Celebrate Kids, Inc.

10/09/2026

I was sitting on the couch one evening, scrolling through the news while our younger kids were winding down for bed, when a video started describing violence happening somewhere in the world. Like most adults, I was only half conscious of how intense the language sounded because I already had enough context to put the report into a larger category: another terrible thing had happened, I roughly understood what it meant, and I could move on to the next story. Then one of my five year old twin daughters walked over, looked at the screen, listened long enough to know something frightening had happened, and started asking me what I was watching. Suddenly, I heard the report differently because I was hearing it through her ears. She had no categories for much of what was being described, but she knew enough to recognize pain and danger, and now something I had casually allowed into our living room had become part of her world too. I remember the tension every parent eventually feels: I didn't want to lie to her or dismiss the question, but I also knew that giving a five year old every adult detail wouldn’t be honesty; it would be overload. Our children are real people living in the real world, but that does not mean they are ready to carry every part of it at full weight.

Tell the Truth at the Size They Can Carry

Dr. Kathy's response helped because she did not suggest that parents either hide the darkness or explain everything. She encouraged us to answer carefully, using age appropriate language and only as much detail as the child needs, comparing it to how a parent responds when a little child asks where babies come from. We answer the question being asked rather than turning every question into a graduate seminar. That requires enough attentiveness to hear what the child is really trying to understand. “What happened?” may mean, “Am I safe?” “Why did somebody do that?” may mean, “Are people bad?” If we rush to provide information before identifying the deeper question, we can unintentionally give children more facts while leaving the actual fear untouched. Christian parents have another important responsibility in those moments because we can name evil honestly without teaching children that evil is ultimate. People sin, and terrible things happen that we may not fully understand, but God is not absent, surprised, defeated, or indifferent. That is not a sentimental ending pasted onto bad news; it is the worldview that keeps the bad news from becoming the largest story a child knows.

10/09/2026

10/08/2026

Most conversations about smartphones and teenagers eventually become conversations about what kids are seeing. We worry about po*******hy, violence, social media, strangers, bullying, advertising, comparison, or whatever new app appeared before parents had time to understand the last one. Those concerns are legitimate, but Dr. Kathy said something in our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast conversation that stopped me because it was not about what the phone shows a child. It was about what the phone repeatedly allows a child to discover about other people: the phone can teach kids that they are being ignored. Before smartphones, a difficult school day eventually ended. A child who felt left out at lunch could come home, play with the dog, annoy a younger sibling, talk with Mom, eat dinner, and experience another world for a while. Today, the same child can carry the social environment of school into the house, upstairs, under the covers, and into the final minutes before sleep.

That changes what rejection feels like because absence can now become visible. A teenager can watch a group chat continue without their name appearing, see pictures from a gathering they were not invited to, notice who viewed a message without responding, or scroll through evidence that everybody else seems to be doing something together. Nothing overtly cruel even has to happen. Sometimes the painful information is simply, “Nobody thought of me.” The phone becomes a little dashboard constantly reporting social position, and the child can check that dashboard as many times as anxiety tells them to. The technology did not invent loneliness, but it can make loneliness measurable. It did not invent exclusion, but it can archive it in pictures, notifications, and silence. When Dr. Kathy said children may learn how they are ignored, she put language around something broader than ordinary screen distraction. We have given young people a device that can keep answering a question they were never designed to ask twenty four hours a day: Do they still want me?

That question lands directly on a child's need to belong. Kids are constantly trying to understand where they fit, who notices them, who wants them around, and whether they matter when they are not performing. A phone can become a very unreliable place to answer those questions because the feedback is inconsistent and often stripped of context. A friend may not respond because she is at dinner, but the anxious child reads silence as rejection. A group may post pictures from an event that was never meant to exclude him, but the child sees proof that life happened without him. The mind starts filling gaps with explanations, and the explanations are rarely generous when someone already feels insecure.

This is where parents can underestimate the weight of ordinary digital experiences. Adults may look at a missed text and think, “They were probably busy.” A thirteen year old may look at the same missed text and think, “I guess they don't like me anymore.” The phone makes both interpretations possible, but the developing brain often has less relational history, and less emotional distance from the moment. A device designed to connect can therefore increase uncertainty because connection is not the same thing as assurance.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on todays podcast and blog; check it out at celebratekids.com

10/07/2026

Weight is one of those parenting topics that gets complicated almost immediately because the body is visible. We can hide a struggle with math, an argument with a friend, anxiety about school, or a season of spiritual doubt, but a child's body walks into the room before most of those things do. Other kids see it. Coaches see it. Relatives notice it. Sometimes strangers notice it. And before long, the child may begin believing that everybody sees their weight before they see them. That is part of why our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast conversation about childhood obesity and the growing use of GLP-1 medications felt so important. The episode discussed a dramatic rise in prescriptions for younger children, including off label use in children below the currently approved ages, while also raising questions about what reduced calorie intake and long term use might mean during seasons of physical development. Those medical questions belong with qualified physicians, but parents still have another responsibility that medicine alone cannot carry: making sure the child never mistakes a health problem for who they are.

Dr. Kathy started in exactly the right place by acknowledging how painful obesity can be for children. This isn't a conversation where we should minimize the physical consequences or pretend every concern about weight comes from vanity. Kids can experience bullying, exclusion, difficulty participating in physical activities, sleep problems, health concerns, and the humiliating feeling that their body has become public property for other people to comment on. Parents feel pressure too. They may fear long term health effects, feel embarrassed by comments from other adults, feel confused about food, feel exhausted by conflict, or feel desperate to help a child who already feels rejected. That emotional weight can make a fast solution especially attractive because when your child is hurting, you want the hurt to stop.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on today's podcast and blog; check it out at celebratekids.com

10/06/2026

Something strangely powerful is happening in some classrooms when adults take technology away. Schools that once worked hard to put a device in every student's hands are now experimenting with removing those same devices, and some educators report changes that have little to do with test scores. Kids are talking to each other more, teachers are having meaningful conversations, students are looking up as they move through hallways, and there are reports of stronger community and even greater confidence about life after high school. One word that surfaced in our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast conversation was resilience, and that word caught my attention because resilience is not normally the first thing we associate with putting a phone in a locker. We tend to think of resilience as something forged through tragedy or tremendous hardship, but Dr. Kathy defines it much more broadly as the ability to recover from difficulty, disappointment, loss, fear, shame, failure, or simply not being chosen. If that is true, then the ordinary environments where kids learn how to respond when something becomes difficult matter enormously.

Technology complicates this because one of its great gifts is also one of its dangers: it makes an extraordinary number of things easy. I am thankful for GPS, spellcheck, instant research, searchable documents, and the ability to fix mistakes quickly. I do not want to go back to getting lost on purpose just to prove I have character. Dr. Kathy made the same point; technology is not evil, and much of its ease is genuinely good. But children growing up immersed in that ease can quietly absorb another message: things should be easy, and when they are not, perhaps something is wrong. That expectation can seep into children in ways that are hard to notice until a child meets something that will not respond to a swipe, restart, undo button, or exit screen.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on todays podcast and blog; check it out at celebratekids.com

10/05/2026

A strange moment happens when people start talking about the cost of raising children. Somebody throws out a number so large it makes you wonder whether every child in America is quietly eating goldfish crackers made from actual gold, and suddenly family life sounds less like a relationship and more like a thirty year financial instrument. The numbers in our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast episode were intentionally sobering: housing is expensive, college is expensive, young adults carry debt, career stability can feel uncertain, and raising children undeniably changes what a family can spend, save, buy, and do. As a father of eight, I also know the difference between a statistic describing the theoretical cost of a child and how real families live. Hand me downs happen, meals scale differently, grandparents help, churches step in, siblings share, friends trade babysitting, and life rarely follows the neat assumptions built into a national estimate.

None of that means money is irrelevant. Dr. Kathy was clear that families would be foolish not to consider finances when thinking about children because food, housing, healthcare, transportation, childcare, and lost income are real concerns. But money becomes a poor master when it is promoted from one factor in discernment to the factor that decides everything. A twenty five year old couple does not know exactly what they will earn at forty, what promotions will come, what expenses will change, what community will surround them, or how their priorities will mature over the next fifteen years. We make financial decisions with real information, but also with enormous uncertainty, which should make us cautious about pretending that a spreadsheet can forecast whether a future child belongs in a family.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on today's podcast and blog; check it out at celebratekids.com