Meet Early Head Start Parent Ms. Portia Terry

Ms. Portia Terry, along with her 3 year old son and 9 year old daughter.

Ms. Portia Terry is no stranger to raising children. With a 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, it’s fair to say she’s an experienced mother. So when her youngest son, now three and in pre-K 3, showed behavior she didn’t see when her other children were his age, she didn’t know what to think. “I was just so frazzled,” Ms. Terry said. “Like, “oh my gosh. Why, why, why?”  

At the beginning of the last school year her son wasn’t very verbal, and Ms. Terry’s concern reached the point where she was considering getting him tested. Before she did though, Ms. Gisela, a Regional Service Integration Manager, with United Planning Organization (UPO), who provides family engagement support at her son’s Early Head Start program at Azeeze Bates, pulled her aside and calmed her fears.   “[Ms. Gisela] explained to me that every child develops differently, you know? And she told me, “Give it a little time.” 

Time, along with exercises Ms. Gisela taught Ms. Terry to do with her son, did the trick. Now, Ms. Terry happily says that her son “just won’t be quiet. ”  Ms. Terry credits how far her son has developed to the strength of the Early Head Start Program at Azeeze Bates. The center is one of the Early Learning Centers, which is overseen by the United Planning Organization (UPO), to implement the Head Start Program Performance Standards.

According to Ms. Terry, these standards are what makes programs like the one at Azeeze Bates childcare instead of daycare. “[They’re] not just sitting [there] watching them...that’s what a daycare is, it’s kind of like babysitting. But childcare is caring for that child, giving them everything they need as far as knowledge, love, the tools that they're gonna need to become great little people.”

The impact of this type of care is apparent when compared to what she experienced with her daughter six years earlier. “In comparison with my daughter...she was not getting everything that my son is getting. She went to daycare in New Jersey ‘cause we’re [originally] from New Jersey, but it was just babysitting, you know? They watched her while I went to work, and I picked her up, but my son learns.”

One major benefit her son received from Azeeze Bates’s Head Start program that her daughter didn’t get in daycare was help developing social skills. “His social skills have definitely widened since he’s been with Azeeze Bates. He’s such a social butterfly I guess you could say.”  

One of the ways Ms. Terry’s son’s social skills enhanced were through teachers encouraging kids to interact with one another. “They did exercises...let’s say morning circle time. They could have them sitting together and then say, “Okay friends, do you know what’s this friend’s name?”

Her son and his peers aren’t the only ones who’ve benefited socially from the Head Start program at Azeeze Bates though. Their parents, including Ms. Terry herself, have as well.  “It brought us all together as parents, as mothers, you know, a lot of us being single mothers...we grew a great support system with each other...We’d lean on each other.”

Although Ms. Terry had been looking for a Head Start program when she first started looking for childcare, it was really the other parents that convinced her to enroll her son into the Azeeze Bate program. “Everybody that I spoke to about it, they gave good reviews, or even anybody that I just threw out there to, like, “You know any good childcare facilities?” They always said Azeeze Bates.”

Along with word of mouth, Ms. Terry says doing your own investigating, as well as getting to know a program’s teachers is important in deciding on a childcare facility. Above all though, she has one piece of advice.  “Always go for a childcare facility that does have Head Start because it’s gonna be very beneficial to your child’s future, okay? The difference is childcare and babysitting.”