Chattin’ with Dr. Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids, 2023 CHAP Convention Speaker

Ginger Wayde interviews a 2023 CHAP Convention speaker, Dr. Kathy Koch! Read the excerpted interview here then go register to attend convention at https://conv.chaponline.com/

Ginger: Good morning, everyone. Welcome. This is Chattin’ with CHAP. I’m your host, Ginger Wayde, and you will see I have a special guest, Dr. Kathy, with me today. We’re going to get to know Dr. Kathy a little bit here. She will be at our convention this year—just on Friday—because she is a busy woman. She will be in South Dakota on Saturday, and with us on Friday. So, we’re excited to have you with us, but our audience might not know you. I was talking with Rick Green earlier, and I said, “You know, homeschooling’s exploded. People are just getting to know CHAP.” They’re just getting into the homeschooling speaker crowd, maybe, and don’t know all the people. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, about Celebrate Kids?

Dr. Kathy: Sure. Yeah, I’d love to. So yeah, my name is Kathy Koch. It’s spelled K-O-C-H. So, if you look for my books on Amazon, or something, spell it right, K-O-C-H. I’ve a ministry called Celebrate Kids. It’s 31½ years old. I’m a former teacher, coach, school board member, and university professor, and I thought I would do each of those for a lifetime. I never had an intention to quit a job and move on, but God just kept noodling me with Deuteronomy 6: A parent will always be a child’s most important, forever teacher. And although what I was doing to train upcoming teachers was important— and I loved it, actually, I very much enjoyed it —I just knew that God wanted me to work with parents, but I’m not a parent. I’m single without kids, and I’m very content. I always tell my audiences that because I don’t want them to feel like I’m lying. Because, at the end, if they say, “You know, Dr. Kathy, how do you handle it when your son or daughter does this?” And then, I’m like, “Well, I don’t have any kids.” Then, it looks like I’ve been deceiving them. I love children. I had a job for life. I was a tenured university professor, and I quit and moved across country to do this. I have the utmost respect for good parents. And all of us at Celebrate Kids are huge advocates of homeschooling. It’s the wisest choice you can make for your family and for your children.

So, for 31½ years, I’ve been traveling. Last year, I keynoted nine homeschool conventions across America. This year, I’m keynoting several. I honestly don’t have it all in my head because I’m that busy. We also do a lot of pro-life events. We do church-based parent education. I do work with Christian schools because I don’t want to abandon that. We do community things. I do grandparent rallies. We do have a variety of things. I’ve written six books. I’m turning in number seven this week, which is exciting. Lord willing, I’ll finish that.

Ginger: Wow! That’s an accomplishment.

Dr. Kathy: We love the family. We are a biblical worldview, multi-generational family people. I’ve been on Focus on the Family a lot. We have a podcast; a lot of people know my voice from different podcasts. But we’re looking forward to coming and exhibiting and speaking, and just adding life to the excellent event that you all produce.

Ginger: That’s wonderful! Thank you. Thank you. We are so looking forward to it. And like you said, I love that your ministry has a biblical worldview and is multi-generational. That is just so huge. I just spoke on, a little bit ago on my show in my mentoring episode, turning mentoring into multi-generational learning. It’s just amazing—the richness of being involved with people of different ages. I love it. CHAP’s purpose—one of the reasons we exist—is we’re helping people train their children to follow Christ in all of life. It’s not Sunday. It’s not Wednesday night. It’s not, you know, Bible class. It’s all of life, every moment of your existence belongs to Jesus. Right?

Dr. Kathy: Hmm!

Ginger: . . .  What are some of the other things you’re doing with Celebrate Kids? How are you strengthening parents to disciple their kids in this way? I mean, you’re saying [that] homeschooling, that’s the ultimate way to disciple your children. You’re with them all the time. So, [with] your Celebrate Kids ministry, what are you tackling or what kind of approaches do you have with parents? Can you tie us together in that way?

Dr. Kathy: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, we talk a lot about relationship. Making sure that your relationship is solid. Just because you’re with each other 24/7/365 doesn’t mean that they necessarily want to listen to or learn from you.

Ginger: Yeah.

Dr. Kathy: It can be really challenging, actually, to be that closely tied as a family. So, how do you keep your relationship solid so that you can participate with the Holy Spirit to transform their hearts for righteousness, obedience, for love and joy and gratitude, rather than just changing their behavior? So, I’m not a behavior modification person. . . .

Ginger: Yeah, perfect.

Dr. Kathy: I am—”get to the heart of the matter.” So, my book Start with the Heart is all about relationship, goal setting, complimenting, correcting, establishing the right kind of rapport with your kid. The new book I’m writing is about biblical character, which is different from good character. So, how do we use the whole of Scripture to impress upon our children who we would want them to be? I’ve written a book about how kids are smart in eight different ways; that’s my bestseller. I’m looking forward to speaking on that at the conference. One of the things that I talked about in that book is that we can come to faith in Christ because of how we were created. We can connect our kids with something they have in common with God so that they see connection. I’m not a huge fan—and I hope this doesn’t alarm you, Ginger, or anybody else— . . . of starting our conversations about sin. You know, we’re sinners and we’re disappointing God. People already think God is a judge and they already—many of them, even our own children and grandchildren, but certainly, kids we might interact with in different ways—think that they’re bad, many of them.

So, let’s start with what you have in common with your Creator. Creative kids are creative because God is creative. Kids who are logic-smart and are analytical and think with questions are that way because God is logical. Those of us who are word-smart—well, you know, God, Jesus is the Word—and we learned through the Word. We have this thing in common that we value words and we value language. You can talk to kids about this beautiful reality: “Did you know that the way you love nature—God created it that you would enjoy it? And that you would discover Him in nature? I’m so excited that you’re nature-smart.”

Use real language; I’m very big on that. I love what you’re saying about, you know, Jesus is not just a Sunday/Wednesday thing. We do need to make sure that our kids know that He is the all in all, and we want to respect that about Him.

Ginger: Absolutely. So, you are talking about—I think what you’re talking about—is your “8 Great Smarts” talk. Right?

Dr. Kathy: That’s so.

Ginger: And that was my next question. You talked about that already. What I love about that—I have heard parts of that before. . . . I don’t know if it was on Heidi’s podcast or whatever. . . . but I know I’ve heard you talk about this before. . . .

Dr. Kathy: Uh huh.

Ginger: . . . . with Covid and being apart from people—just realizing how desperately we need each other. I mean that first Sunday when we went back into church, I leapt from my car and ran over and hugged my friends. I didn’t even know I had that in me until I was in the presence of other people. But what I’m getting around to is that connection you were saying, having that connection with the Creator —I love that thought.

Dr. Kathy: Yeah.

Ginger: Because that gives intrinsic value. You have a connection with the Creator; you are a reflection of His image. Everyone’s made in His image. Well, what does that mean?

Dr. Kathy: Yeah.

Ginger: What does that mean for me? . . . . Explaining that to children, I love that. And there’s different ways. We get so hung up on the book stuff, like the academics and things. But there’s so much more to life than just that. There’s just so many different facets to our Creator, and we reflect them all. I just think that’s great. Whenever I hear you speak about it, I’m like “Oh, yeah, this. It’s just so inspiring.” So, I’m encouraging parents out there to come to [the 2023 CHAP] convention and hear this. I don’t know, it just brings something to my heart with parenting. I’m thinking about connecting with my children and the importance of it, and to just let some of that other stuff go so that we know that we’re working on that relationship with our kids because that’s how we were designed to be.

Dr. Kathy: Yeah, I love that, Ginger, if I can just interject that when children feel known, they feel safe. So, when you, as a homeschool parent, figure out how they learn best, there’s less frustration, there’s more safety. So, the book—you know the major thing I’ll talk about at the convention with 8 Great Smarts—is how you can teach according to how they are smart. So, you might teach spelling words on Monday with the word-smart part of the brain that would make sense, and maybe by Wednesday, you figured out that some of the words are tricky for one of your kids.

Ginger: Gotcha!

Dr. Kathy: Then you introduce learning it through another smart, and you review with yet another smart on Thursday and now they’re using more of their brain to bring to bear on that issue. Or they’re doing drama, which requires picture-smart, word-smart, logic-smart, nature-smart, people-smart, self-smart. I could convince you of that in our seminar. So, the more that you know about how kids are smart, the more confident you’ll be as a teacher, mom, dad, [then] the more excited your kids are going to be, especially if they have felt “less than.” If you did have them in a public school, as an example, and they were not doing well and that’s why you pulled them to homeschool, then understanding how they’re smart can be really revolutionary for them. So, I’m excited to talk about that along with the other stuff that we’ll be doing.

Ginger: Yeah, that’d be great. I’m so excited you’re coming, and you know what, I listen to your podcast, too. And what I love there is, well, it’s bite-size chunks. So those of you who don’t have an hour to listen to a podcast, do you have 15 minutes? I know you can listen to 15 minutes, and at the end—your discussions are so good, and you talk about hard stuff. . . hard things, relational things [that] are hard discussions, too, to have. . . but at the end—there’s always Scripture. You come back around to at the end and tie everything into the Word. So, parents have Scripture because that’s the foundation, right? That’s the truth.

Dr. Kathy: Supposed to be.

Ginger: Yeah. I do love that, and that’s a great resource. As we’re wrapping it up here, I’m so glad you came, I’m so glad that people could get a “taste” of you and your ministry, and I’m wondering if people want to know more about you before coming to the convention, how they can get connected with you. Obviously, they can do that when they’re at the convention, but if they want to do that before they come, where should they look for you?

Dr. Kathy: Thank you. Well, they could look for the Celebrate Kids podcasts wherever you get podcasts. So, you just mentioned that—”Celebrate Kids with Dr. Kathy”—and then the new one is, oh, shoot! Oh, that’s so embarrassing! We’ve changed the name several times, not “Confront the Dark.” You’ll find it. Go to. . . .

Ginger: It’s “Don’t Fear the Dark”—that’s the one I was listening to.

Dr. Kathy: Yeah, yeah. It launches on weekday mornings. It’s about culture and then my interpretation of what’s going on. And I appreciate you mentioning that. Of course, we’re on Facebook and Instagram, like everybody else, under Celebrate Kids Inc. Website is celebratekids.com. I’m still working on improving that. But we’re all looking forward to being with you. My executive director and a member of our team will be there. A friend of ours is speaking on Saturday since I have to leave, but I’m excited. I’m looking forward to it. We’ll talk about technology. We’ll talk about motivation. How do you deal with whiny, complaining kids who say, “It’s so hard. It’s so hard. Mommy, it’s so hard.” . . . . How do you deal with that? I’m looking forward to being with you. And yeah, [if] people want to check us out in advance, that’d be great! [I’m] looking forward to meeting with people at the booth when I’m not speaking. We just love putting eyes on people and interacting and being a source of hope.

Ginger: . . . . Interaction with people, I just think [that] it’s so important. Because I can hear you on your podcast, I can get you online everywhere, but when you can be in a room with someone, that’s something with the Spirit there, right?

Dr. Kathy: Yeah, yeah.

Ginger: I don’t know—the Spirit does something when we’re together like that, and it’s just incredible. So, well, I’m glad you’re going to be there.

Dr. Kathy: Yeah, for sure.

Ginger: I thank you, and for coming on to my show, I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Kathy: My pleasure, looking forward to being with you in person.

Ginger: Yeah, very soon. A month away. Okay, everybody, have a great week.