This Just In!

Wow! Kudos to our Counseling and Education Team here at Hope Cottage - just yesterday they reported that just since 2005, 8,459 teenagers have been through the ABC's of Adoption Education Program. For those of you not familiar with this program, the ABC's of Adoption is a program, developed and presented by Hope Cottage to area middle schoolers and high schoolers so that teens are armed with real world information about the difficulties created by becoming a teen parent for themselves, their families and any real or potential children in hopes that they will make responsible choices for both their future and that of babies they may have. It gives a de-romanticized message about teen parenting and then as a tag, presents a few minutes on adoption as an option for a crises pregnancy.



Many of you read the article in September 2009 (and it has also been referenced on this blog) in the Dallas Morning News that recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control showed Texas to be #1 in repeat teen pregnancies (that means children under the age of 20 having more than one child) and Dallas is #1 in Texas. A couple of weeks ago, when the principal at a local (I will keep them nameless) high school reported to an assembly that their school was #1 in Dallas for teen pregnancies, the entire study body cheered. Yikes!



I won't repeat the statistics for children of teen parents - you can see them in an earlier post, but I think we can all agree that teen parenting is not a good thing. You can be a successful teen parent and not succumb to the stereotypes, but only if you have a VERY strong support system and let's face it, most teen parents don't have that.



This weekend, Girls Living Life on Purpose, Inc. is hosting "No Baby! You Ain't Ready". The organization empowers young women to discover, connect and pursue. Kudos to them!



Most of all, kudos to Brooks Quinlan and Susan Mathews for their outstanding work educating, I repeat, 8,459 area teens in the past 5 years on the cost of being a teen parent.