After adoption of seven, this mom will celebrate Mother's Day with 10 children

Yahoo

09-05-2025

At this time last year, Londeshua Kendrick was the mother of three.
On this Mother's Day, she will be the mother of 10, ages 2 to 13.
'It'll mean everything just to see the smiles on their faces,' she said.
Her motherhood officially grew by seven on a Friday morning last December, a couple of weeks before Christmas. She and the children all put on red shirts and went to the Duval County Courthouse for Family Support Services of North Florida's annual 'Home for the Holidays' adoption event.
Seventeen families adopted 30 children that day. A couple of local television stations were there and interviewed Kendrick about her adoption of seven siblings — seven brothers.
It isn't unusual for adoption events to involve siblings. As Jenn Petion, FSS president and CEO explains, sibling adoptions are a big need in the system. When siblings end up in foster care, they want to do everything possible to keep them together.
'Siblings are the longest relationship we'll have,' she said. 'The worst thing is if you have to separate kids into different foster homes, because now they've endured more losses. They've lost their parents, their home, and their siblings.'
Still, the adoption of seven siblings is unusual.
Judge Michael Kalil has presided over many adoptions — since 2022, he has served as the chair of the Jacksonville Bar Association adoption committee — and he says the one involving Kendrick and her children stands out.
'Seven siblings staying together is pretty extraordinary,' he said, echoing what Petion said about sibling bonds often being the longest relationship in life. 'Preserving that bond changes the entire trajectory of a child's life, giving them healing and stability not just now but many years from now. She willingly took on an amazing responsibility rooted in love and commitment to those kids. The kids will grow up and celebrate life's milestones together for many years to come as a family because of her.'
In this particular adoption, it begins with an another sibling bond — between Kendrick and her siblings.
Kendrick, 37, is the third of four children. She has an older sister and brother and a younger brother. She says that years ago, they made a pledge to each other: If anything happened to one of them, the others would be there for their children.
'I'm just standing on that promise,' she said.
The seven boys that she adopted are her nephews — her youngest brother's sons.
Asked what led to them ending up in foster care, she prefers not to get into specifics, saying: 'Something happened in the home with their mom and dad that they had to be removed.'
She says that others were willing to take one or two of the boys.
'I wasn't going to do that,' she said. 'I said, 'If you can't take all seven, you can't have none. They're going to stay together.''
She first took them in about two years ago. At the time, she was in a two-bedroom apartment in Jacksonville. She set up seven beds in one bedroom and made it work. They eventually moved to a five-bedroom house in St. Augustine.
Her original three — Faith, 8, Jeremiah, 5, and Skylar, 2 — now have seven cousins-turned-brothers: Tishawn, 13, Trey, 12, Tayvon, 10, Knox, 6, twins Rome and Rio, 3, and Jemarr, 2.
Before this, she knew her brother's boys and they knew her. But it wasn't anything like a mother-child relationship. With some, that took time. She recalls telling the new additions to the family that she would love them, protect them, care for them, just like she did with the three she already had.
'I told them, 'I got you',' she said. 'Everybody gets loved.'
On a recent morning, everybody came to Family Support Services on the Southbank. While their mother was being interviewed, the kids colored pictures and kept each other entertained.
At one point, Faith drew a picture on the white board. It was of her mother. And while her mom questioned some of the details — 'Is that hair on my chin?' she said with a laugh — it clearly was a tribute.
While working on it, Faith was asked what she'd say about her mom. She thought for a minute, said it's hard to explain, then gave an explanation befitting a Mother's Day card.
'She gives more attention to her kids than to anyone else,' she said. 'I love her because she's pretty, she's nice and she takes care of us the right way.'
In the opposite corner of the room, Tishawn and Trey, the oldest two, were looking out a window at the view below of the Southbank and the river. Asked about their mom, Trey said: 'She's like the best mom ever. She doesn't have to buy us anything. We appreciate that we have a mom.'
When they walked over to Treaty Oak Park for a photo, the kids paired up, with the older one holding the hands of the younger ones. Once they reached the old tree, they scrambled around its giant trunk and limbs, giddily laughing, making a place that had been quiet moments earlier sound like a school playground.
At one point, their mother — in a deeper, serious tone — told them they needed to calm down and do what she was asking them to do. And almost instantly, they did.
'When I go into mommy mode, in that voice, they know it's time to chill out and behave,' she said later. 'They're good kids. They're respectful. They're helpful.'
While she is a single mom with 10 children, she says she isn't alone in raising them, that she has a large support group, starting with her sister, her older brother and her own mother.
'She helps a lot,' she said. 'She'll come over and cook for all of us. She'll say, 'You can take the weekend off. I'm coming over to take care of the kids.''
She also talks about the kids' teachers. And friends. And a mentor. She says it takes a community. And for her and thousands of others, that has involved Family Support Services.
For Petion, the CEO of Family Support Services, adoption isn't just a part of her job and the FSS mission — to be the leader in providing safety, stability, and quality of life for all children by working with the community to strengthen the family unit.
It's a part of her family.
She has five children, two adopted from Florida's foster care system.
'It is an incredible gift that a child not born to me calls me Mom, and I will never take that for granted,' she said. 'And I will never take for granted that for them to become my kids, another mom had to lose something precious. So I think while there's a joy, there's also a sobriety that goes into being an adoptive mom.'
That, she says, is an element of Mother's Day. It is joyful. It also is a holiday that requires sensitivity and appreciation of what led to it.
On Mother's Day, she'd like to remind people to think of adoption — and let them know how much support is available if they take that leap.
'Some people tend to think of adoption as the second choice if you can't biologically have kids, and it doesn't have to be that,' she said. 'We knew we could biologically have kids, but we chose to adopt. … I want more people to think of it that way, that's it's not second best. Because it's not. It's just as good.'
If it's an incredible gift that a child not born to you calls you mother, then Kendrick is bombarded with those gifts, plus some more, leading to a constant 'Momma, Momma, Momma …'
Suffice it to say, on an average day, she doesn't have a lot of quiet time. So most mornings, she sets her alarm to get up before the kids. That's when she writes in her journal.
She started doing this when she was younger. 'Because I was angry,' she says. She'd put down in writing what she was feeling. And then she'd rip it up.
She found that exercise made her feel better. She's been journaling ever since, putting her thoughts and prayers onto paper. And these days what she's feeling isn't so much anger as gratitude.
She says that on Mother's Day, she'll probably write a prayer in her journal that morning to 'let it be the best Mother's Day ever.'
And as is the case for many mothers, her vision of the best Mother's Day doesn't involve fancy gifts — she's looking forward to seeing what her kids made for her at school – and it isn't about getting a day full of peace and quiet.
She says a bit of peace and quiet would be nice. But she knows if gets that, she'll quickly be thinking, 'I miss the kids.'
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This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville woman celebrates her first Mother's Day as a mom of 10