The Iced Tea Lemonade Question
You already have what your kids need. Let me show you.
I have been doing a lot of screenings of 15 DAYS over the past several months. The same moment happens almost every single time.
The lights come up. People have been crying, or quiet, or angry, or all three. And then a parent stands up and asks me some version of the same question.
“What can I do?”
They’ve just spent sixty-nine minutes watching what was done to their kids. What is, in many ways, still being done to them. They want to act. They want a checklist. They want to know if they should canvas for a candidate, subscribe to something, donate somewhere, show up to a school board meeting, write a letter, march.
They are looking for alchemy. The special sauce. The Big Action with a capital B that will fix it.
I understand that impulse completely, because I have lived it. I sued Mayor de Blasio to reopen our schools. I made a film. I built an organization. I believe in the big things. The big things matter.
But here is what I have come to believe even more.
The big things don’t take root in our kids unless the small things are already there.
Activism begins in the home. Values begin in the home. And our children are watching what we do far more closely than they are listening to what we say.
Let me tell you what I mean.
From spring through summer, when my kids are around, I make iced tea lemonade nearly every day.
Two black tea bags steeped in hot water.
A tablespoon or two of raw honey.
One whole lemon, freshly squeezed.
Pour over ice.
That is the entire recipe.
I could buy a premade product. It would be easier. It would be faster. There is a version of me that, on any given morning, would absolutely rather not stand at the counter cutting a lemon. But I make it because I care about what my family puts into their bodies. And also because I want them to know that taking the time to prepare something for the people you love is not a waste of time.
That this is one of the most valuable things a person can do with twenty minutes.
And here is the part I did not expect.
Their friends notice.
They come over and I offer them a glass and their eyes go wide and they say, “You made this?”
And I say, of course I did, it’s just lemonade, it’s not a big deal.
But to them it is. The entire pitcher disappears. I come back into the kitchen and ask where it all went and my kids say, my friends really loved it, they thought it was great.
But I make it because I care about what my family puts into their bodies. And also because I want them to know that taking the time to prepare something for the people you love is not a waste of time.
Their friends are stunned that a parent would take the time to make a beverage you can buy in any bodega for a few dollars.
That tells you something. That tells you a lot, actually, about what kids are accustomed to and what they are quietly hungry for.
When parents ask me what they can do, I tell them this.
Learn to cook. Teach your kids to cook. Set the table. Eat meals together as often as you possibly can.
Please do not set yourself up to fail by demanding seven nights a week. We live very busy lives. But if we don’t gather, if we don’t sit down and have quiet conversation with each other on a regular basis, how will our kids actually know what matters to us? How will they know who to model themselves after? What values will they absorb and carry forward into their own homes one day?
These are not small questions. They only look small.
The pandemic should have taught us that the institutions our children spend most of their day inside cannot be relied upon to transmit our values to them. In many cases, those institutions are actively transmitting the opposite.
If we are not the primary cultural force in our children’s lives, something else will be.
So when a parent asks me what they can do, I am not being cute when I say make the iced tea lemonade. I mean it.
The Big Things, running for school board, funding the study nobody else will fund, suing the mayor, making the film, pushing back on what is being taught in fourth grade, those matter. They have to happen. Some of you are going to do those things and I will be cheering you on.
So when a parent asks me what they can do, I am not being cute when I say make the iced tea lemonade. I mean it.
But the kid whose parent never sat down to a meal with them, never made them anything by hand, never modeled the idea that people who love you spend time on you, that kid is going to be much harder to reach when the culture comes for them.
And it is coming for them. We live in an age of feelings, as Robert P. George recently put it, and feelings are exactly what an unmoored child has nothing but.
The home is the counterweight.
The dinner table is the counterweight.
The pitcher of iced tea lemonade is the counterweight.
The recipe (and an honest ask)
You already know how to do this. I bet you knew the second I described it. You have it in you. Most of what we are talking about here is not skill, it is the decision to spend the twenty minutes.
Here is exactly how I make mine:
2 black tea bags, steeped in 2 cups of hot water
1 to 2 tablespoons raw honey, stirred in while the tea is still warm
1 whole lemon, freshly squeezed
Top with cold water, pour over ice
Adapt freely. As the weather warms up, you will want it on the tart side, lightly sweetened. Your kids will love you for it.
Hand a glass to your kid. Hand one to their friend. Sit down with them while they drink it. Ask them how their day was, and then actually listen to the answer.
That is the activism. That is where it starts.
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Because no one is coming to save our kids but us.
Family therapist here. This IS the answer, and it's the answer to almost all problems with children. We must stop outsourcing parenting, including to the therapists and counselors.
Love it. So good!