Kim Patterson

It’s not every day you hear something that changes your entire perspective. For me, that day came a few weeks ago and, as these things usually do, it blind-sided me. 

My longtime friend and mentor, Susan Cowley, had been talking to a group of nonprofit folks about marketing their causes and she mentioned the work of Talitha Koum Institute in South Waco. I was familiar with Talitha Koum (it’s day care, right?) but was sort of vague on the underpinnings of their work. I am vague no more, and I am forever moved by this center that brings help and hope to our poorest little ones.

Talitha Koum Institute is an outreach program of CrossTies Ecumenical Church, which also sponsors Waco’s famous pay-if-you-can Gospel Cafe. Nothing this humble ministry tackles should surprise me, but nevertheless it did.

Talitha Koum volunteer Trish Weinberg holds 11-month-old Jordyn Betters.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

Unlike a typical child care facility, the Talitha Koum Nurture Center has adopted a take-charge attitude toward helping the brain development of children, especially babies, from poor families. They take in infants as young as two months. By emphasizing touch, eye contact and talking to them, the staff works to lay down appropriate brain connections that will hopefully lead to a lifetime of learning.

Our community is at war with poverty — an almost undefeatable, shadowy adversary that is crushing families and destroying lives. Every day more helpless infants fall victim to poverty. But Talitha Koum is fighting to ready these children for learning in our society.

Intergenerational poverty begins its dirty work at birth. Consider the science: The way we think, feel, reason and react becomes organized in our minds before we are 18 months old. Long before the age when we can recall a solid memory, our path in life and the person who we will become is forged.

Early connections

For most of us, our early days were filled with lullabies and hours spent in the arms of someone who cared for us wholly and completely. But woe to the baby whose life is not so. 

According to Baylor University clinical psychologist Dr. Helen Benedict, a baby who endures a lack of emotional nurturing in the first months of life suffers permanent changes in how its brain develops.

The wondrous brain is equipped with all the neurons needed for optimal development. However, it comes partially assembled. The neurons need positive life experiences, like gentle language, touch and soothing, in order to connect.

“If no one is connecting with you, then the fundamentals for self-regulation — that are formed through the relationship with the caregiver — never develop,” Benedict said. In many ways, emotional neglect is more damaging to a baby than physical trauma, she said.

If the brain doesn’t make those connections during that first year, the neurons die. If those early experiences focus on violence, neglect or fear of abandonment, the prognosis becomes even more dire. The brains of babies who grow up in such environments tend to build connections that are disorganized, centered on chaos and in a perpetual state of angst.

While intense therapy can help these children with coping skills, no amount of intervention — or incarceration, in some cases —later in life can repair these broken sensors.

Institute executive director Nan Holmes said many people cannot comprehend by looking at these helpless babies how they could one day end up incarcerated. But that is what Talitha Koum is working to prevent by stimulating brain development.

“You have that little window of opportunity for the baby,” she said. “Ultimately, it is a story of hope and these are the people at the bottom who we are trying to help.”

The path of poverty

Trying to survive poverty often puts many families in physical and emotional chaos, leaving parents ill-equipped to provide the nurturing their babies require. In some parts of Waco, such as the Kate Ross and Estella Maxey housing complexes, extreme poverty runs five generations deep. With each successive generation, parents become less able to nurture, less connected with their babies and more powerless to change this frightening course, Benedict said.

Sadly, many children from these homes arrive at our public schools completely unprepared to learn.

This came to the attention of CrossTies members several years ago during a visit to a South Waco school where many children were regularly in trouble for behavioral problems. When they asked school staff what the leading problem was with entering kindergartners, the reply was immediate and shocking: They were told the children’s mental health is already shot.

This leads to an almost irreversible spiral of anger, anxiety, interpersonal conflict and learning struggles that can include dropping out of school, joblessness, incarceration and teen pregnancy later in life.

“We were seeing more teenagers being buried than graduating from high school,” Cowley said.

This spurred CrossTies into action. And this small church is known for not being afraid of trying. It had, after all, managed to turn an abandoned crack house into the wondrously successful Gospel Cafe where hundreds of people eat lunch three times a week supplied by generous donations from area churches and other groups.

So in January 2003, they launched Talitha Koum at Clay Avenue and 13th Street with a handful of children. They now have four classrooms filled with 27 children and are already witnessing the fruits of their success.

Fighting the tide of poverty

“Talitha Koum” is Aramaic for “My child, get up.” These words were spoken by Jesus in the book of Mark when he visited a dead child. In the Bible story, the child did get up. 

So are the babies at Talitha Koum, thanks to a staff and volunteers who fill the nursery with love, affirmation and cognitive development curriculum. 

Childrens’ brains develop and flourish here through sensory and emotional stimulations and human connections. For instance, they never let infants “cry it out” in their cribs because that reinforces the expectation in the brain that they are abandoned and that no one will come and make them feel better when they’re upset.

In the seven years since its inception, Talitha Koum has seen its children rise up to new life: some of the earliest children, those for whom the smallest conflict would lead to an hours-long meltdown, are now third-graders reading well above grade level.  

Those who have been at the center since infancy are displaying much higher coping skills. Those still struggling benefit from play therapy. The center also recently started incorporating the Neurosequential Mode of Therapy with staff and Baylor doctoral students. This form of therapy is individually tailored to each child depending on his circumstances and development and is designed to stimulate the brains of at-risk children.

“We are interested in anything that will enhance the brain development in babies,” Holmes said.

Brighter future

Children at the center talk about going to college one day, spurred on by devoted volunteer mentors. 

Parents also are engaged. Every Tuesday night the center holds parenting classes to discuss healthy parent-child interaction and infant health care. Expectant moms also are invited. And one night a month, they host a family-building session that engages families in creative projects, like scrap booking. 

Parents are not required to attend workshops. They come because the center is a place of peace, encouragement and hope.   

Some in our society believe that true poverty only exists in underdeveloped countries. But poverty and its harsh consequences are tearing down families throughout our community, starting with the babies. And, as we see in our schools and prisons, this is not someone else’s problem. It is our problem.

Talitha Koum is providing us a solution that begins with the simplest of steps: love, for the youngest among us.

Kim Patterson sits on several nonprofit boards and coordinates communications and special events for the MCC Foundation.