what a military parent might be like?

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That we’re overstrict. Harsh. I remember when I coached Little League, the other parents were scared. Someone said to me, “Maybe send an email out to the parents and let them know I’m not going to be putting them through boot camp, and making them do push-ups and screaming at them.” If anything, combat veterans are more empathetic. They’ve seen the worst of human nature, and that actually makes them caring parents.

(Photo: Brandon Webb in 1999 at a warfare training center in Niland, Calif. Brandon Webb)

How do you differentiate between discipline and punishment?

Punishment is when a parent acts out of a fear response whereas discipline is more thoughtful. You want to take your own emotion out of it and get to the “why” behind the kid’s behavior and respond to that. But I’m a big believer in consequences too. Kids know if you’re bluffing, so do not make a threat that you’re not willing to carry through. Once I was taking the kids to SeaWorld and they were misbehaving in the car. I said, “If you keep that up, we’re not going to SeaWorld.” When they kept going, I took the next turn off the highway. When we finally went back two weeks later, they were all quietly reading in the back seat. They need to know you’re not messing around.

Who is the reader you had in mind while writing this book?

I keep seeing these successful parents who obviously love their kids but give in too much. You can’t focus solely on your career and outsource being a parent—and then wonder why your kids are going in a really dark direction. Some high performing parents need a splash of water in the face.

Explain what the phrase “Do it for Dad” means in your family.

It’s my fatherly nudge to do something that they’re a little nervous or apprehensive about, like the double black diamond or even trying a new food.

What does it mean to you to be a good father?

I want to be the kind of dad that my kids look back on and think I was present and loving and the kind of person they’d look up to. It’s such a rewarding thing as a parent to have this kind of friendship with your grown kids.

We had just come off the mountain after a long day of skiing. Legs smoked. Everyone ready to get home. And my youngest, Tyler, spotted it in the parking lot.

A half-frozen puddle of mud and slush so gnarly it looked like it had its own ecosystem.

His face lit up. He started running straight for it with the delight of a dog chasing a tennis ball.

My default parent mode kicked in immediately. I opened my mouth to shut it down. Don’t even think about it T-Man.

And then I stopped myself.

Because in that split second I realized something. By stopping him I wasn’t protecting him. 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. The mess. The wet clothes. The extra laundry. Him looking ridiculous.

So I took a breath. Smiled. And said, “Get after it, dude.”

He launched in full send mode. Muddy ice slush everywhere. Laughing like the little maniac he still is today.

And that is when it hit me. These are the kids I want to raise. Kids who jump into life, not around it.

That moment in a ski resort parking lot became the book I had been living for twenty years without knowing it.

Here is the truth I want every parent reading this to hear.

I deployed to Afghanistan eleven days after September 11th. Gretchen was seven months pregnant with our first son Jackson and everything felt uncertain in ways I cannot fully describe.

I came home to a baby who had been alive for months without me. I became the head instructor of the Navy SEAL sniper course at 28. I lost my first business. Lost my savings.

My marriage ended in divorce. We moved cities, moved schools, lost friendships, navigated drugs, alcohol, social media, and all the other landmines that modern parenting drops in your path without warning.

Not sure about you, but none of my kids came with an owner’s manual.

Like most parents, I just started winging it. But I had one unfair advantage. My SEAL sniper training had given me a mental management system that I started applying to parenting.

Visualization. Positive self-talk. Emotional regulation. Self-image management.

The same four principles that keep a sniper functional under life or death pressure turned out to be the most powerful parenting tools I had ever encountered.

People started noticing. Friends, colleagues, people I met at conferences after keynotes, they would spend time with my kids and then pull me aside and ask what I was doing differently. When I told them my parenting approach was rooted in SEAL sniper mental management training, they wanted to know everything.

So I finally wrote the book…sometimes your next project just finds you.

Puddle Jumpers is not a perfect parenting book written by a perfect parent. I am a divorced dad who made more mistakes than I can count and paid close attention to what actually worked.

Every lesson in this book was learned the hard way, self-taught, parent-tested, and refined through raising three very different kids with my co-parent and ex-wife Gretchen, who was brave enough to write the foreword.

There is no greater mission as a parent than raising a child who knows who they are and has the tools to thrive and become the captain of their own life.

I wrote this book because every parent deserves to feel that. Not just the lucky ones. Not just the ones who had great role models or stable circumstances or a village around them.

Every single parent who is out there doing their best behind closed doors in the quiet moments that nobody else sees.

This book is for you.

From one parent to another. I am giving you everything I learned in the arena.

Because while we cannot cover everything, we can sure as hell focus on what matters most.

Puddle Jumpers is finally here!

Muchas Gracias for grabbing a copy for yourself or someone who needs it. It’s also a great Father’s Day gift—one that dad will actually enjoy! ;)

Brandon