Jocko Underground: Addressing Evil In The World with Kids.

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 192, sitting here with Echo Charles. We have got some questions, life questions, relationship questions, leadership questions, raising children questions, jujitsu questions, working out questions. We've got a bunch of questions and we get them every week and we answer them every week. So let's get into it.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  First one.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  First question. How do you approach swear word usage by kids? Did you allow your children to swear? And if so, from what age, in what circumstances? Did you swear around your kids? Also, how do you teach children that there is evil in the world and that it can be in unfair place? We have two boys, seven year old and six year old.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  So swearing, I didn't swear in front of my kids and I actually did swear really in front of my wife. I still don't like get crazy swearing in front of my wife, but I do swear more around my kids now because they're adults and what have you.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  Don't get me wrong, because I did swear all the time in the teams, like totally every third word was an F-bomb or some other profane word. And I will still swear at this time with the boys, you know, we're doing whatever.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  But when I'm interacting with someone on anything outside of like my kind of direct crew, then I generally speaking, I don't really swear. And now, you know, when you're raising your kids, might your kids be swearing, you know, at some point? I remember one time I took my, I was out camping with my son for his, maybe his like eighth or ninth birthday or something like that, maybe, no, maybe his 10th birthday. Anyways, he's with his buddies and I'm in the RV and his buddies and him are in the tent on the beach. And I woke up early because we're going to go surfing and it's cold. But I walk over to their tent and I can hear that they're already up and they're like swearing.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  And I'm kind of like, okay, you know, it's the boys, you know, the 10 year old boys getting wild.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  And I unzip the tent and I look in there and they're like, they're like horrified.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And I go, put your fucking wetsuits on. And they were like, oh, you know, it's one of those moments. So, you know, again, it's like a little relationship thing, right? What are you getting all bent out of shape because your kids said a bad word? So I don't think you need to get crazy with it, but they definitely need to understand that it's suboptimal communication methodology. Right? If you have to swear all the time, it's, there's better ways to get things done. And I would err on the side of not swearing.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  But, you know, I don't make a huge deal out of it, you know? More like you don't want your kids to swear all the time. They just need to recognize that it's not a good look. Right? It's not a good way to gain respect. Not that occasional F-bomb at the right moment. Can't get the attention of someone again, but if you're swearing all the time, then it won't get anyone's attention. So yeah, that's kind of that.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  As far as teaching them about evil in the world, I think it's just a slow exposure to reality. Like what you see in the news. What you see in the news, I think you expose to them over time and you kind of start off with lesser evil. And start off with, you know, there's people stealing things and people being, people hurting other people. People fighting other people, people hurting animals, people doing some kind of sadistic behavior. Then abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, you know, sexual abuse.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  You, you gotta tell kids about this stuff and then you get into like murderers. And you know, you can first explain that, you know, there's a crime of passion where the husband's mad at the wife and he kills her. And then you can start talking about serial kill like so. But again, you kind of have to do this over time where they can understand and they're not overwhelmed by it.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  It's wrong to not let them understand that these things are in the world. But it's also wrong to expose them at a young age when they can't really comprehend it. So I think you got to do exposure therapy, kind of just start off slow and grow from there.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've talked about this before, but I think one of the best things that ever happened to my son was we saw a, again, we were surfing early in the morning, we saw a tweaker at five in the morning. Just as the sun's coming up or six in the morning, just as the sun's coming up and this guy's just tweaked out on drugs. And he's being arrested and he's acting totally insane screaming. He's got the spit hat on and he's got like ripped pants and no shirt. He's all beat up and just dirty. And he's saying crazy things. And my son, again, at this time, he was probably like seven or eight.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, like dad, what is going on with that guy? And I said, that guy's on drugs. That's what drugs does to you. That left a mark, you know what I mean? So I, I, I think that you have to kind of do exposure therapy with your kids. So they, and you know, it's another good thing is like movies. You know? The rated R movie thing. You, how old were your kids when you started to let them watch rated R movies?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was, I mean, young technically, but it's not that. That's not how I categorize it. Like, oh, you can watch this. It's rated R. It's like, but it totally depends on the movie.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  What the actual R rating is for.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Like Deadpool?

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  My son, as soon as it came out, he was like four or five.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  No kidding? Is that rated R?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  Because of what?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  wildly inappropriate stuff. There's like, there's violence, but it's sensationalized. There's swearing. There's like sex jokes and like just it's really flagrant. But given my son's personality, that's not going to affect him. He's just going to think it's funny. But then if I show him like, um, I don't know, like a, like a Friday the 13th or something like this. It'll mess with him, you know? So it depends. It depends on, you know, his personality at what stage.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Does your kid like scary movies?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Uh, my daughter does, but my son does not.

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  Coach Hannah?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  My daughter, she watches scary movies, but they like horrify her, but she likes to watch them.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's real.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. She like, when she starts talking about it, you can tell if they landed.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  The way she says, there's a movie called Mid-Sommar.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  I actually haven't seen it.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  But the way that she says the name Mid-Sommar.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  You're like, oh, she has PTSD. She knows she'll be like, she'll like shift her positioning.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  So, but I do think that you can show kids movies, you know, because they're fictional.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  And you can say, hey, look, this isn't real, but this does happen. And then you can get, then you can move to movies that are based on reality. And then eventually you can show them to a documentary, right? And you can, but I think you just gotta slowly introduce these things to kids over time.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and like I said, I do believe this as of right now, I do believe that it does depend on the movie. Cause that Mid-Sommar, like that movie's not, I didn't, I don't think that one was actually scary. It was disturbing, or real disturbing, but it wasn't scary. Like it didn't, you didn't leave the movie and like be scared. But back in the day when you watch Friday the 13th or Candyman, you ever watched Candyman? That first one? Holy cow. I was in like eighth grade or something and bro, you say his name in the mirror like three times or something or five times. I don't know. And he'll appear behind you and kill you, bro. It was, bro, I couldn't go in like the bathroom anymore, like by myself at night. It was hard. That's scary. It's different.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  We watched The Exorcist when I was a kid.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which was horrific, you know, as a little kid. You're like, oh my God. So, uh, but I think you can utilize movies as a introduction to things. And that, that way they're a little bit more controlled. You know what the movie's about. So I think you could do that too. But, and I think my kids were watching rated R movies, maybe around 12. And you know, again, same as you, like generally speaking. I think my youngest daughter watched Black Hawk. Which he was pretty young, you know, so and that is, that's where we're at.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Does Black Cop Down have any like disturbing things that would affect the kid?

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, getting their legs blown off and be dying. I mean, it's, it's definitely violent, high violence and bloodshed. So.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it feels like it doesn't um play on a kid's fears as much as like a Friday the 13th, that there's a crazy maniac kid, unknown, unseen killer out there in the darkness.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember Uncle Fester? I think he's from the Addams Family. I had a friend in the SEAL Teams that would have nightmares that there was like an Uncle Fester type person. That was gonna kill him. And, and the thing was, it was like he was way bigger and way stronger. Uncle Fester, this Uncle Fester type character was way bigger and way stronger. And if you think about, that's pretty horrifying. You know, like you and I, you know, we trained jujitsu, we left, you know? We're in shape. We have concealed carry. Like we're, you know, we're kind of like in the game.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  We are the danger.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  We are the danger, as they say, right? Cheeseball. But if you start thinking like, oh, there's someone that's even to the nth degree, and it was kind of superhuman. Kind of a superhuman scenario. I ended up thinking it was like, uh, in the book,

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  Blood Meridian, which I don't think you've read, but in Blood Meridian, there's a character called the Judge. And he's sort of the same way. He's like bigger, stronger, cat-like reflexes. And you're like, bro, this is kind of, you're kind of at the whim of this dude from a physical way, you know? And I think that's why my friend was so scared of this Uncle Fester type dude. But if you're a kid, pretty much everyone's like that. Pretty much everyone's bigger and stronger than you. So it's pretty horrifying.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true. What um, the swearing thing, I kinda went back and forth on it and I like, like I think your way is kinda optimal, I think. Cause I, I do swear, but not that much around the kids. And I'm, I'm gonna make it a point, and this is where I arrived at, where I don't want it to be like normalized, you know, like really, cause I, in fact, I wish it was less normalized for me. Actually freaking, now that I'm however old I am, there's a lot of things looking back that I thought were cool, cause it was fine. I, you know, my parents did this or whatever. And I turned up and I realized maybe I didn't turn out as fine as I could have been, you know, if these, there's a handful of things that are, were normalized that I'm like, but I think he kinda jammed me up, to be honest with you.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  But the swearing one wasn't a big deal, but every once in a while, I was like, I think I shouldn't have been swearing, you know, like that kinda, like there's this, it was at the muster and it was actually some people that we know. And they were, uh, so there's the daughter, the dad, you know, these people, we completely know them. But I'm not gonna say their name just for privacy, but um, there's the daughter, the dad and the mom. I didn't know they were all related. I knew them individually.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And the daughter's maybe twenties, early twenties, so young, way younger than me, you know? Um, and then the mom and dad are slightly older than me. So anyway, I'm like, she goes, oh, hi, you know, and I'm like, I was like, shoot, have I met you? Right? Like, and they're all standing in front of me, but I didn't know they're all related. So she's like, oh, yeah, I met you last time. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm trying to figure it out. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, yeah, it was at this other time. And I was like, oh, wait, was it at this time? She was like, no, no, no, it was at the other time. I was like, are you sure? She was like, yeah. I go, are you fucking with me? And she's like, no, no. And then the mom and the dad were right there. And the mom, you could tell she was like, hey, like you shouldn't talk to my daughter like that. Like that was the vibe. She didn't say that.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But that was the vibe, cause she goes, uh, this is our daughter, like interrupted the conversation, you know? And me like, bro, I'll say that to anybody, you know, all my friends like, are you fucking with me like right now, like asking, you know?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  And then I remember thinking that swearing kinda came out real naturally, you know, like almost like a default that like that's how, you know? I was like, shoot, maybe swearing was normalized a little bit too much. See what I'm saying? So, and that's just one time. I mean, maybe there's another time, whatever. So it's not a huge problem, but I'm saying if it wasn't normalized, if my default was like you, whereas like you kind of only swear under certain circumstances.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  Try to, yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the default was no swearing, I probably wouldn't have had to endure that, you know? And I feel weird, like every time I see her at the mustard stuff, I feel like, kinda like, oh, shoot, you know? So I try to be extra nice and stuff like that, but I'm like, man. But yeah, so I, I think I'm with you now. Like my kids will hear me swear, but I'm not just swearing like it's all good. They don't swear at all. They think like, I think like a lot of kids who are, you know, have.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  They'll get through it.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  No, but you know how like, like your boy, when he was swearing?

• 13:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  He's like my, and how kind of I felt when I was really young where I was like, hey, when no one's around, I say it, it's like, ooh, so crazy, right? Or whatever. Oh, my kids are totally like that. Like if there, if there's a song going on and they're swearing in it, they'll like, kinda look at me like, oh, that was crazy, you know, or whatever.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  My oldest daughter ratted out some of her friends or some kids at school or something when she was probably in like third or fourth grade or something for saying the S word to my wife.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  S word? S H I T?

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  No. It was. 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 jacood underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, 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, 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.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, 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 jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.