Lakisha Davis looks like a typical 18-year-old. On an afternoon last week at home, she wore plaid shorts and a Snoopy T-shirt. She had a toe ring on each foot.

She loves Caesar salad and her favorite movie is “Juno.” She has an 11 p.m. curfew.

The 2008 valedictorian at Sequoyah High School, Miss Davis also stays busy raising her 4-year-old son, Konnor.

“I was the one who made the choice to do whatever I wanted,” Lakisha said. “(Young motherhood) is a sacrifice I was willing to make because of my choices.”

Before she became a mother, Miss Davis said, she spent most of her time hanging out at friends’ houses or at the mall.

“It was mostly hanging around, waiting for something to happen,” she said.

She also occasionally sneaked out at night, she said. When she suspected she was pregnant, she said, she took two home pregnancy tests. Even when they came back positive, she said she was in denial.

“I figured because I had gotten them from the dollar store, they had to be wrong,” she said.

The pregnancy was confirmed when she was hospitalized for a kidney infection and the doctors performed an ultrasound, she said.

“It was very surreal,” Miss Davis said. “I felt really stupid because I was in the children’s hospital. It was pretty depressing, being in the children’s hospital (and being pregnant).”

Miss Davis’ mother, Donna, a nurse practitioner, took on the task of home schooling her daughter so she wouldn’t have to endure the difficulties and stigma of being a pregnant eighth-grader.

But her daughter set her sights on getting the valedictorian honor several months after Konnor was born.

Miss Davis, who already has completed many college-level classes through Chattanooga State Technical Community College, plans to pursue a degree in physical therapy at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

While the responsibility of child rearing has kept her focused, motherhood has taken a toll on her social life and on her own childhood, she said.

“It’s hard to hang out with people my own age because they usually want to do something stupid,” she said.

These days, much of her free time is spent at the park with her son.

“It’s not all about you, once you have a kid,” she said. “You can’t do what you want anymore.”

Miss Davis plans to live with her parents while she attends college. She said Konnor’s father is not really in the picture.

Miss Davis says teenaged girls who might see Konnor’s cherubic face and be romanced by the notion of motherhood “need to go buy a puppy. They’re only seeing the picture perfect times.”

Mrs. Davis said she is proud of the responsibility her daughter has taken and described her daughter as a good mother.

She and Miss Davis have built trust based on open communication that was lacking before Konnor was born, she said.

Still, she strongly encourages sex education from a young age.

“I think it should be addressed in junior high,” she said. “Lakisha is a fine example of (young teenagers getting pregnant). By (high school), it’s too late.”

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