“The overarching purpose is to ensure they understand their life doesn’t cease simply because they’re a teen father,” stated James Hogue, the founding father of Dad Prep Academy.
By Anna Spoerre, for Missouri Unbiased
Tyreque Carter held his 2-month-old son, outfitted in a festive Christmas onesie, as he congratulated one other soon-to-be teen father on his gender reveal: a lady.
They have been amongst a number of college students at DeLaSalle Excessive College in Kansas Metropolis who filed into their seats as they chatted about ultrasound images and soiled diapers.
The group of teenagers, 5 with infants ages 2 to 12 months and two expectant, are a part of Dad Prep Academy, a pilot program launched this fall geared toward higher making ready younger dads for fatherhood.
“Simply because an expertise is troublesome or robust doesn’t imply it’s not good, doesn’t imply it’s not constructing you up and creating you into one thing higher,” James Hogue, a longtime educator and this system’s founder, advised the teenagers sitting in a half circle earlier than him on a current Thursday.
Two years in the past, Hogue left his job as an assistant principal to start out Fathers Helping Moms Inc, a nonprofit that helps practice males in doula practices to allow them to higher help their companions throughout being pregnant, childbirth and postpartum.
However Hogue’s newest focus is geared toward serving to a bunch of fathers he not often sees sufficient sources going to: teenagers.
Whereas teen being pregnant charges throughout the state have been trending down, Kansas Metropolis nonetheless has one of many highest charges of being pregnant in teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17 in Missouri, in accordance with the Missouri Division of Well being and Senior Companies.
“I do know these younger males have greatness within them, throughout them, and never many applications are talking instantly to those younger males,” Hogue stated. “The overarching purpose is to ensure they understand their life doesn’t cease simply because they’re a teen father.”
This system takes Hogue again to his roots as an educator. Previous to beginning his nonprofit Fathers Helping Moms Inc in 2022, he labored as an assistant principal.
However his curiosity within the intersection of training and fatherhood started two years earlier than that, when the pure residence beginning he and his spouse, Shunquita Hogue, had deliberate went out the window when she developed preeclampsia. So grateful for his or her doula’s assist transitioning to a hospital beginning, James Hogue determined to undergo doula coaching himself.
Now he makes use of that coaching to show expectant dads learn how to be “first responders for his or her companions” throughout being pregnant, labor and postpartum by way of boot camps and one-on-one teaching on subjects that embody “learn how to draft your successful beginning staff.”
However the teen program, which Hogue hopes to in the future broaden into a number of faculties throughout the area and even state, is a bit completely different.
On a current Thursday, Hogue was joined by his spouse to speak to the teenagers about every part from diaper rashes to stuffy noses, fevers and RSV.
Shunquita Hogue, a nurse, answered their questions on navigating outdated medical recommendation from elders, and learn how to make selections about vaccinations.
A lot of the curriculum is centered across the logistics of prenatal well being, postpartum, early childhood growth, and monetary and profession planning. However Hogue additionally makes some extent to dive head-first into the emotional facets of parenthood, together with an area to grieve the life the teenagers beforehand imagined.
“You’re a younger man, you’re nonetheless rising, you’re nonetheless attempting to develop, however on the identical time realizing that primarily based upon the choices you made, a few of the frivolousness or frolicking youthfulness you’d usually exude is completely different now,” Hogue stated. “It’s important to develop up.”
The category prior, two of the teenagers acquired into an argument over a feminine pupil. Sitting in entrance of the group, and flanked by Hogue and two different mentors, the teenagers work by way of the sticky scenario.
James Smith, director of pupil life at DeLaSalle, and one of many Dad Prep Academy mentors, stated he was relieved to see the 2 younger fathers speak by way of the battle in a protected area, doubtlessly avoiding a a lot bigger confrontation.
Navigating interpersonal relationships is tough for teenagers, and even tougher with a child within the combine. It’s a part of why Smith believes this system could be so essential in countering lots of the tendencies he sees with pupil dad and mom, together with decrease attendance and decrease grades.
However he hopes the ripple results are a lot wider.
“If we are able to begin to stabilize dads of their houses,” Smith stated. “Then hopefully they’ll proceed a wholesome relationship that’s an instance for his or her little one.”
Carter, one of many teenagers in this system, enrolled in this system two weeks after his son was born.
The 19-year-old stated previous to his little one’s beginning, he didn’t have a lot expertise round infants, in contrast to a few of his friends who grew up serving to take care of youthful siblings.
“This class actually confirmed me it’s OK to not know what you’re doing,” Carter stated. “It’s OK to be confused and burdened and fearful.”
Prior to now two months the category has helped him outline his personal function as a father and discover ways to higher help his little one’s mom.
“Communities like this, it reinforces that dads aren’t as clueless,” Carter stated. “ … Right here it’s really stepping right into a supportive function and being dedicated, and being part of your loved ones.”