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Young fathers learn how to be a part of their children's lives through a family class.
By AMY WIMMER
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Jared DuFour is a 17-year-old high school dropout with a 14-month-old son. His own father, also a dropout who just recently earned his high school equivalency certificate, was 17 when DuFour was born.
DuFour wants to stop the cycle.
"A lot of things and a lot of people kept telling me I was going to end up just like my dad," he said Sunday afternoon.
DuFour plans to take the exam for a high school equivalency certificate in August, but passed a different kind of test Sunday. He was among 17 struggling fathers who graduated from a Healthy Start class for dads, which took them beyond diapers and formula and into how to set priorities to make time for their children, how to get along with their children's mothers and how to maneuver through a family court system that might not always rule in their favor.
The ceremony took place Sunday afternoon at the St. Petersburg Main Library.
Patrick Diggs, director of family preservation for Family Service Centers, said helping at-risk fathers is a "no-brainer."
"You have a million programs to impact women. You have a million and a half programs to impact children," said Diggs, who works with Healthy Start to bring the program to St. Petersburg. "This is the missing piece of the puzzle to have a total impact on the family."
The men, many of them young enough to be considered boys, meet weekly to learn how to interact with their children, the importance of a steady job and how to treat the mothers of their children, even if the mom wants the father to have minimal contact with the baby.
Take Luther Green, 23, who has been attending the dads' classes about six months. His poor relationship with the mother of his 3- and 4-year-old sons disenchanted him with the idea of being a dad. But now, he said, he's proud to be paying child support and working through the courts to get more time with his kids.
"The mother treated me so wrong that I just didn't care what happened to my kids," Green said. "The steps that I went through to get here make me think you have to go through something to learn something."
Like several others in the program, Green said it is the conversation and comradery among the men that keeps him coming back for the voluntary classes. Opportunities to talk with a group of men about child-rearing and personal goals are rare, the participants pointed out.
Having a group of peers who know each other's dreams also makes them accountable to each other, many of them said.
"Being a man, you don't really look for somebody to answer to, especially if you're single," said Darren Lewis, 21, father of 20-month-old Marco. "It was like just men, expressing the way we think children should be raised. We learned from each other about how to raise children."
That comradery doesn't end with the class, participants say. Dontae Hammonds, who graduated in July with the program's first class of 23 men, was at the ceremony Sunday, along with his girlfriend Alteena Moore and their children, 3-year-old Dontae Jr. and Keyshawn, 7 months.
The graduation itself was indicative of the program's success. About half the 17 men in the program couldn't attend the ceremony because they had work obligations.
Said Lewis, who recently earned his high school equivalency certificate and says some college courses might be next for him: "I would say that having a child gave me the strength and the maturity to go forward as an adult."