Diamond Wills was 15 when she ran away from her mother’s Las Vegas home. She said her mother was addicted to drugs and wouldn’t let her go to school, which she desperately wanted to do.
Her mother's kibosh on education was a common theme of her childhood, in addition to physical forms of abuse, she said.
The day Wills ran away, she said her mother broke a glass bottle and tried to press its raw edges to her neck. Wills broke free, grabbed her backpack and fled. Wills entered foster care through the Department of Family Services, but she ended up running away from the three homes where she was placed.
A year later, she found out she was pregnant and ran away for the last time, crawling out the window of her foster parents’ home in the dead of night with a suitcase packed with “stuff that I wanted and stuff that I needed — toiletries, perfume, some of my stuffed animals and clothes.”
She hopped on various city buses and trekked down Boulder Highway with her suitcase in tow. Holed up at a Siegel Suites, Wills felt safe for the first time in her life. But as the days went by, she knew she couldn’t raise her daughter as a teen runaway.
Wills called her caseworker to pick her up. It was that caseworker who introduced her to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children’s Pregnant and Parenting Teen Program. Two days after giving birth to her daughter, Austin, they moved to the program’s ranch in Boulder City.
This has been their home for the past two years.
Wills and Austin will celebrate Mother’s Day at the ranch with the program’s other five mothers. St. Jude’s Ranch plans to surprise them with professional photos with their children.
“She is the sunshine of my life, she is my happiness, she is what drives me,” Wills, 18, said.
Through the St. Jude’s program, Wills obtained the skills to be a better mother than her own mom. She said the program has provided the support for her and Austin to flourish, feel safe and welcome, where running away was no longer an option.
Wills will graduate from Boulder City High School in December. She turned 18 while still in high school, meaning she and Austin can reside at the campus until the eve of Wills’ 19th birthday. The staff is coordinating a transitional living plan for the mother and daughter.
She is one of five mothers now participating in the program, placed in St. Jude’s care by Family Services or the Department of Juvenile Justice. Teens in child welfare systems are at higher risk for pregnancy and birth than other demographics, and teens living in foster care are more than twice as likely to become pregnant than those not in foster care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The main goal is to help these girls break the cycle of abuse by helping them transition from the idea of being a good mother to helping them build the skills to be a good mom,” said Christina Vela, the executive director of St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. “What we know is that for many of us, the frame of reference when we become parents is oftentimes our own parents.”
That’s why the Mother’s Day pictures St. Jude’s is donating are important.
“They don’t have family members snapping pictures of them, but for the moms to reflect on their baby's life and say, ‘Oh my gosh I remember that. Here’s a picture of when you were a year old.’ It’s also important for those children to have pictures of themselves when they were growing up,” Vela said. “That’s interrupting the cycle of abuse, it’s creating positive childhood memories.”
The program has been in operation for about six years, and the average age of the girls is 15 to 16 years old, Vela said.
“In the last 10 years, there was a growing need to help girls who were also victims of abuse and neglect, but became pregnant,” she said. “We try to be a yes in a system where oftentimes it’s a no. Yes, we’ll help pregnant girls become better moms.”
Unlike many other programs dedicated to teen mothers, this program offers services around the clock. The mothers live at a separate house on the campus and have the support of two houseparents, Irene Lovelace and Alana Dowling. They are also mother and daughter.
“They’re learning this balance between getting the diaper bag ready and their backpack ready, and getting their babies off to school and then them going off to school,” Vela said.
Vela said that by having Lovelace and Dowling role model the appropriate mother-daughter relationship, it helps the young mothers also realize a healthy balance with their children.
The program helps with prenatal care and pregnancy plans. It teaches skills such as changing diapers, time management and preparing nutritious meals.
Wills typically comes home from school at 3:30 p.m., finishes her homework or chores and then walks across the campus to pick Austin up at the daycare center.
One day walking back to their home from daycare, Austin was given keys to open the house. Wills watched her daughter stand on her tippy toes, pull the door handle down by applying all her body weight, and slide inside the home.
Once inside, Wills asked her daughter for the keys. Austin, looked up at her mother and defiantly shouted no and ran off. Wills chased her 2-year-old around the dining room table before she snatched the keys away.
“Well, I used to be able to tell her what to do, but now she’s hit the terrible twos and she thinks she’s the little boss,” Wills said.