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A story of Success
It’s hard for Savanna Jones to talk to visitors sometimes, especially in the afternoon.
The 22-year-old mother of three runs a daycare service from her home with as many as seven or eight children, ages five and younger running around her spacious home on Durwood Hall Drive in Carthage.
But when it comes to talking about how she got to this point in her life, she makes the time and effort to talk to anyone who will listen, including other teenage girls who find themselves in the same position she found herself about five years ago.
A big shock
At age 16, Savanna Jones was a good student. She was starting her junior year at Carthage High School. She was a cheerleader with her whole life ahead of her.
Then came the most shocking news of her young life.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I had been a cheerleader since seventh grade, so it was just sort of a big shock,” Savanna Jones said. “It wasn’t like I was . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“It wasn’t like she was out there having sexual relationships with a half a dozen boys,” her grandmother, Linda Smith, said finishing her sentence. “She had dated one other boy, which was not a good relationship, she had split up and just gotten back with Zach.”
Zach Jones, now her husband, was at that time someone she could talk to and a shoulder she could cry on.
“Zach and I had dated back and forth since seventh grade,” Savanna said. “He was just kind of my best guy friend and we connected and that was it.”
This time they connected on a new level, then a few weeks later, Savanna got the shock of her young life.
It’s the kind of news that can devastate families and destroy young lives. Katie Hines, a parent educator with the Carthage Parents as Teachers program, knows all too well what can happen when a teenager finds out she’s pregnant.
Sometimes the father falls out of the picture and the parents of the girl, overwhelmed with anger and the life-changing prospects a pregnancy and baby bring, might even turn their backs on their child.
Support system
That didn’t happen with Savanna though. Hines met Savanna just a few weeks after Savanna found out she was pregnant.
“Savanna had actually been teaching in our preschool classes and that is how I got introduced to her,” Hines said. “It was the first or second month of her pregnancy that I got involved. From there on, it was every other month that I came and visited with Savanna. She was my first pregnant teen.”
A story of Success
It’s hard for Savanna Jones to talk to visitors sometimes, especially in the afternoon.
The 22-year-old mother of three runs a daycare service from her home with as many as seven or eight children, ages five and younger running around her spacious home on Durwood Hall Drive in Carthage.
But when it comes to talking about how she got to this point in her life, she makes the time and effort to talk to anyone who will listen, including other teenage girls who find themselves in the same position she found herself about five years ago.
A big shock
At age 16, Savanna Jones was a good student. She was starting her junior year at Carthage High School. She was a cheerleader with her whole life ahead of her.
Then came the most shocking news of her young life.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I had been a cheerleader since seventh grade, so it was just sort of a big shock,” Savanna Jones said. “It wasn’t like I was . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“It wasn’t like she was out there having sexual relationships with a half a dozen boys,” her grandmother, Linda Smith, said finishing her sentence. “She had dated one other boy, which was not a good relationship, she had split up and just gotten back with Zach.”
Zach Jones, now her husband, was at that time someone she could talk to and a shoulder she could cry on.
“Zach and I had dated back and forth since seventh grade,” Savanna said. “He was just kind of my best guy friend and we connected and that was it.”
This time they connected on a new level, then a few weeks later, Savanna got the shock of her young life.
It’s the kind of news that can devastate families and destroy young lives. Katie Hines, a parent educator with the Carthage Parents as Teachers program, knows all too well what can happen when a teenager finds out she’s pregnant.
Sometimes the father falls out of the picture and the parents of the girl, overwhelmed with anger and the life-changing prospects a pregnancy and baby bring, might even turn their backs on their child.
Support system
That didn’t happen with Savanna though. Hines met Savanna just a few weeks after Savanna found out she was pregnant.
“Savanna had actually been teaching in our preschool classes and that is how I got introduced to her,” Hines said. “It was the first or second month of her pregnancy that I got involved. From there on, it was every other month that I came and visited with Savanna. She was my first pregnant teen.”
Hines said Parents as Teachers works to teach teenage girls that a pregnancy is a life-changing event but it doesn’t mean they have to abandon their dreams.
“We want to support them and make sure they know that yes, they’re pregnant, but we still have a life and we can still do whatever we set our mind to,” Hines said. “We want to support them and make sure they’re getting the proper health care, the proper nutrition for them and their child. We want them to know, you know what, you got pregnant, but you can still graduate high school and you can still go to college, to support them and let them know that whatever they put their mind to, they can do it.”
Savanna and her parents, Mike and Marla Shumny, also turned to her grandmother, Linda Smith, for help, especially in those first few days.
“I lived a half mile down the road from her, here’s this knock on my garage door and Savanna was standing there in tears,” Linda Smith said. “She comes in, this was fairly late at night, and we sat down at the bar in the kitchen and I said, what’s the matter. She tells me she’s pregnant and boo hoo hoos and grandma says well, first of all you’re going to finish school, that was probably the first thing I told her. Then we’ll work everything out, everything will be all right, you’ve got me, you’ve got mom and dad. We’ll work it out.”
Hard work
The next few months were tough on Savanna.
She went through her junior year at Carthage High School pregnant.
She and Zach broke up after she found out she was pregnant.
“We both knew we needed to finish school, and neither one of us knew how to handle it really,” Savanna Jones said. “I grew up immediately, it took Zach a year or so.”
“Let’s face it, at 16 years of age, you two were too young to even think about getting married or anything,” Linda Smith added. “It was just not something that would have worked.”
She worked two jobs while going to school. She stashed away as much money as she could. She lived at home and her parents helped her, but they also let their daughter know that she was responsible for raising this baby.
“I worked at Braum’s with my feet swollen great big, I had tears in my eyes every night,” Savanna said. “I worked up until about a month before I had him and then I didn’t have to work my senior year, because I had stashed away enough money to make it. My parents helped a little, but I put my money away for diapers and formula and that kind of thing.”
“She had support but it wasn’t just, here, we’re handing it to you,” Linda Smith added. “You got yourself into this situation, so now we’re going to see to it that it works out the best it possibly can. She had to grow up fast, but she did a real good job.”
After high school
Savanna gave birth to a bouncing baby boy named Lucas in the summer between her junior and senior years at Carthage High School.
She still had to finish high school, but because she had saved her money while she was working, she didn’t have to work her senior year.
That money would only last a certain amount of time, so Savanna took an additional class from the University of Missouri so she could graduate in December of her senior year instead of waiting until May.
All along, Savanna had been taking dual-credit courses in high school so she could go to college with a few college credits in hand.
Her plan was to go to Crowder College’s Webb City campus and get a degree in nursing.
“It was in Webb City, it was smaller classes, it didn’t cost as much because I didn’t know if I would get help or not,” Savanna Jones said. “I planned on having to pay for it, so I didn’t even attempt to go to Missouri Southern because I just knew that I needed to get to school.”
She changed her mind and decided to go into accounting, then Zach reentered the picture.
A new challenge
“It was about 17 or 18 months after I had Lucas that Zach and I got back together,” Savanna Jones said. “I kept telling him, one day, if you grow up, contact me and we will see where things go from there, but he was still living the teenage dream and having fun. Finally one day, he realized that his son was a year old and he needed to be involved because his dad was in and out of his life and it was starting to take a toll on him.”
The two got married, and their second child, a daughter, Layla, was born in 2008. This pregnancy was another life-changer for Savanna.
About 28 weeks into her second pregnancy, soon after Savanna found out she was having a girl, doctors told Savanna that their tests indicated her baby might have Downs Syndrome, a disabling genetic disorder.
She was taking 18 hours at Crowder College the semester when she got pregnant with Layla, and the pregnancy changed Savanna’s outlook on college.
“I am three hours from having my associate’s degree in business administration, but after going through the whole issue of Layla and Down’s Syndrome, it’s a lot more special to stay home with your children,” Savanna Jones said.
Layla was born healthy. Savanna calls Layla, her miracle baby. The family bought a small, two bedroom home on Forest Street, then when Savanna and Zach found out they were expecting their third child, Lucy, they bought a more spacious home on Durwood Hall Street.
Helping other teen moms
Savanna is rethinking her college plans. She was a substitute teacher for a time before she opened her home daycare, and she decided she liked teaching. Zach works nights as a shipping lead at H.E. Williams in Carthage.
She would like to go back to school to teach, but she may wait until her children start school.
“I still work, I do the in-home daycare,” Savanna Jones said. “I have three children of my own and I have four full-time daycare children and one part-time daycare child. This is full-time work.”
One of the children Savanna cares for is Emma Hines, the daughter of Katie Hines, her Parents as Teachers counselor.
In the meantime, Savanna is working with the Parents as Teachers program to help other teen moms.
“When she comes and speaks to the girls, she doesn’t sugar coat anything, she tells them it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be rough and you’re going to have to get down and work at it, but you can accomplish what you want to if you set your mind to it,” Katie Hines said. “I don’t even look at Savanna as a client anymore.”
“Her daughter has become my daughter and we’re just that way,” Savanna Jones added.
“Even though Savanna was a teen parent, she has done so much more for herself and her children than I have seen from parents who are in their 20s and 30s do for themselves and their children,” Hines continued.“Savanna has done an outstanding job of parenting and now you wouldn’t even know she was a teen parent. She and Zach are 22 years old and look what they have accomplished for themselves. Not a lot of 22-year-olds have a house, or two nice vehicles, and a happy family.”
