Helping Teens Become Dads
For five years, the Arlington, Texas school district has been helping teenage boys make the transition to fatherhood:
‘The fatherhood program serves about 50 to 80 teenagers at a time, providing support groups and educational sessions at each of the district’s high school campuses and lots of other one-on-one contact. The teen fathers and fathers-to-be learn about parenting basics like changing diapers and feeding as well as how to register with the state child-support office or establish paternity.
…”We’re keeping kids in school. That’s our ultimate goal,” said Tori Sisk, coordinator for Pregnancy Related Services. “If we have kids dropping out of schools, we don’t want it to be because of pregnancy-related issues.”‘
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Star-Telegram
The program has been funded by a yearly $320,000 federal grant, but was just awarded an additional $1.85M over the next five years.
Though students learn the logistics of parenting, they’re also realizing the fundamental truths:
‘”When we first found out she was pregnant [with Mariah] a lot of people were like, ‘You’ve just messed up your whole life,’ ” said Oscar Perez. “But we didn’t look at it like that. We look at it as we started a new life.”‘
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Jared,
This sounds like a worthwhile program. I, personally, am all in favor of all high school students having a class in parenting. That’s something that almost everyone would be able to use at some point in their lives.
I was once director of a non-profit program which taught parenting classes specifically for dads. It was a big challenge to address all the aspects of fatherhood, as well as addressing all the different situations of fathers-those who were full-time parents, those who were divorced and had visitation with their kids, those who had been absent from their children’s lives for awhile and were trying to reconnect. The list goes on and on.
Any program which teaches better parenting skills is an advantage and the earlier kids learn those skills, the better.