487: How to Raise Patriotic Kids When It Feels Complicated // Sharon McMahon

I'm a word person. (Occupational hazard of spending years as an English teacher, I suppose.) I notice when words shift — when something that used to feel simple and clear starts carrying extra weight, or gets claimed by one group of people until the rest of us feel uncertain about whether we're still allowed to use it the way we always meant to.

That's what's happened, at least in my experience, to the word "patriotic."

I used to say it easily. I love this country. I believe in what it's trying to be. I want my children to feel that particular swell of something at a fireworks show, or when they read about someone from history who risked everything for an idea they believed in. Patriotism used to feel uncomplicated.

But over the last several years, that word has felt harder to hold. Not because I stopped loving this country — I haven't, not even a little — but because "patriotic" has started to function more like a signal, a sorting mechanism, a way of declaring which side you're on, until I found myself hesitating over a word I once used without a second thought.

And even more than my own hesitation, I started to feel genuinely unsure about how to teach it to my kids. How do I hand them a word that carries this much... messiness, and still give them the real thing underneath it — the love of country that has nothing to do with which party you belong to?

I went back and listened to an episode I recorded on this topic back in 2018, and I kept thinking: the world has changed too much. We need to go deeper than we did then. And with Flag Day celebrated yesterday, 4th of July coming up, and especially this year as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I really wanted to explore this more.

That's why I invited Sharon McMahon back to 3 in 30. Sharon is known as America's Government Teacher — a title she has genuinely earned. She's the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Small and the Mighty, and her following of more than 1.8 million people — who call themselves Governerds, which I love — trust her because she explains complicated, heated topics calmly and without an agenda. She also has a brand new children's book called We Are Mighty.

In today's conversation, Sharon gives us three takeaways for raising children who are truly patriotic — in the oldest, most honest sense of that word. If you've been wanting to have these conversations with your kids but haven't quite known where to start, or how to hold both the love and the complexity at the same time, I think this episode will help.