A Father’s Guide to Raising a Confident & Capable Daughter

Raising Puddle Jumpers

A lot parents spend too much time trying to protect their kids. Especially the first one. The second? Go ahead and bang your head on the table, you need to learn…haha. Am I right?

We see a jagged edge and reach for the foam tape. Some build fences instead of giving kids the gate key and the freedom to roam.

Then there’s raising a daughter. Nothing grabs a father’s heart like a daughter.

(Photo: My daughter at my NY apartment prepping shoes for her customers.)

As Jack Nicholson’s character famously said in As Good As It Gets, “You make me want to be a better man.”

That’s the effect a daughter has, but it’s a two way street. You have to be the man she deserves so she knows exactly what a man of character looks like because you are modeling relationships (good or bad) for her.

In the SEAL Teams, we didn’t build elite snipers by keeping them locked in a classroom. We put them out in the wild.

And your daughter doesn’t need an overprotective bodyguard, she needs the “ordinary magic” of being allowed to fail, get dirty, and realize she’s the one who can get herself back up.

That’s a Puddle Jumper.

Surround her with greatness.

I made it a mission to surround my daughter, Madison, with high achieving women to show her what was possible. Artists, founders, fashionistas, executives, and incredible professionals in their respective fields.

One of those friends, Maria, ran a boutique events empire in New York and saw Madison’s potential (her side hustle was painting on sneakers).

Because of that connection, Madison was asked to be an in-store artist for Puma. A few weeks later she found herself at sixteen years old riding the New York subway alone to work twelve hour shifts at the Puma store inside Saks Fifth Avenue.

(Photos: My daughter’s Saks event as an in-store artist for Puma. Thank you Maria Emma! xx)

She wasn’t just painting sneakers, she was navigating the concrete jungle and earning a thousand dollars a day. That kind of confidence isn’t gifted. It’s earned through sweat and the freedom to explore.

When Madison graduated high school, I gave her a watch. It wasn’t just a piece of jewelry to tell time. It was a reminder of her own internal power.

On the back, I had it inscribed: “She thought she could, and she did.”

She went on to graduate with honors from Goldsmiths in London and she’s now at the Royal College of Art getting her masters degree at 21.

She didn’t get there because I paved the road for her. She got there because I let her take the wheel when it was uncomfortable. And she became a good driver.

A daughter’s sense of self worth is often a direct reflection of how her father treated her.

We set the standard for the respect she will demand from the rest of the world, including the type of partner she'll choose.

So, let her do hard things. Let her travel to places where she doesn’t speak the language. Let her get muddy. When she stumbles, don’t just swoop in and fix the problem. Stand beside her and remind her that falling is just a prerequisite for becoming great in her own way. Share your own failures and success stories to inspire her and let her know failure is ok, and part of the process. This last part is something I wished I’d done more of.

Our job isn’t to keep them clean. It’s to make sure that when they jump into the deepest puddle life can find, they do it with a grin on their face and the absolute certainty that they belong there.

Thx for listening.

Brandon

PS-Pre-orders matter so much to us authors, especially these days. Please consider ordering or gifting a copy of Puddle Jumpers here.