Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: How to Finally Get Your Kids To do What You Want Them To.

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Leading at Home Without Anger(How to earn respect, guide your kids, and avoid becoming a tyrant parent.)When a Neighbor Crosses the Line(Handling heartless comments after the Charlie Kirk tragedy while keeping peace next door.)Finding Peace After a Father’s Failings(Moving forward when your dad wasn’t the hero you needed.)Bipolar Disorder and the Fight for Balance(Using sports, discipline, and creativity to manage the highs and lows.)Set Up to Fail at Work?(Navigating redundancy, lost progression, and building an exit strategy.)Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 182 sitting here with Echo Charles. We've got some questions from the troopers out there in the world. We will provide answers. We'll provide recommendations, courses of actions. Courses of action. Yep. Which is helpful, by the way. Indeed.

Okay, first question. Hi, Joccoe. Long time listener here. Father of two, eight and four. Husband, business owner and Brown Belt. Oh, yeah. Who trains hard every morning. Inspired by your example.

My problem is my eight-year-old daughter is very bright, but extremely defiant about chores and daily effort. Every request turns into a fight, and I inevitably lose my cool. After a recent blow-up, she asked, what's the point? You're always mad anyway. I actually got you. I'm failing to lead it at home. My anger sets a negative tone from my family, and on a break this cycle, earn her respect, motivate effort, and set discipline without crushing her trust or spirit. I've done therapy for anger in the past and greatly changed my perspective and approach, but I'm human and I still struggle with triggers.

What advice do you have for fathers wrestling with this battle at home? How do you lead defiant kids who rattle the home's stability and maintain trust so the family buys in? Thank you. Listening to your podcast has helped me push through tough spots for years. Yeah, right on. Um, classic case of imposing things on the people. Yeah. Look, you can get away with that.

Some of the times like, like, like maybe 10% 20% of people will be okay with that. Um, most people won't. That's why it doesn't work. That's why we didn't write a book, you know, called like extreme tyrannical leadership. Mm-hmm. Because that doesn't work. It doesn't work in a business. It doesn't work on the battlefield and won't work with your family either.

So here's a couple things. It's just straightforward. a little tricky because you, because I was about to say you think you know best. And you actually do know best. You do know what's best for your daughter. And if you could program exactly what she should do, study from this time, train this much, clean this thing, play, you know, violin at this time. And you could program your kid and just break their spirit and just make them do. That would be like the ideal, you'd make the ideal kid, right? Except for the part that where I said, where I said broken spirit. Because you have to break them to get them to do that, right? You have to break them to get them to do that.

So you don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. You want to give her some ownership. You want to kind of as much as you can treat her like an adult. Not in a punitive way and don't go crazy. Don't go overboard. But if you look at her, an eight-year-old kid, I've known guys that were eight years old.

I lived on a farm. And they would drive the tractor into town with hay and sell it, like get the money and bring it back. You know what I mean? Like, an eight-year-old is a capable human. And so let her come up with it. Like, let her come up with the chores. And maybe there's going to be some successful,

dad, it doesn't make sense that I have to, you know, make my bed every day. Instead of freaking out and be like, you're going to lock discipline it through. No, just be like, okay, cool. Yeah, you're right. Just pull the comfort up so we can tell it it's, you know, so you can put stuff on it.

It won't be messy. Or if the dog jumps on it, it won't get, you know, hair inside. You know, just whatever something. It's just real simple. Let her come up with it. the chore list. And then, you know, maybe negotiate some kind of a salary.

You know, what do we let's work? Let's, let's get some rewards, some compensation here. And you got to explain the why. And the why's got to be pragmatic. And it's got to be something they can understand too. And kids don't understand this will instill this discipline that you need in the future. They don't care about that. Needs to be, hey, listen, here's the bottom line.

If we have a fire in the house and the firefighters have to come through your window and there's crap all over the floor, they're not going to be able to get you out of here. So I don't care how clean the room is. You don't have to get the dust off the floor, but you can't have a bunch of toys all over the floor. Cool. Yep, cool. So like a pragmatic explanation. Hey, you can't have dishes in your room because then we have flies and we have mice and we'll have ants all over the house. So you can't have, you know, dishes in your room. Just pragmatically, you can't do it. Do you have to fold your clothes a certain way? No, you don't have to. If you don't mind going to school with wrinkle clothes, I don't care.

What if the other parents judge you as a bad parent? Like, whatever. My kids look like damn freaking, they were raised by wolves when my kids were that age. My son didn't wear shoes. He didn't wear a shirt. His feet look like you as a damn caveman. My daughters only wore like leotards, dirty leotards. So you see what I'm saying? And I wasn't like, you know, people probably looking at me going, what a, you know, that guy doesn't even, he's no discipline in his house. Really? Yeah. So that's kind of like some pragmatic things to do.

The other thing is, you want respect, you got to give a respect. You want her to trust you. You got to give her trust. You want to have influence over her. You better allow her to influence you. That's, you know, trustless and respect, influence and care. That's what you got to do. It's really hard to give those things to your kid because you know you're so much smarter

them and I'm not I'm saying that like being a jerk saying it but I know it's true I know for all of my kids I could have given them the ultimate schedule that they then would have been the jiu jitzu champion the wrestling champion the freaking guitar hero whatever like you can you can impose or you can come up with a plan the perfect plan put in a chat Bt hey how many times a day should my should my daughter be training jiu jiu jitsu in order to be a world champion what school should she go to for jiu jitzu and where you know how many times it did what what athletic uh pursuit should she take on what Olympic lifting you see what I'm saying you could do and you'd be right you'd be right and you'd also have a child that would hate you and you'd have a child that hated

whatever sport you were trying to get them to do or whatever thing you were trying to get them to do so if you build a relationship with them and you make all those things fun instead of freaking misery and discipline doesn't become this horrible overbearing tone inside your house where everyone just thinks you're ridiculous you're trying to run this thing like a like a tyrant then it'll be problematic but if you treat them like listen what they have to say put some trust oh hey do you want to go what is some things you're going to hey do you want to go and train jihitsu I don't know is he trying to get his kids to jihitsu no um uh you're trying to get your kids let's say you were trying to get your kids to trade jih Tutsu?

And they're like, well, I don't really want to train today. Oh, well, what do you want to do something else? Well, yeah, well, what do you want to do? I don't know. Do you want to get some ice cream? Okay. Yeah, let's go get some ice cream. We'll skip Jitsu.

You see what I'm saying? Just have fun. Have fun. And by the way, what you're at, here's the, here's the important thing. That person that you raise like a robot ends up with a person without a mind that isn't going to be able to think isn't going to be able to be able to overcome adversity, isn't going to be able to figure out ways out of problems that they're going to get presented in their life.

So you think you're making them a better person, but you're making them a worse person. You have to open up their minds. You have to allow them to brush in the guardrails of failure. These are all things that you have to do. You have to teach them to think for themselves. You have to teach them to think for themselves. And guess what?

Sounds like your daughter thinks for herself right now. She's got that beautiful, natural spark of individuality and spirit. And that's gonna come with some damn problems, bro. I was looking at old videos videos the other day of my kids when they were little. Yeah. I almost posted them because you see a couple of videos of Rana and you're like, dude, that's going to be hard to handle.

You know what I mean? She's just, you see some little pictures of Frey when she's like, you're, oh, that's going to be, you know, these are, these are not, these are not obedient, you know, slaves or my son. Like when he's a little kid, you're like, oh, this kid's going to be, you're going to have to put some freaking guardrail. up and he's going to hit him. And you've got that with your daughter. It's freaking amazing. It's freaking amazing.

It's like when you're a battlefield leader, would you rather have that totally obedient guy that only does what you say and you have to push him to get him go out in the field and make it happen? You want to have some of that's a dude, I got to pull the reins in on this guy. Of course.

So that's what you got to do with your daughter. Now with yourself, bro. You got to learn to detach. Take a step back. Take a breath. Recognize that you are embarrassing yourself when you get mad Your daughter I laughed when when you read that I rarely interrupt you when you're reading echo But when your eight-year-old daughter's daughter calls you out and says what's the point you get mad anyways

That's an eight-year-old calling you out that's embarrassing and she's right You can't let that happen you cannot let that happen so Treat your kids like their a little, you know, like their adults, treat them with respect, listen to what they have to say, give them some leeway, bro. They want to go out and expand into the world.

Do you want them to stay in the nest for the rest of it? What is a Jordan Peterson calls it a smothering mother? Yeah, you know, you're devouring mother. That's what it is. Devouring mother. That's what you're acting like here. Is a devouring father. Everything must be my way.

And it's horrible. Be stoked that you've got some strong, defiant wild kind of kids. Those are the kids that become, you know, super. Be thankful that you don't have unthinking automaton that are so scared of you that they just obey you out of fear. Because as soon as they turn 18, they are out of there. And they're going to go do some really, truly defiant stuff. That's not healthy. You got, you got, it sounds like you got some rebels on your hands. Good. But let's help them figure out what to rebel against and let's make sure that the thing that they're rebelling against isn't you.

And the stronger, the harder, the stronger, and the more you try to hold them down, the more they are going to try and break away from you. So you're in a beautiful situation. Luckily, she's only eight years old. Luckily, she's just going to kind of remember. I got my kids right now, they'll kind of remember that you used to be mad a bunch,

but then they'll be like, oh, no, no, yeah, when we were little. And they'll probably end up thinking It was like some of the stuff that was maybe that they were doing. So you'll be okay. You'll be fine. And they'll grow up, yeah, my dad was awesome. Oh yeah, he used to do this with us. Oh, yeah.

Yep. And then that's what you want, man. Don't try and freaking control people. It doesn't work. Try and build relationships with them. That's what I got. I agree. There's one part that I don't necessarily agree.

And I know you were making a huge point or nothing. But you said something like, along the lines of yeah you know best right the parent knows best I don't even think that's true a lot of the time yeah you're you're right how was I trying to explore it's like that's the I know yeah I know that you think that you know the best and and I will say this most parents many parents if given like I said like a like if they were able to program the daily activities of a child by the way now it's important to remember that they haven't even programmed daily activities for themselves, right? There's a reason why they're trying to put all the stuff on their

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