When you think of a teen parent what visual comes to mind? Was it a teenage girl or teenage boy? Well, I will be honest up until 7 months ago my visual was a teenage girl. My experience as a school social worker had created this framework in my brain because I never had a teen father in my office, but rather teen mothers. At this point in my professional career I can say with great enthusiasm that I have the most amazing opportunity to work with teen fathers and they are a blessing! The young men I have the pleasure to know love their children dearly, want to be the best fathers they can be, and in spite of their chronological age are growing up rapidly simply because they
WANT TO embrace fatherhood. This is a
CHOICE they choose and I admire them for that!
Now, the reflections and experiences of one young father in my program...
This particular young man is growing up on the reservation with absent parents, influences of drugs, alcohol, and gangs. He is being raised by his elderly grandmother who loves him dearly and wants him to earn his high school diploma and enjoy a healthy and successful adult life. When I first met this young man (before he was a father) he felt it was important to draw me a map of his community. He wanted to show me where I should NEVER go because these certain areas had heavy gang involvement and he didn't want me to get caught in the crossfire. I think he was being a bit dramatic, but he knew we came from very different worlds and wanted to help me out.
This young man has a beautiful 4 month old son that he loves deeply and is so proud of. In our many conversations he has shared that he wants his son to have parents who are involved in his life and that he doesn't want his son to experience some of the things that he experienced as a young boy growing up. He vacillates between feeling like his son is destined to have the same life he did growing up and the seemingly unattainable possibility of a better option out there for his child. This young father has never seen healthy relationships between parents and children. He has never experienced those relationships first hand. He only knows one way of life and that is the only thing he visualizes. His experiences have shaped his expectations, his mental framework.
There is hope in this story. Now, as part of this program of course I utilize a national parenting curriculum and it has been tested and proven to be a best practice tool for parenting programs. Don't get me wrong, this is a wonderful tool that continues to enable me to teach these young parents the many ingredients needed for healthy and effective parenting. BUT! There is always the peripheral benefits that continue to wow me. The benefits that occur from the simple experiences in life and my inevitable way of just being human and transparent before my teen parents. Nonetheless, the unexpected outcomes seem to be the most powerful.
Get to the point Heidi...this young man had the opportunity to work for 3 hours for $7.25 at a polling site on November 2, 2010 - voting day. I asked all the young fathers in my group if they were interested and this father jumped to the opportunity! You would think that I offered him a lifetime supply of diapers for taking me up on this offer. He was so thrilled to have his "first job" - a legal one at that! So with great enthusiasm I drove him to the polling site, gave him water and a burrito, dropped him off, and he went to work. His grandmother was proud of him. He was proud of himself. He was proud because he was going to make enough money to buy a box of diapers - just
ONE box of diapers for his son. These outcomes alone were simply wonderful, but it was the peripheral benefits that will sow a long term effect in him. Two things happened. 1.) He observed families going into the polling site together. He was amazed at how many kids were with their parents, at night, together! He states, "This doesn't happen where I live." It is not safe where he lives and he reports that the families he knows do not spend a lot of time together with their children. The funny part is he said that the moms were scared of him and kept their children close when they walked by. He didn't care, he just smiled and thanked them for voting! 2.) I drove this hard working dad home and at that point I had my daughter in the car. She and I carried on our usual "how was your day" conversation. This young father listened intently and then commented on how he has never heard parents and kids talking this way. Positively and encouraging - showing love! He wanted that experience for himself and as we discussed it I pointed out that he could have those conversations with his son too.
Besides promoting voting and earning money for diapers, that evening was a huge success. The observations he made that night will impact him in a far greater manner than any single lesson in my curriculum. This young father had to visually see families being loving and together. Laughing and enjoying each others company. Mother's pulling their children close to them. :) He needed to see this example in real life form, to hear my daughter's responses, to hear my words of encouragement to her. My hope is that these moments will begin to change his framework that defines parent/child relationships. The more human, real, healthy examples he sees the greater chance for change in him and his relationship with his son. I am confident that this evening was the beginning of change for this young dad. He went home with new experiences to draw from and strive for in his own family. It was incredible to hear the insight he shared that night. Who would've thought that a simple trip to the voting poll would've made such an impact! Now I need to show him how to register to vote!
