How to Guide Your Son: The Saturday Morning Bleacher Report

Jeff Nelligan • September 16, 2019

Dad-to-son conversation - in solitude.

In the previous post, I gave you the Map, a basic starting point for developing the methodical son, the one who is prepared and reliable and ready.

Next up is the harder and more rewarding task: How to go about guiding your son.

Perhaps you already believe you are. Then humor me.

Developing the confident and resilient kid requires setting a baseline on you will go about explaining virtues and good behavior and right from wrong. No amount of random exhortations is going to do that. When my three boys were young, I knew it would be crazy to think I could simply tell them at regular intervals, “Hey boys, listen up. You need to be good kids, tenacious and strong and honest. No joke – the old man means it. Now, pass the salt.” C’mon man, no reasonable Dad operates that way. Kids at any age hear that refrain and roll their eyes. I would.

Nor can you leave it to chance, waiting for the right moment. You’ll never find it. And what will happen? The cruelest outcome of all”: The culture will shape your kid.

Hence, how you go about articulating these concepts – as I said, the virtues - conviction, effort, resilience - is just as important as what you say. You gotta have a plan. And the following is mine.

1. Explanations in Solitude.

Beginning when the eldest was in third grade, I took great care in explaining to each kid individually in the simplest terms possible, the basic qualities to which I wanted them to aspire. How and Where was key: They were too young for high-sounding lectures on integrity, self-assurance, and aspirations. No kid is going to understand that stratospheric approach. Plus, you must have your son’s full attention. This rules out a room in the house or the back¬yard porch or a restaurant or a shopping mall or the front seat of a car. I settled on an ideal place of peace and quiet, one with no distractions: A Saturday morning in the bleach¬ers fronting the fields of our local high school. It was a poignant venue. I had their rapt attention and they had mine.

As we sat together, I would engage them first with sim¬ple conversation about easy subjects from their everyday life. Then, I’d gently guide the talk to many of the situa¬tions in my book – handling adversity, listening to others, being of good cheer, reading the crowd. In fact, these talks became a fond ritual – not every week or even every month for each kid, but timed to be relevant. Indeed, these meet¬ings persist to this day; the eldest kid and I were in the bleachers not two months ago between his overseas deployments. What started at age 6 was being played out 18 years later.

2. Fearless Judging.
My book is full of examples of judging others. In fact, there are no judgment-free zones in my life or in anyone’s life, yours included. I don’t live in equivocation city, a suburb of the temporizing, hand-wringing, oh-let-it-go-this-time enabling world.
When my boys and I were out and about in the real world I genuinely treasure, my head was always on a swivel seeking allegories and metaphors in everything and everyone. I was relentless in acknowledging good and bad and doing so in mostly comic fashion.

Virtually everywhere we went, from the most pedestrian places to the most exciting, we’d play the game. What do you see? Who is doing what? Who is hot and who is not? “Take in all the folks around you, measure them. Which one would you trust? Who is sketchy? What did that person do wrong? What did that other person do right?” You need to impress upon your son these opportunities in the arena all around us. By judging, you’re making your kids think.

3. Persistence.
I never, ever stopped judging and demanding that my kids absorb the world around them. None of the sayings found in the book was a one-time deal. And no, I didn’t get through to the boys all the time. In order for my principles to be absorbed, they had to be sustained, over days and weeks and months and years. I know boys and I know that the same situations in their lives are repeated over and over again. I was dogged – I made sure to make every moment count.

Finally, it cannot be said enough so I’ll say it again: You’re the Dad. You’re the leader. You’re in control. Kids don’t know best. You do. Every father has the experience of being a young boy, knows the ups and downs, the everyday and the extraor¬dinary, what works and what doesn’t. So tell him about it.

As I say in my book, this life and world offer up countless situations for anyone paying attention. I used that world to build confidence, resilience and ambition in my sons, and it that has led them through the Naval Academy, Williams, and West Point. They developed the way they did because they knew right from wrong, good from bad, how to navigate and hold on through tough times and develop the resilience that is manifest today in the three hemispheres in which they lead men and women.

Explain. Judge. Persevere. Get to really know your son. And shape him before the culture, as I noted, does it for you.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Every Dad in America wants to raise a resilient kid. Four Lessons from My Three Sons charts the course.

Written by a good-natured but unyielding father, this slim volume describes how his off-beat and yet powerful forms of encouragement helped his sons obtain the assurance, strength and integrity needed to achieve personal success and satisfaction. This book isn't 300 pages of pop child psychology or a fatherhood "journey" filled with jargon and equivocation. It's tough and hard and fast. It’s about how three boys made their way to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams, and West Point – and beyond.

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Flag duty and the end of 30 years in politics

By Jeff Nelligan • January 29, 2026

It's 8:30 a.m. on a humid August Tuesday and I’m on the roof of the U.S. Capitol, the Dome rising 280 feet directly above. In my arms is a stack of thin boxes and I’m navigating a plywood gangplank leading to a rusted 15-foot flagpole. A colleague joins me carrying more boxes. She opens one and hands me a 2’ by 4’ American flag which I affix to the pole’s lanyard, raise and lower quickly, unfasten and hand to her as she hands me another. A third colleague brings out more boxes and retrieves the ones containing flown flags. This little dance continues for three straight hours. Afterwards, my colleagues and I carefully re-fold each flag and affix to it a “Certificate of Authenticity from the Architect of the Capitol” reading “This flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of____” and fill in the blank: “The Greater Bakersfield, California Chamber of Commerce”…the 80 th birthday of Wilbert Robinson of Bowie, Maryland, proud veteran of the Vietnam War…” We will perform this task for five days a week until Congress returns from recess. This is my very first job in Washington, D.C. and obviously, I have what it takes. *** Flag duty began my 32-year run in politics and government, which ended last week. It included four tours of duty on Capitol Hill working for three Members of Congress, two Presidential appointments serving Cabinet officers in the Departments of State and Health and Human Services, posts at two independent agencies, and a career position at FDA. The jobs were a mix of purely political positions where being on the south side of an election meant cleaning out your desk and getting good at catchy LinkedIn posts – twice that happened - and career federal government stints where the stakes were less exhilarating. *** I worked principally as press secretary and special assistant. The former job, a common D.C. occupation, was transformed in 2008 with the onset of social media, morphing from daily pronouncements of your boss’s wisdom on the issues of the day to rapid-fire postings on the obvious unreasonableness, even cruelties of your opponents. Sound familiar? As for the latter occupational specialty, special assistant, the terms ‘bagman’ or ‘fixer’ are more apt: A guy always two steps behind the principal but always ready to step up and fix whatever problem arose in daily political life. Need a special vegan lunch for Congressman Busybody, White House tour tickets for the Big Bad High volleyball team, or the personal phone number of the executive assistant to a heavy-duty lobbyist? I was your guy. Every leader needs a fixer. Like anyone else who works in D.C., I occasionally participated in a glam political moment – you know, that unique, epic event that would never ever be forgotten in D.C. history Until it was. *** The best part about government life was working for many men and women who were at the top of their game in the D.C. Swamp, one of the toughest arenas on the planet. Their success, from the vantage point of your humble correspondent, was attributable to four simple rules of life. “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen.” Every office I was in kept metrics on virtually every aspect of the principal’s week – how many meetings and events attended, X posts, interviews, committee votes, constituent letters, action items completed from memos?! Numbers, numbers, and always keeping score – and always the quest to improve. “Never lose it.” In a lifetime of political jobs, I may have heard a boss raise her or his voice half a dozen times, even during and after major-league setbacks. Self-control was their hallmark. One boss, a powerful House Committee chairman once confided to me, “I’m fine that 80 precent of my job is humoring these guys, no matter how crazy they get.” An equally valuable corollary skill: Humility. The ability of these individuals to admit to colleagues and staff when wrong on a particular issue. Which counterintuitively only upped their long-term credibility. “Something’s always gonna go south.” Always the need for a plan C. Every initiative during an upcoming day was scoured for what elements would interfere and how, if they occurred, they could be ameliorated. Hence, in the rare times when things did go south, there was always preparation in advance for getting to 80 percent of what was needed. “Good is not good enough.” Successful politicians and government leaders – and their staffs – never get complacent. If they do, they’re not long for the Swamp. Everyone is always hustling for the edge. A useful corollary learned from an NCO when I was in the Army: Always have your hand up. Volunteering is at the heart of the hustle, the cheerful willingness to take on the new and unknown and do whatever it takes. *** And that’s how it all started. On the second day of my first congressional tour the Member solicited volunteers “for a fun recess job that’ll get you out of the office.” It was flag duty and from that day onwards my government career could only go up. *****