Mother Nurture by Stephanie Hirsch

Author:Stephanie Hirsch [Stephanie Hirsch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061737138
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Phyllis Stephens

Mother of JOHN LEGEND

“I didn’t force him to go any further than he wanted to.”

Phyllis Stephens, the mother of John Legend, the platinum-selling musician, said she was always praising the Lord when John was young. “I don’t know if it was because he always heard me saying it, but his first word was ‘hallelujah.’” Today, John has good reason to keep saying his first word. Just shy of his thirtieth birthday, John has already collaborated with some of the biggest names in the business, such as Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lauryn Hill, and Alicia Keys. In 2004, he released his platinum-selling album Get Lifted that produced two top 100 songs. Taking a somewhat unusual path for someone who has topped the billboard charts, John first studied at the University of Pennsylvania, on an academic scholarship, where he majored in English with an emphasis on African-American literature and culture. After graduating in 1999, he dabbled in consulting and performed on the nightclub circuit in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. John recently launched the Show Me Campaign, an organization that encourages his fans to donate money to help improve living conditions in Ghana. John has appeared in everything from Lexus commercials, to the closing music of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s keynote presentations, to the Live Earth concert in London.

As might be expected from a child whose first word was hallelujah, religion was front and center in John’s upbringing. But Phyllis didn’t think of religion in traditional terms. “We called it a relationship with Jesus Christ,” she said. Religion and regimen were the cornerstones of John’s childhood. Reflecting on the roots of her approach, Phyllis said, “I grew up being raised as a disciplined person, so that’s how I raised my kids.”

John was an early bloomer, Phyllis recalled. “He started walking at around eleven months.” What really stood out about John’s development, however, was that he responded very fast and talked early. “When he was still in his crib, he was speaking in full sentences.”

As a stay-at-home mom, Phyllis didn’t have babysitters or put John in nursery school, so she felt it was incumbent on her to take on the role of teacher. “I would always walk around the room and point out everything so John would be able to associate an object with a word.” In fact, Phyllis said that her husband made a special seat—a bumper seat—so that John and his brother, whom they affectionately called “Bumper,” could see out the window when they were driving places. “Teaching was something I loved to do, and I wanted to help them learn.” Elaborating on her hybrid role as parent-teacher, “I was training them to be good people. I felt that this was my project. I wanted to try to teach them everything I knew,” Phyllis said. Part of her pedagogy was no television in the house. “I didn’t want my kids influenced by the television,” Phyllis said, explaining why she enforced this strict policy. “I wanted them to be influenced by us, their parents.

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