Nia's Birthday Edition: Support for Teen Mothers | Episode 61

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TD Flenaugh celebrates her daughter Nia's 27th birthday, reflecting on her birth story and her own experiences as a 4th generation teenage parent. Nia, an eight-pound, two-ounce baby born via cesarean section at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA, was a caring and empathetic child before she could even talk. Despite her initial reluctance, Flenaugh acknowledges Nia's passion for hairstyling and her success in the field. TD emphasizes the importance of counseling and open communication in parenting, particularly in breaking generational cycles of teenage motherhood and trauma. Nia, who has traveled extensively and does not have children, continues to be a source of pride and inspiration because she is a blessing, and to be in her presence is a blessing!

Transcript

TD Flenaugh: 0:00

Welcome to Episode 61, of the falling for learning podcast. I am here today. This is the birthday edition. Today is August 24 it is 2024 it is my daughter's 27th birthday. So we're going to get into the birth story and something a little bit about my origin story in the process. All right, you want to stick around, don't miss this episode. Hi. Thank you so much for joining the following for learning podcast. We have this podcast to help parents and caregivers with having the resources, strategies and tools needed to make sure that their children are on track for learning and to stay on track for success. Okay, let's get into it. So my birth story of my daughter was 27 today is that in on August, 24 20 sorry, August, 24 1997 I gave birth to a eight pound, two ounce girl through cesarean section. I was eight days before I started my sophomore year, I was a teenage mom like my mom before me, and like my grandmother before her and my great grandmother before her. I don't know anything really about my great great grandmother, but at least I was the fourth generation teenage mom in my family, so I was a little different. I was kind of half in and half out of this, because I was a scholar. Just a couple months before I waddled onto the stage of Clark Atlanta University and accepted the award I had earned for getting the highest freshman GPA. So I was on academic scholarship, and I was about four months shy of my 20th birthday, so kind of half in and half out of this generational cycle. Enough about me. We're going to talk about my daughter, Nia. So she is a very kind person and caring, and one of the things about her, even before she was able to talk, she would be spending time trying to comfort others like me, her dad and my brother, who lived with us, with us as well. So she would just like rub us on the back and say things in a very comforting way. It was just baby talk. But we didn't know where it really came from, because I really didn't do that, so I don't know where it came from. And it's like, it just like carries through throughout her life, that she's very caring person. It carries through, throughout her life that she is caring for others. And if you are a person who doesn't like Nia, really, it's really about you losing because just to be clear, people would look look. Whenever you know someone doesn't like Nia, people always are looking at that person in a weird way. They kind of question them, because everyone pretty much loves Nia. So as always, you are the problem if you don't like Nia. So that is just how it has been over time. And she really like has a lot of people. She makes people feel good, and she has lots of families, lots of people adopt her, you know. And so, you know, I'm married now. I got married in 2016 but I was with my husband for a while before we got married, and definitely she was integrated into their family. And so it's but there's lots of people, like lots of people who love Nia. I once had said something really negative that my mom, you know, usually said to me, but I said to her too, and I didn't really say a lot of that kind of stuff to her, but this particular time, I was like, "You make me sick." And then she, like, repeated it back to me, and then she repeated it back to me in a way that was really made it a mirror for me to like, hear what was said. And that's how. She did it. She didn't do it where she was just giving an insult back to me, but she really paused and really looked at me like. You really said that to me, you know. So she really, you know, has that muscle for sympathy and empathy and then really, like trying to check people if they try to do people wrong, of course, standing up for herself, but also standing up for others, which is something that she regularly does. So she also helped me to, like, check my biases, because, for sure, I was not in agreement about her going into the trade that she is a third generation hairstylist. She went to the community college, and our plan was for her to do pre nursing and then for her to transfer to a four year university. But that did not happen. She did ask me right after high school, could she go into nursing? And I was like, No, we're on the pre nursing track. We need to stay on the pre nursing track. And I really had to check my biases, because, you know, as a first generation college graduate and a career educator, and having the security of having my own job and, you know, being paid, getting My health benefits, all that I really was suspicious of having her trade and going into her own business, and so I know that I had family members do it. Part of my concern was like retirement age and how that works out. 75% of children don't know how to write. Well, add that to the fact that so many people out there are trying to silence the voices of those who have been oppressed and trying to prevent them from telling their story. Who's going to tell your story if your child doesn't know how to write? Well, I have two books to address this issue, the rewrite method and the rewrite method workbook, we tend to make sure that parents know what to do, that educators know what to do to get their children to write better and just not write better, but love to write. Make sure that your next generation could tell their story and they won't be silenced. Go to fallingforlearning.com today to purchase your set, and really again, she would love doing hair. She shined in that class when it was time for her to take her boards, which were delayed because of covid, she said like she threw up in the bathroom. She was scared that she wasn't going to be able to pass because she did it so fast, so many people were still working. She passed it on the first time. She is quick witted and very smart. She gets things very quickly, and if she loves something, she's about her business. And so that just plays out. She also works at an airport, and she has flight benefits. And so she travels around the world, to Japan, to Europe, on to, you know, to visit the United Kingdom and to visit France, and has gone to Peru with us. So a lot of travel, she just lives her life. She did not repeat the cycle for the fifth generation. She is 27 and doesn't have any kids. She even really helped a lot with her first cousins, which my brother and sister started having children 10 years after she was born, and they were not, they were not teen parents, but I definitely, you know, because she's such a caring person, we talked a lot about her helping my mother or grandmother with the family daycare, and she said she didn't want to have kids because of this experience, which like, Okay, hopefully that changes, but she's fairly young. Of course, my idea is skewed, because in our family, I'm not the only teen mother, not even in my generation. So it is fairly common in my family, and I definitely was in the past. Have thought about how old one of my. Start having kids at 25 and I was like, wow, she's very old, because it's very common for us to start as teens, or just, you know, no teens. It's very common. I think all my aunts who had kids had them started by 1819, years old. I think all of them my mom included, of course, so except for my aunt, my youngest aunt and my oldest aunt, so three out of the five daughters that my grandmother have even some of my some of my uncles as well. So it's very common in the family. The next thing I'd really like to talk about is how you know, for me, counseling was really important to make sure that she that I was doing a better job in this generation. You know, young mother, immature, very impatient, and got counseling for myself, counseling for the both of us, and counseling for her individually. It's really important, and I do attribute that a lot to my reflection and my growth. Of course, I did a lot of journaling and a lot of talking through with family members about situations my mother and I had, you know, some estranged years, but we did come back together again, but we did talk through a lot of the issues that we had. And so this was so key, opening up those lines of communication. You know, some people really feel like, okay, everybody's wrong and that's it. They're wrong, and I don't have anything to talk to them about it, because they're wrong. But actually hearing their viewpoint, and their viewpoint may be skewed, it may be just off, but just even hearing like, again, we're dealing with generational trauma as African Americans like I definitely know there's something that happened on my grandfather's side, my mom's dad, that my great grandfather wouldn't tell me about, and, but he know he was like, definitely, he's not going back to Louisiana. And he never did, um, and he moved to California, and, but, but something happened, apparently, the way he said it, and we talked about it. He wasn't going back, but he didn't ever tell us what it would tell me what it was. Maybe some other family member knows. So we do have, like, mental health issues. And you know, my grandfather had some mental health like, even hospitalization, which I found out later because I have a family member who is currently battling mental illness, so it's a lot in our family. We have to make sure we take care of ourselves and and if we don't, you know, we could definitely have some major problems, just like anybody else, but recognizing those patterns in our family is really important about healing and really trying to understand our family members, instead of separate ourselves from them. Now, of course, you may separate for a time, but you may want to come back. And then sometimes you know because of the issues you might just have to love from afar, and that's all about healing too, because some people stay around each other, fighting, even hurting each other, and obviously that's not healthy. But I really wanted to share the story of my daughter and then some of my backstory, my generational conditions that I brought, obviously, um, some people say generational curses about certain things. And of course, it could be curses. But children, of course, are blessings. So even if they're you have them young, you know they are blessings. And you know, if you decide to have your children and take care of them, there are blessings. Bottom line, so God hours a blessing. Of course, she's a blessing to be around. You are blessed in her presence, right? And you know, I'm very proud of her. I'm very proud of you, Nia, and I hope that you know that and so many of your family members, blood family members and family through love as well, really care for you and are really just proud of who you are as a person and how you care for others and really integrate people into your life in a way you stay in touch. And we hope that. That you took some nuggets of wisdom from this story and celebrate your loved ones as well. Thanks again for supporting the falling for learning podcast, new episodes go live every Saturday at 5pm you can watch us on youtube.com, at falling for learning or listen on all major podcast platforms such as Apple, Google, Audible, Spotify and much more for more resources, visit, falling in love with learning.com we really appreciate you. Have a wonderful week. Goodness. I hope this works. I'm so tired of recording this again and again, so I hope it works. Okay? So?