Jocko Underground: You Might Be Worrying Too Much About Your Kids.
15:58 Share

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 157, sitting here with Echo Charles, EC. Yes, sir. We got some questions from the troopers of the world. Yeah, man. What's happening in the world? Let's find out. Let's give some recommendations. Yes. Some courses of action to take. People are wondering how to do certain things under certain circumstances. And we can provide courses of action.

Courses of action like try this check your feedback if that's going well continue if it's not going well adjust Yeah, but it's good to have some courses of action. Yeah, fully. So let's get to it. Okay. We got first question Hey, Jocko. Hey Charles. I'm a 40 year old male from Germany I have a family and two children and a great job as a teacher in higher learning since having children I have been afraid that I might lose them for example through illness or accident and

The worry is at a low level but is always there and it affects me in my daily life. Several years ago I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder which I manage well through psychotherapy, exercise and discipline daily routine including playing saxophone and lots of reading. However, I still struggle to let go. For example, when the children walk to school alone in the future, play outside unsupervised or be out on their own. How can I handle that fear? Thanks from Germany.

Clearly you care about your kids, which is awesome. That's great. And that's a very common feeling for people to have. We care about our kids. We hope people care about their kids. And look, I'm glad you're getting some professional help. And I'm sure your therapist can give you a course of action. That's probably better than my course of action, my recommendation.

But you know if I had to think about this or just give you some thoughts about it again I think you should check with your professional and see what they say one thing I noticed you say that there's a low-level worry. That's always there I think that's pretty common for parents to have like a low-level Concern that about your kids. I don't think that's abnormal. I think that's in fact I think it's healthy that you have hey

a little voice in your head that's going, you know, at a low level going up. I hope my kids are okay. I hope, I hope everything's all right. I hope there's not a, you know, a school shooting. I hope there's not a bus crash or whatever. Like things can happen. The terrible things happen. So I think that's totally normal. But you do say that it affects you in your daily life, which I would wonder how it affects you in your daily life. If it makes you check the news more often or something, you know, okay. You know, it's like a little bit of a,

But if it makes you not want to work or something like that, then I can see where it could be a problem. But I would keep these things in mind a little bit. You know, you want your children to be safe, of course, but you also want them to be functional. You want them to have enjoyable lives, right? But what if I told you you could actually hurt them by being overprotective?

Right that you can you can shelter your kids to a point where they don't develop Or you can pass on your own irrational fears to them and you can give them anxiety or other end of the spectrum You could make them rebel against you in a disastrous way where they're emotionally detached from you And they don't want to talk to you and just leave me alone at net and so you see what I'm saying so if you have extreme behavior and

Which again, right now it doesn't sound like you're, it doesn't sound like, worrying about your kids is not extreme behavior. But you have to kind of cap it there, right? You have to kind of cap it there. So you don't want them to overcompensate for your overprotectiveness by becoming either risk addicts or acting out in ways to get back at you because you interfered with them. Like those things happen. So we don't want those things to happen. There's a long list we could make of things that could go on there.

And it's important to note that children are very difficult to predict. I have known amazing parents, amazing parents. You know, I wouldn't go so far as to use the word perfect, but I've known parents that were really good parents and have had two, you know, three kids, two of which are wonderful children and have carried out excellent, productive jobs.

in their lives. And one kid has just been a total disaster. Drug addict. Yeah, mostly it's drugs that gets them. But drug addict or nonproductive or quitting, you know, not doing anything, not working, being lazy, like all those things. Same exact parents. Now look, your birth order and where you are and what's going on at the time, all that stuff plays a role. But what I'm saying is you can...

You can provide the same household to children and you can have it work for some and not work for others, right? And there's some kids that become more resilient because of certain types of behavior. Arnold Schwarzenegger. You heard about Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was on our podcast and just him talking about his dad, very cold,

you know, alcoholic, borderline abusive. And that breaks some people and turns them into abusers. But no, like Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be a nice guy and very successful. So there's...

There's things that are happening when you're raising kids. And I think it's best to try and be as balanced as you can. Because if you start going extreme in one direction, you might get extreme. You might create extreme reactions, right? What is the physics saying? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So this is why you don't want to have a bunch of...

Extreme actions because it might create an extreme reaction and we don't want to do that. We don't we don't have enough control over the experiment to to to test with extreme behaviors. You want as a parent to be kind of middle of the road. You want to be kind of middle of the road.

You know, you want your kids to do stuff, but you don't wanna go crazy. You wanna get good grades in school, but you don't want them to cheat to get there. You see what I'm saying? Like there's all these things. You wanna be a good stable middle of the road person. Now, there's things in life that you cannot mitigate. You see what I'm saying? Like you can't protect your children from every possible risk. If you do try to protect them from every possible risk,

In other words, if you overprotect your children, you will do more harm than good. And what's hard about that explanation is that if you have that very rare catastrophic incident, like for instance, if your kid can break their neck wrestling. Happens. Happens once every 10 years. Like of all the kids in the world that are wrestling, once every 10 years or football, right? Playing tackle football, right?

Once every five years how often we say someone breaks their neck and gets paralyzed in football. Yeah, I don't know Yeah, it's it's it's not a huge number once every five years once every five years of all the Individual football plays that take place across the country now. You're in Germany I don't know what the equivalent but American football talking about American football once every five years a kid gets paralyzed and if

I'm telling you that hey over protecting them will do more harm than good and then you're end up with that kid out of the millions the one in 300 million football plays and your kid gets paralyzed obviously these words that I'm saying have are Have no bearing whatsoever but in the event that your kid is not one of the one in 300 million that that now gets all the benefits and the friendships and the athletic skills and the leadership skills and the the mental toughness from playing football is

You take all that stuff away that there's a remote chance that this is something bad could happen. Well, your kid's going to get sick when traveling. Okay, so no traveling. Your kid dies on a plane. Your kid can die on a plane crash, right? So we're not going to put our kids on planes. And so now our kid's not going to travel, not going to see the world, not going to feel comfortable, going to be paranoid. What about kids drowning in pools? Kids drown. So what are we going to do? No pools. Not teach them how to swim. Like if your kid never gets wet, they're never going to drown.

but they're also not going to go on a swim. And by the way, there's going to be certain situations that you can't control. So there's risk with everything that we do. And there's a certain amount of risk that you cannot mitigate as a parent. And what you have to do is you kind of have to do a risk assessment of saying, okay, yes, there's a one in 300 million chance that if my kid, what sport would they be playing in Germany where you could get injured? Obviously soccer is real big. Okay, judo. We'll go judo.

Occasionally judo you get thrown in your neck you break your neck, but man take that away Okay, so now we're not doing judo and by the way, you can blow out your knees doing soccer And by the way, you can you see just hockey. Well, you get checked in hockey you get head trauma You get TBI you see what I'm saying? It's like everything has risks traveling has risks interacting with other human beings have risk going to school has risks and

You're in Germany right now. They're having these vehicular attacks where people are plowing down. Terrorists are plowing down groups of people. So let's not go to any other, let's not go to any events anymore. No fair, no circus, no movie theater. You see what I'm saying? So you have to recognize that there's some risk. There's some things that you cannot mitigate. You cannot mitigate that risk other than putting your kid into a bubble. And if you do that, it will negatively impact your

Not just negative impact, there's a decent chance it kind of wrecks their life. So that's the hardest thing about being a parent. It's kind of like I wrote about in the dichotomy of leadership. Like you love your guys, but you still got to send them out on missions. That's the ultimate dichotomy. Well, guess what you're doing with your kids? You love your kids. You don't want anything bad to happen. But in order for them to grow up, in order for them to become productive humans and resilient humans, they've got to go out and live. And in living,

There is risk. There's a bunch of risk that you cannot control. And this goes back to combat. Like there's some things in combat you can't control. You cannot control some things in combat. And if you focus on those things, you're missing on the things that you can control. So let's focus on the things we can control with our kids, making them situationally aware, making them healthy, helping them learn how to make good decisions. Those kind of things will mitigate way more risk than you keeping them from doing anything.

So that's my kind of, that's my two cents. I'm sure your therapist is going to give you some, some protocols to go through, which I'm sure will be very helpful. Yeah. You, uh, uh, one that I like that you, I guess in a way taught me, whatever, explain to me where, uh, let your, let my brush up against the guardrails of failure. Yes. But, but with that, let them go off the cliff. Yeah, exactly. No, but even before that, um,

let them do this stuff. Like, you know how like, you know, we want to, and I think you were talking about making lunches or something like that. I forget, but you're like, Hey, let them do it or tell them they got to do it. Even so.

So it's basically in a nutshell, teach them to do stuff and try to make that a routine and a habit, like teach them to do stuff so they know how to do certain things. And so when you do that, let them brush up against the guardrails of failure so they know how it feels, so they know how to correct themselves, you know? So you're going to have to worry way less about a kid who knows how to do stuff

And then on top of it knows how to, if they don't, if they're not successful, they know how to bounce back and be normal rather than just this fragile person who doesn't know how to do nothing. And that's really what we're worried about. They're going to go outside in the real world, whether it be out, just out to play on their own or when they're going to grow up and go into normal society, we worry that, okay, they're not going to be okay. That's, that's essentially it in whatever way, however far our imagination can go. That's what we're worried about.

But you reduce that chance of something them not being okay if they know how to do more stuff including recover Yeah from bad stuff because that kind of stuff can happen. You know when I was a little kid so at my house we had a like a steep hill in our front yard and My dad was like need them the lawn needed to be mowed and I was pretty little you know and I was like, okay, so I'm out there mowing the lawn and it's a very steep hill and

And I like fell and the lawnmower fell too. So me and the lawnmower were like tumbling down the hill. And it was...

You ever seen somebody on a BMX bicycle and they fall and they get all tangled up in their bike? Yeah, I've been that guy before. Okay. 100%. It kind of was close to being that. It was close to being that, but it was a lawnmower with those blades spinning. But I remember thinking to myself, this probably was not a good idea. Like in motion, I'm like, I might lose an arm right now. Yeah.

But that's probably one of those things where you you can do a risk assessment and say to yourself like oh What's the worst case the well the worst case would be my kid falls and the lawnmower hits him in the head Yeah, like and gets his head chopped. Yeah, so use good judgment Yeah, or even if they you know, like there's other jobs I could have done besides that one, you know pulling weeds or weed whacker You're not gonna lose a limb from your weed whacker. Mm-hmm

So those would have been smart, but just the straight lawnmower? Yeah. That little freaking .5 horsepower roll. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jockounderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms.

So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we're building a website right now.

Where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance at jacounderground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.