Moody Publishing Partner Book Review: Start with the Heart by Dr. Kathy Koch

I love launching books.  But books that help parents/teachers/adults whisper the Word to our children make my heart happy!

The subtitle of this pretty amazing book is: How to Motivate Your Kids to Be Compassionate, Responsible, and Brave (Even When You're Not Around).  And the big title- Start with the Heart.

Starting with the heart and a real relationship built on love and connection with children is my inner mantra and a tip I share with anyone who wants advice.  It makes an enormous difference when children know you love them (not dependent on their behavior) and only want to help them grow a little bit each day.  Love really is the answer in impacting the next generation for Christ, and raising up a new body of believers who will thrive and grow to new depths in love and connection in the body of Christ.

Dr. Kathy Koch is a book mentor of mine.  She knows how to help others equip their children to become the best adults, she writes in a way that makes it simple and easy to apply with questions, tips, and story telling examples to move the reader forward in an uncharted path or to continue gaining skill in supporting children to become great grown ups!  And this is my favorite book of hers so far!

This book has a larger and stronger biblical foundation and wisdom shared than I remember in her other books.  Her principles have always been built on how God creates us and communes with us, but this book shows us how following His Word will make change happen in our lives and will help us identify what needs to change.

She also knows children, what makes them tic, how they learn, and approaches all of her books with this in mind. So it's not a one size fit all approach. It's individualized for different personality children and adults.
Things I love about this book:

Features:

• format- two color pages used just right to make a huge impact. 
• Green headings throughout chapters, with smaller italics headings sometimes. 
• Green tabs with motivational key points (so when you flip through you stop at them)
• Appendixes- these are worth the price of the book! 

Biblical Counsel with psychological, therapeutic strategies taught:

• Chapter 3: What will make change happen?  
• Look at the Contents page... 
• practical, manageable strategies
• developing a growth mindset, resiliency, tenacity, etc. GRIT- such a need in our world today! 
• Modeling of the strategies including suggestions of what to say to help.  

I've read so many books on helping children grow in the past five years.  Many from leading researchers and counselors on how to help children, and in this easy to read, easy to grasp and implement, as long as you are honest with yourself new book, I can tell you this book puts the best research based concepts into practice and the author makes it so realistic and easy to build on.  I wish I'd had this book five years ago!  

I can't wait to hear what other parents love about this book, as I can see it being read and re-read as we seek to be the best parents we can for the children that God has given us!  And Dr. Koch grasps how to make that work and possible.  So prepare to dig in, take a few quiet breaks to pray and think about yourself and your style, so that you can address your kids needs and change yourself and your children with techniques that build one another up.  

Thankful to partner with Moody Publishing and get an advanced copy of this book.  It releases Friday, March 5th, pre-order it today so you will have it on Tuesday!!