Season to Share: Young mother scraping to finish high school, needs help for son's future
WEST PALM BEACH — Kimberly Simon knows first hand that raising a child can take a village.
She was a child herself, 14 years old in 2018, working on her middle school's yearbook, on the spring day her pediatrician confirmed that she was pregnant.
She had tried to oversleep that day, to get out of the appointment her mother insisted she keep.
“I didn’t need the judgment,” said Simon.
She knew she had disappointed her mother badly.
But she also knew what she wanted to do. She had grown up fast, her father not around, her mother working hard to take care of the family. They moved often, sometimes because they faced eviction.
Now, in her high school senior year, Simon's on the verge of starting a future for herself and her young son.
Simon has the determination but not the money or the tools to train for a job that will support them both and keep them in one place without constantly being in need.
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Word of pregnancy spread on social media
Simon bore responsibilities young, called on to babysit when adults around her had to work. She had always loved children, and she knew she would love her own.
The consequences of her decision began right away. Her mother, who had wanted her to terminate the pregnancy, came close to kicking her out.
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At school she kept her pregnancy a secret as long as she could, but when a relative posted her sonogram on social media, word spread. At church, she felt judged, shunned and isolated.
'I felt I should have been guided'
“It shifted my perspective on faith. It shifted my perspective on religion,” she says. “I felt I should have been guided. It made me stress more. It made me cover more.”
She learned a vital lesson from the way she was treated, though — never to judge anyone.
Over the summer of 2019 she started dealing with symptoms of her pregnancy — nausea and vomiting — and dehydration leading to an attack of gallstones that landed her in the hospital.
At the end of the summer, she returned to school, and by October, her pregnancy started to show. The doctor appointments took more and more time, from once a month to every two weeks and finally weekly, as the holidays came, she turned 15 and her due date approached.
At the same time, her support system grew.
Her pediatrician had referred her to Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the countywide agency that connects expectant mothers with medical care, counseling, parent education, nutritional guidance, support groups and other resources.
In steps, Simon began learn how to take care of herself and the child she would have.
A family friend who Simon calls a grandmother figure offered a listening ear.
“Even though I didn’t feel she approved,” Simon said, “she really tried to encourage me.”
A counselor with Youths for Christ connected her to a group of teenage mothers who talk, hold holiday parties, go on day trips and learn how to be parents together.
A group of teenage moms that 'made me get out of my shell'
“The group made me get out of my shell,” Simon said. “Gave me a sense of comfort.”
She learned not to depend on the boyfriend who had fathered her child, but who barely made it to the hospital in time on the day their son was born. Their son, Aiden, was 7 months old when Simon started high school.
She has struggled in the nearly three years since to juggle her responsibilities as a student, a mother, a daughter and to care for herself as well.
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At times she faltered. Sleeping late from sheer exhaustion, and with no transportation, carrying her son to day care before trudging to school, she missed classes. The challenges of online learning without a laptop and a reliable connection, with her son at home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, led to more setbacks. She took a transfer to an alternative school.
Now she is in her last year of high school. She hopes to graduate from the high school she started in. She wants to finish strong.
Now 3, her son is tall for his age and and greets a visitor with confidence. He has a broad smile.
“He’s an overachiever,” Simon says, adding he was ahead on all the measures of development from the start. She wants to show him that he can achieve anything that is important to him, with her own example.
She plans to become a paramedic, but that’s just part of her future. She would like to some day start a program to feed people who are homeless, to show them they are valued. “I want to give them food I would eat myself."
She would like some day to help other young moms.
“I’d like to give back,” she said.
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Kimberly Simon's Wish
Kimberly Simon wants to finish school, prepare for a career and prove to her son that anything important is possible. Her needs include financial assistance to enroll in a program to become a paramedic, a computer or tablet with a Wi-Fi card for school work, clothes and shoes for her and for her son, and gift cards to Publix or Wal-Mart for hygiene products, food and other basic needs.
Nominated by: Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Palm Beach County
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Charity: Teenage mom in West Palm needs help finishing high school
