Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Safety Protocol for Your Kids When They're On Their Own.

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

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This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 227 with Echo Charles and me. We are sitting here and we've got some questions from you all and we're going to provide some answers to the best of our ability. And perhaps at a minimum, we will provide some courses of action that can guide you through whatever challenges you might be facing in life. Let's get to it. First question, Chalk Reco. My teenage daughter and her boyfriend are attending a concert at a state fair soon. This will be their first major outing without parents. They'll be with a group of friends, which gives me some reassurance,

although I also know wisdom can disappear pretty quickly in a group of teenagers. I'm approaching this as a preparedness and risk management exercise. Beyond the basics of hydration, charge phones, and backup battery, I'm insisting on the following standards, which, yes, I've already exhibited with our family, but could be overlooked. unnoticed or otherwise taken for granted as a norm in our family okay so here here they are never go anywhere alone that's one number two is never leave each each other isolated number three maintain an escape route number four cover and move which is teamwork number five know where help is

before you need it so for your perspective am i am i missing anything are there blind spots in how i'm about this or anything you would change in the guidance. Appreciate your help. Well, those are some good rules, good start. I hope she's been training jiu-jitsu. If not, she should be started now, you know, because that just provides a whole another level of personal security for her. And by the way, if you're one of these people that's like, oh, what are you going to do

with jih Tzu? Hey, you can do a lot with jih Tzu. And as I tell, you know, when I train females in jih Tudu, especially from a self-defense perspective and you know a hundred pound woman is you know wondering if she can if she trains jiu-jitsu enough she'll be able to defend herself from a 225 pound man and the answer is usually no but guess what you can make enough resistance that it becomes problematic for the 200-pound man and at a minimum you can make things more difficult and perhaps those couple seconds 10 seconds, 7 seconds, 14 seconds that it takes for a guy to get control is the 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 14 seconds, that a police officer or that someone sees it or that someone hears it.

So that's why we're training in jiu-jitsu. A couple of the things here. A rally point, right? You're at a, you're at a fair scenario. What's a rally point? If we get split up, something goes on, where are we going to meet? Probably have one inside the fair area and one outside. Maybe it's the car.

Maybe it's a certain area by the car. Something like that where, hey, if we lose each other, this is where we're going to go. I'd probably have one inside the arena. The secondary is like the car. And if for whatever reason, one that's not even the car, further away further away than the car. Maybe it's the, you know, the McDonald's up the street or whatever, some other rally point. You should also have an extraction point, right, for you and for them. So something goes wrong, the boyfriend, whatever, he gets drunk and starts acting like,

an idiot. She just calls you and she gets the hot extract from a certain point. She doesn't even have to say anything. She passes a pro word. Right. She passes a pro word. She says, dad, cowboy, cowboy, cowboy. You go, stand by. And whatever, you already have it timed out. It takes you 12 minutes to get to the fair. She already knows to go to the entrance gate on the right hand side, on the south side to the entrance gate she's going to be that's what we're going to be waiting for boom so have an extraction pool a pre-designated extraction point primary and secondary also just the call me if you need me right if anything happens give me a call it's two o'clock in the morning give me a call it's 10 o'clock at night give me a call maybe some calm windows this might be getting a little bit in the micromanagement

territory but since it's the first time you know she sends you a text every hour All good. Just a little all good, a little comfort zone, right? Make sure everything's cool. Do we have a loss of communications plan? So if you don't, where she, you don't hear from her, where's she going? She loses her phone and where is she going to go? She loses her phone.

The dude freaks out. He throws her phone off the Ferris wheel at the thing. She doesn't know, she doesn't want to talk to him. She leaves. No comms. You have no comms with her. What are you going to do? Midnight, if I don't hear from you, at midnight, I'm going to be right here.

That's what we're doing. Here's probably the most important stuff. Don't do anything dumb. It's small. It's a small statement. But hey, sweetie, go have a good time tonight. Don't do anything dumb. Because she's going to get an opportunity to do some dumb stuff.

That's what happens in your teenage years. There are dumb opportunities. lined up, lined up for you. And you want to give her that last little bit of, you know, hey, don't do anything dumb. And by the way, it's also infused with, I trust you. That's why you're going. I trust you. Hey, I know you're not.

Hey, you know what? I trust you. I know you're not going to do anything dumb. That might be a good way to phrase it. I know you're not going to do anything dumb because I trust you. Boom. That might be it. Just that simple little statement because you have hopefully infused her.

with good values at this point where when dumb stuff gets presented to her, she knows the deal. Maybe, you know, and hopefully you've had those talks with her about things that she can do right now that are dumb and will hurt her reputation and hurt your family's reputation. You know, sometimes people, sometimes people care about their own reputation. Sometimes they keep, they care about their family's reputation. Like, sometimes you don't want to let your teammate, down sometimes some people don't want to let they'd rather not let the team down some people would rather not let themselves down so cover both those bases hey just remember the way you act

it impacts your reputation and it impacts our family's reputation so that way if if she's not really doesn't care about the family cool it's your reputation if she doesn't really care about her reputation because she wants to have fun cool that's the family's reputation hopefully one of those lands properly this is you know trustless and respected influence and care right You've given her to trust. You're giving her the trust to go there. You've allowed her to influence you. You're showing her that you respect her.

And hopefully she has a good time. So I think that's what I would, those are my little additions to the, to the plan here. And enjoy. Solid. I'm with this guy. You know,

these are strong ones that I'm kind of looking to you for some cool additional ones. So thank you for that. Yep, check. My daughter is 13. Mm-hmm. So she's entering this zone. Mm-hmm.

You know, she goes, I feel like ours is like a, which I've found to be successful. That's the reason I'm sharing it. So, so far, so good. There, when she, you know, she's 13 now. So her radius of independence from the house or from wherever I am, that's actually the house. If we go somewhere else, the radius is very, way, way smaller. So it, as she gets older and proves to be responsible. The radius just gets, you know, bigger and bigger as the years gone.

It's like kind of it, you know. You know, in the meantime, I'm looking, I'm seeing who she's hanging out with, how her behavior acts, like literally minute to minute. Because, you know, sometimes friends can come over. And I'm not going to say this has not happened. So friends will come over and then, oh, I see a little bit different behavior. For better or worse, by the way. Sometimes better. Sometimes I'm like, she's kind of like, you know, a little bit braver or a little bit more, you know,

loosening up the maybe coloring outside of the lines a little bit, you know? It usually starts in a fun way because I'm like that so which is good because it could be worse but you know paying attention

to these things. Okay when she hangs with Linda she's really polite. She's really, you know, they're trying to live up to a standard together. I like it, you know, kind of a thing because Linda squared away. But when Jenny comes over,

you know, she's a little bit this which is cool. We don't judge. Hey, we all have different flavors of friends. I get it. But I, I see how her behavior.

So now that radius with Jenny is going to be a little bit tighter, a little bit more monitored. Do you see what I'm saying? So it's kind of that. Yeah. I was probably shockingly liberal with my kids and their, what they were doing. Like I gave them all kinds of leeway to do stuff.

You know, with my girls, I was a little bit, a little bit more, but barely. I don't think I said no to my son. to do stuff. No, I take that back. There was one time.

I told him, no, you're not doing that. Yeah, you remember what it was. Yeah, it was during the COVID George Floyd riots and protests and stuff. And he's like, hey, I'm going to go down to the protest tonight. Like, he didn't have any like political. He wasn't like, I'm going to go down there, you know, and support the police or go support the BLM. He was just going down there because shit was going down. See what up.

You know what I mean? It's chaos. And the funny thing is when I was like, oh, no, you're not. And he was like, he, he like didn't understand what I was saying. And he's like, no, no, no, no. It's going to be, you know, it's like, we're going with this kid and this kid. And like, we're just going to go down. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's, it's tonight.

I was like, no. I was like, nope. And I was like, hey, this is the situation where someone can easily get killed. You can get wrapped up in doing something stupid. You can have something stupid done to you. You can get killed by a protest or you can get killed by a cop. And I know you're just going down there to freaking experience chaos because that's what a young kid wants to do.

You know, oh, there's mayhem going on. You know, this is what, he must have been like around 14 or something like that. But that was the only time where, or maybe he was 15. I'm like, no, you're, no, actually you're not doing that. because there's so much chaos in those riots and everyone. A riot? Like, riots are not good scenario. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast.

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