Jocko Underground: Physical Punnishment.

Abandoned US Military Equipment being used against Israel? Not getting internal support to move up the chain. When your boss(es) are out of touch. Lead a team to victory with very few A-Players. Physical training as punishment, and other punishment techniques. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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 132, sitting here with Echo Charles, getting into some Q and A. What'd you call it? Lessons for the people? Advice for the people?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, advice.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  Learning moments?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Learning moments.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  I call it Q and A.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Q and A, sure, but I, you know, I feel like advice for the people's provides the depth that I think it deserves. Because Q and A is just, let me just ask this arbitrary kind of question and let me get an answer kind of thing. But I take this as kind of advice for me, too, most of the time.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  You and me both.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying?

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  Alright. Alright, let's get into it.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  First question. Hi, Jocko.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I'm listening to Jocko Underground, episode 38, and just finished the part where Jocko told the story about his son lying. Aside from getting a good laugh out of it, it also it also got me thinking more about properly disciplining children. My wife and I have our first child on the way, a girl, and I'm certainly, and I've certainly been thinking more. I really love the idea of forced PT as a form of punishment for children administered for the proper transgressions, like lying, of course. My question to Jocko, had, had your son just refused to do the PT, what step would you have taken from there? My question to Jocko and Echo, what are your thoughts, observations on using forced PT as punishment? Would you employ it for your daughters?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Does it really just depend on the kid? Other thoughts of disciplining children? I listen to the podcast a lot and certainly plan on leading my children using all the other tactics and strategies Jocko teaches without immediately resorting to punishment. But I need to be prepared in the event that disciplinary actions are just simply required.

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and hopefully that's very rare, and it was very rare for me with all my kids. Disciplinary actions were, was very rare. How, how is it with you?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, very, very rare.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  Almost. And you know, like that particular situation, my son was a little bit older. He was definitely understanding, you know, and he kind of understood the whole, because one thing that's really negative about that is you don't want to make physical exercise punishment. That's not the way it's supposed to be. It's almost supposed to be, it should be a reward. But let's face it, sucks. You make someone do enough freaking burpees. It sucks. Doesn't matter how freaking happy you are and how much you love PT. Look, just, I would say 50% of the guys going through SEAL training love PT. And at one point, all of them hate it.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  There's not one, there's some nights where like every single dude does not want to do anymore, whatever they're doing to them. So you can make anything suck if you do it long enough. But that's not, for me, it wasn't the usual punishment. Like that was a kind of a one-off case. I was like, oh, you want to lie to your mom? And me, by the way. And I give you a chance. I give you an out. And actually, he accepted the out. He's like, yes, it was not true. I was like, cool, then you just need to pay now.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  But I would say it's not the best thing. Like I didn't normally do that. Wasn't normal punishment for me. I didn't use that, usually use that for this one. Here's one thing that they talk about in the military, which is a really good thing to think about. You don't think about until you're in the military. But you have privileges. Now, think about the privileges that your kids have right now. Yes. You see what I'm saying? You're already shaking your head, like nodding, like, yes. Your kids, your kids have nice clothes, they get dessert, they get cold water, warm showers, toothpaste, like they don't have to pay for their food. And I know, how old's your boy? Seven.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  It'd be weird to tell your boy he had to pay for your food, for his food, right? But it's not totally, like you could formulate a payment plan. Where it's like, oh, if you want this food, cool, here's what you need to do to get the food. Chores, you know, all this stuff, all these, all these, oh, you want, so there's certain privileges, so in, like in Navy boot camp? Or an officer candidate school, like there's things that are privileges.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Like being able to uh drink a soda is like a privilege. Being able to uh I don't know, but there's like privileges. Like go in your room and shut the door before ten o'clock. That's a privilege. So they have all these things that they make them privileges. And then there's like work detail.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I can tell you, I did use a decent amount with my kids. If there was a punitive scenario was going on, yard work.

• 4:53Jocko Willink?

  And which is one of the things where it's like, oh, well, we gotta do yard work anyways. But when you're doing yard work, like when the whole family is doing yard work and it takes an hour to get something done, cool. When you, when one person is doing yard work and it's gonna take them five hours, that's, it sucks. So when I ever said to my kids, get your work clothes on, like to one of them, they knew it was not cool. So what privileges, you know, I remember I was having a funny conversation with my oldest daughter who had gotten in some trouble. And but we were like, now we're just like talking through what happened and she's like, and I was talking to her, cause I had taken her phone away.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  And cause that's another thing, like your kids have screen time, they have phone, they have TV, they got all kinds of privileges. So I was talking to my daughter and I was like, well, you know, you know, you, you, you can have your phone back. But you know, that kind of stuff, you just can't do that. As otherwise like it'll be a lot more than your phone will get taken away. And she's like, what else could you take from me? I was like, well, cause I, I was like, well, I said, you have a bed. You have a mattress. And I forget what the final straw was the fi- like the final thing I said was, oh, I said, you have a door on your bedroom. I said, you have hair. By this point, she was laughing, right?

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and the thing is there is she was laughing and why was she laughing? Well, it's because what's more important than any of this punishment stuff that we're talking about is that you have a good relationship with your kids. And if you have the better relationship that you have with your kids, the less you have to worry about this kind of stuff. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. You need to give those things. You need to listen to your kids. When your kid's like, I don't want to do this. You need to go, okay. When your, when your kid says, uh, I want to go do this. You need to go, okay. Like you need to trust them. If you give them trust, they'll give you trust. If you listen to them, they'll listen to you. If you treat them with respect, they'll treat you with respect. If you allow them to influence you, you'll have influence with them.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  And all these little stupid things that you care about, they don't matter, man. They don't matter. So especially when they're, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 years old.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Jamie Cochran was telling a story the other day about she was in a, in the orthodontist with her kid and there was a mom there. And the other kid wanted to get like

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  yellow and red braces. I guess you can get different colored braces. And the mom was like, no, you're getting blue. And they were like in a fight about it.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  And like, that's just terrible. Imagine all the leadership capital that's blown. Your kid wants to have yellow and red? Hey, it's cool. Oh, oh, they're gonna stand out. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Oh, your kid wants to get a, wants to wear this, you know, T-shirt. You don't like it or doesn't want to wear a T-shirt or doesn't want to, you know, all these stupid things that we get all wrapped up around with our kids, when you can actually, especially when they're six, seven, eight, nine, 10, you can allow them to influence you. Cause we want to impose our stuff on them, you know, like naturally, of course, like just wear that T-shirt looks stupid with a Mickey Mouse on it. You're, you're, you know what I mean? Like we get mad about this kind of stuff. It's so dumb.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if you're like, oh, that's a cool shirt. But like, if you say, I don't really like that shirt, like you're, aren't you a little old for Mickey Mouse? I'm just randomly making stuff up, but aren't you a little old for Mickey Mouse? They're like, no, but I really like it. Oh, if you want to wear it, that's cool. That's cool. Allow them to influence you. And that's, that's how you're gonna move forward. Um, one other, one other good, well, not good. I had another disciplinary example. Which was, I, my son did something wrong. He was pretty young. And I took his, I took one of his toys. And I brought it on the patio and I said, hey, listen, you know, because you behave that way, I have to

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  exact, um, uh, and meet out some punishment here, which is going to be this toy. And I had a truck and I had a, a sledgehammer.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  And I, and I smashed this little yellow truck. It wasn't, it wasn't even his favorite truck. It was like a random thing. Actually, I know, I know, I know. It's traumatic. So I smashed this thing.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  And, but this is what this guy's asking. Are, can you get in a situation with your kids where they need dis- to be disciplined legitimately? Yes. I hope it doesn't happen. It happened very rarely with my kids. Honestly, I don't think my middle daughter, I don't think I ever punished her. Yeah, that's good. My oldest daughter, look, you're always too hard on your oldest kid and I was too hard on my oldest kid. My youngest daughter?

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  But, but guess what? Freaking good kids. You know Hannah? I mean, could what, what'd you want her to do different? With her life? All good. Yeah. You're like, dude, she's good to go. With no punishments in her life. Yeah. Look, well, there's some little whatever, but I'm saying no, like outstanding, hey, here's a punishment. I had to exact on her for, for disobeying or whatever. No, none.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  And even like my son? Barely. Like this is the time, I'm, I'm telling you the one I can remember.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  It's like, so I took this truck, smashed it. Do you remember what he did? Are you at liberty to say? I, he was young, so it was something stupid. He, what he probably did was backtalk his mom. Okay. Uh, yeah, probably backtalked his mom or something like that. Maybe some little lie, cause lying is, you know, that's bad. Cause that's a trust issue. But what would have been better is be like, hey, why didn't you tell me? Do you always be, you know, it would have been better to talk through it. But it might've been something that was a little bit more extreme. Anyways, here's the point of this story. Never had to smash another one. I put one into the staging area.

• 11:03Jocko Willink?

  I put one into the staging area and said, hey, listen, if this happens again, this one's next. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  go to JacoUnderground.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

• 11:50Jocko 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 JacoUnderground.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.