Celebrate Kids, Inc.

08/23/2026

08/22/2026

What an amazing group of people we got to teach today at START Baptist in Louisiana. These church organized parent trainings are so important.

Did you know there’s a lot of people who say when people need help with parenting they’re turning more and more to the church? We have seen that. We love encouraging the church and Gods people to celebrate kids. So much fun to do this training today!

08/21/2026

Every once in a while, new research comes along and makes parents feel as though somebody moved the floor beneath them. For years, many of us have heard a fairly simple story about screens: more is worse. Then a study comes along suggesting that greater screen time throughout childhood and adolescence is associated with better cognitive processing in teenagers, as measured by attention and working memory. Before anybody runs out to buy an eight year old a tablet for Christmas, the broader research remains much more complicated. Other studies discussed in the podcast have associated heavy or early screen exposure with attention problems, anxiety, altered brain development, emotional regulation concerns, and other negative outcomes. Maybe the lesson is not that everything we knew was wrong. Maybe the lesson is that “screen time” was always too blunt a category.

The better questions are more specific. What kind of screen use? At what age? At what time of day? With whom? For what purpose? What happens afterward? A teenager working with siblings to build something in Minecraft is having a different experience from a child alone in a dark bedroom endlessly scrolling. A student researching lightning bugs with an older sibling is using a device differently from one consuming whatever an algorithm places next. The minutes may be identical. The formation is not.

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

08/20/2026

When I was growing up, one of the rules of childhood was remarkably simple: come home when the streetlights come on. Somewhere between breakfast and those lights flickering to life, kids figured out what to do. We found people. Invented games. Changed the rules halfway through. Argued about whether somebody was actually out. Got bored and started something new. Childhood today can look very different. In our genuine effort to keep children safe, we can schedule, supervise, organize, and improve so much of their lives that we accidentally remove the very experiences through which they learn to handle life.

That was the concern behind a Utah resolution discussed on the Celebrate Kids Podcast encouraging more childhood independence and free play. The proposal specifically connected constant supervision with reduced opportunities to develop qualities such as resourcefulness and perseverance. I think those qualities deserve our attention because neither can be handed to children in a lecture. They have to be practiced.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on the podcast and in the blog today. Check it out at celebratekids.com

08/19/2026

It was our last trip to Summit this year. What a blessing Summit is. A complete honor to join the teaching team and encourage these young people. Join us in praying for them as they launch into God's call for their lives.

08/19/2026

One of the strange things about raising children is eventually realizing that the people who look so much like us may not actually want to become us. This can be surprising. You spend years looking across the dinner table and seeing your spouse’s smile and maybe, unfortunately, your tendency to leave shoes in the middle of the floor, and, somewhere along the way, you assume there will be other similarities, too. Then one child wants to do exactly what you do, while another looks at your career and thinks, “That seems terrible.” That is not necessarily a parenting problem. It may simply mean we have finally discovered that our children are people.

A recent Gallup survey discussed on the podcast found that about three fourths of parents wanted young people to pursue education after high school, with 40 percent preferring a four year university. I understand that instinct. Education after high school is valuable, and most young adults will need additional training, skill development, apprenticeships, certifications, college, or other forms of preparation. But Dr. Kathy made an important distinction: the purpose of education is not to prepare children for more education. It is to prepare them for life.

Dr. Kathy talks about this and more on the podcast and in the blog today. Check it out at celebratekids.com