Teen Mom Profile: Stephanie and Isaac

At 18, Stephanie was a senior in high school and very close to graduating. She was working after school and trying to decide what she wanted the rest of her life to look like. Then, she got pregnant. She was shocked, and suddenly facing the reality that she would have to mature much more quickly than the average 18-year-old. She was worried about how she would support her child financially and continue going to school. Now she didn’t only have to think about who she wanted to be for herself, but what kind of a role model she wanted to be for her child, too. Stephanie worried that she wouldn’t have any support in raising her child, and she wasn’t sure she could take on that task alone. “My mom surprisingly was really supportive,” Stephanie says. “To have my family there and my boyfriend’s family there was very helpful. To see them helping me out through this journey is what makes me enjoy being a mother.”

With her support system, especially her mother, behind her, Stephanie was ready to continue going to school. Her principal told her that going to school as a new mom would be hard, and suggested Florence Crittenton Services. “At first, I wasn’t so into it, because I knew it was an all-girls school,” remembers Stephanie, “but it’s not bad at all. I feel like I was meant to be here in a way.” Stephanie and her 10-month-old son Isaac enrolled at FloCrit.

Stephanie found a support system at FloCrit for which she is very thankful. The resources and supplies help her. Parenting classes helped her grow as a mother. She’s learned how to handle Isaac’s temper tantrums and model good behavior for him. “Florence Crittenton helped me not just with school and graduating, but actually having the passion to learn,” says Stephanie. Here, she found the drive and resources to make post-secondary plans. She now has a direction for her life after graduation that she never had before. Stephanie gets excited when she talks about a career in coding. “It’s something that I want to do that I love,” Stephanie smiles. “I love how you can literally tell a computer what to do, and there are different languages, and you can tell it how to do design or even just the basics of a website. You can apply coding to almost anything.” She’s passionate, and the staff at Florence Crittenton sees that. She is currently taking a class called KidsTek that teaches business computing, which works toward a Microsoft Office Specialist Certification. Her counselor is helping her apply to Galvanize, a program in Denver where she can get a coding certificate after graduating from high school.

And what about Isaac? Stephanie says her son is blossoming in the Early Childhood Education Center (ECEC). He rolled over and started crawling early, and is almost walking. Stephanie is proud of that. “I feel like I am doing things right for him to grow right.” Isaac loves his teachers. He’s learned to socialize with other babies and with new adults. Stephanie works hard to balance her life between school, computer programming, and Isaac. She loves being close to Isaac, and wants to have enough time for him, which can be challenging. She knows it will all be worth it in the end. “Being a young mom, having a kid, it’s not like you have an illness or anything like that,” says Stephanie. “You get to see someone, a person you made, and have that life with them, and care for and love them.”