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It was all good a couple of years ago.

Former NFL star Chad Johnson is trying to keep his financial head above water and part of that includes wanting his child support payments for one of his children lowered.

Johnson recently filed court papers stating that he would like the court payments lowered because when he initially agreed to pay the $5,420 per month back in March 2012, he was doing very well for himself. But now, Johnson says he cannot afford the payments stating he”finds himself without a contract and without a team. Simply [I am] unemployed.”

The child involved in these particular documents is a son he has with Andrea Pearson. They were involved in a bit of a child support “battle” until they both agreed on that monthly $5,420 check.  The son is one of five children Johnson has fathered.

There was no word from TMZ how much child support, if any, he pays for all of his other children.

My, how the “mighty” have fallen.  Johnson was having a pretty good year in 2012 for quite some time: he became an even bigger star after he began dating and eventually being engaged to Basketball Wives cast member Evelyn Lozada. But that relationship ended in the summer of 2012 after he head butted her during an argument.

He was then released from the Miami Dolphins, he lost pretty  much all of his endorsement deal and he and Evelyn’s reality show was shut down.

No word yet on how the judge will rule.

Over the years, Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade has taken a lot of hits off the court about his personal life, including his fight for custody of his children, the alleged way he treated his ex-wife and his current relationship with actress Gabrielle Union.  Now, he’s finally ready to discuss it…well, a little bit.

In the June 2013 issue of Jet magazine, Dwyane Wade takes time to discuss his role as a father and in the midst of that, he reveals bits and pieces of what his relationship is like now with the boys’ – Zaire, age 11, and Zion, age 5 – mother, Siovaughn Funches:

Why he fought so hard for custody of his children:

“I didn’t set out to get full custody but I wasn’t able to see my kids the way I wanted and I’m not a parent who’s going to run away from his responsibilities. I was probably a terrible husband, but I pride myself on being a good dad.”

The state of his relationship now with Siovaughn:

“It’s been six years and hopefully one day she and I can get to the point where it’s a lot easier than it is now to co-parent.”

It should come as no surprise that they don’t get along: Funches allegedly claimed Wade gave her an STD and he’s allegedly called the police on her for not bringing their children back to him on time.  The two were together for many years, since they were both teenagers, so there are likely some very hurt feelings still involved.

You can pick up the June 2013 issue of Jet when it hits newsstands May 27th.

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From YourTango

There are over two million marriages in the United States and if you are considering joining that number, be sure you know what you’re getting into.  Before you pop the question to your beautiful bride (or groom) to be, you may consider all the things that make you smile – great sex, same taste in food, spontaneous personality – but  you also need to look further down the road.  Here are 3 questions to ask before you ask the biggest question of your life:

Are we having kids, and if so, when?  Believe it or not, the decisions of whether and when to have children can be deal breakers.  So while you may not think it’s a big deal to wait another ten years to have a child, your future spouse may have other plans in mind.  Don’t allow yourself to be in the kind of marriage where your spouse’s gynecologist knows more about her plans to have children then you do.  Raise this conversation before you get married in order to make sure you are on the same page and avoid future disagreements.

Read more at YourTango.com

Source: WENNN

From HelloBeautiful

I remember vividly the first time I came to know the name Jada Pinkett. It was in the last days of “A Different World,” when the “The Cosby Show ” spin-off sitcom set on a Historically Black College campus was struggling to keep its freshness as it transitioned in to the early 90′s. Beloved characters Dwayne Wayne & Whitley Gilbert were all grown-up and professional, and the show’s once authentic connection to college life, youth culture and energy was dwindling. Insert Jada Pinkett’s Lena James, a powerful pint-sized freshman who boomed with energy and breathed new life in to cast. She joins the cast as a freshman, Lena James, introducing her self to the common area with a not so humble solo step routine: “L to the E, to the N, to the A, Step off, you ain’t getting no play!” From that moment on, in my 9 year-old mind, I was pretty sure I wanted to be her. She exemplified the spirit of what largely came to define the creative Black experience in the 90′s: loud, colorful and unapologetically proud. That was 20 years ago.

I find myself on the phone with Jada on a Thursday afternoon about a month ago. She’s in the process of doing promotions for “Free Angela And All Political Prisoners,” the brilliant documentary directed by Shola Lynch.  After a friend shared the film with her, Jada came on as a producer using her hollywood muscle to help get the film distributed in select AMC theaters nationwide. What I thought would be the typical 15-minute movie junket interview (abruptly ended by publicists listening in on the other end), turned in to a 90-minute phone call with the real Mrs. Smith about everything from her early relationship with her husband to why people should lay off Rihanna.

In what #TeamBEautiful has deemed the Best.Jada.Interview.Ever., we speak with the stylish and brutally honest A-lister about about parenting, dating, marriage, Black hollywood, and why America loves to hate on little girls. Check out the first of our three part series.

HB: You get a lot of criticism on the way you parent, has it ever bothered you?

JPS: You know what, I get it. In people eyes, I could see how it could be radical. It’s so funny the more I sit back and think about it, I was raised like this. It’s so natural to me–my situation was different; I had a lot of freedom. My mother worked a lot and she also struggled with drugs. So I had a lot of freedom at 12. But I also paid attention to where freedom worked and where it didn’t. One of the freedoms that I had was hair and clothes and how it completely [helped to] develop my self-esteem and sense of worth. And how, if I could dye my hair blue and shave it on the sides and deal with people remarks or smirks while I am walking to school, I’m good. To be able to stand tall in my own personal convictions for who I am and what I decided I wanted to be. And I was given that at a very early age. So by the time I got to 18 and I came out to LA, there was nobody out here that was going to pull me out of my own Jada game because I was very clear about who I am. You aren’t going to sucker me into to doing some crazy Isht I didn’t want to do. I didn’t have someone dictating to me along on what I need to be, and then at 18 struggling to figure out–I was already there. And the difference I see in Willow at 12 is, she’s got a loving father and the truth of the matter is that a girl’s emotional development is really strongly developed based on her relationship with her father. I just think of parenting at this: I don’t believe until waiting until a child is 18 to throw them to the world. I’d rather have kids in my house with me, building out certain freedoms as you go, and being there with them in my house while they are exercising these certain freedom so that we can be in the process in these freedoms together. When my children are 18, they will be fine. I don’t have to worry about them. Life starts when you pop out of the womb, and that’s what I believe!

Read more at HelloBeautiful.com

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From MommyNoire

“What’s your daughter mixed with?” asked the cashier at the value grocery store I often frequented as a new mom with my, then, three-month old daughter. She was smiling then, so I knew that her question was well intentioned, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. The question proceeded something about my daughter being pretty and something else about her then “wavy” and “pretty” hair “Ummm…mixed?” I asked, not really confused but mostly trying to buy more time before facing the questions that I knew would inevitably come when I told her my daughter wasn’t mixed. “Yeah,” she said, confidently. “What’s she mixed with?”

Like many persons of color who look a bit different, I grew with questions about my heritage. So by the time I had become a parent, questions like “Where are you from?” and “What’s your background?”and “Are you (fill in the blank nationality)?” had come to be colored in my head as racial identifying questions. I had come to accept them as just part of my identity as a brown-skinned African-American woman, in the same way, I assume, my East African husband had come to accept them as a brown-skinned, black man in America. Our ethnic backgrounds are mixed, but we are black, and so, too, are our lighter-skinned, curly-haired daughters.

I try often to explain this to strangers we encounter in public, but it’s tricky since so many, it seems, have a predisposed notion of what it means to be black and not black and that anything that veers from that notion is odd. “No, they’re black,” I always say when asked about my daughters being mixed. To this, the person asking usually looks confused. And then there’s a silence between us that makes me feel like I should explain more. And I usually do explain more by saying something about how my husband and I have many ethnicities in our backgrounds, but that we, and they, my daughters, are black. This usually does the trick. But, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, the person asking will want to know specifics.  So then I say, “I’m American and my husband is from Africa” but the inclusion of Africa in a conversation about being mixed just complicates things even more.

Read more on MommyNoire.com.

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From Essence

I can’t imagine, even in this hysteria over the scanty supply of single Black men, that any sister’s best bet for a relationship would be with a dude in prison. I just can’t. Barring him being a hubby or a serious boyfriend prior to his incarceration, there is nothing—not his golden-throated promises, not a miraculous behavioral transformation, not even his physical Idris Elba-esque magnificence—that could make sense of picking up a boo thang serving hard time in the pen.

I’m open to dating someone who’s gotten his act together post-release (and I’m not talking about two weeks after he hits the outside, either), but an inside man? No thanks. That’s just me, though. Because last week, news was electric with stories about Tavon White, the gang leader in a Baltimore jail who had 13 female corrections officers smuggling drugs, cell phones and other contraband in so that he and his cronies could continue to run their enterprise out in the liberated part of the world.

This guy was behind bars pulling in—according to his own braggadocio—$16,000 in a slow month. That’s an insult and a bummer. But the real kicker is that, detained and all, homeboy fathered five children with four of those women. (Yeah, somebody double dipped.) He’s been locked up since 2009. For attempted murder. And four women in positions of professional authority were so swayed by whatever the heck they were so swayed by that they risked their health, safety, careers and reputations—because their names are sure ‘nuff blasted all over the internet—to not only participate in his criminal underdealings but have babies by him.

Two of them even got tattoos of the man’s name, one on her neck. Lord Jesus, there’s a fire. I wring my hands in despair.

At this point, we could argue about better prison controls, the corruption of the corrections system, the misappropriation that allowed an inmate to operate a full-blown criminal enterprise from the discomforts of his danky little cell. But I want to know what kind of psychological superiority this man is outfitted with to make him able to pluck out women just vulnerable enough to go along with the go along and become his willing assistants.

Read more at Essence.com.

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From HelloBeautiful

Without sounding conceited, I just want it to be known that I get hit on almost daily. And usually, it’s by a homeless man, some dude who’s been standing in the same spot in front of the same bodega from 8am to 8pm. But this time, when I looked up in the direction of the shoulder tap, I immediately smiled.

He smiled back. Dimples perfectly set on either cheek, lips the color of my flushed cheeks and a jawline that would make Clark Kent insecure. He was fine. Call me shallow, but between his devastating good looks and his gentle approach, I had to give him the infamous “time of day.”

He asked my name and gave his. “Winston,” he said, perpetuating the smile that laid across his lips from the first moment I turned around at his tap.

“Nice to meet you Winston,” I blushed. Unsure of what to do with myself, I unplugged my earphones and Winston asked if he could continue walking with me. As we walked towards my apartment, he looked over at the bar we were approaching, pointing towards it, he asked, “Want to go have a drink?”

I smiled. And this smile was for all those times I could never get any native New Yorker to ask me out on a first date. I could meet them all day, but making it to a dimly lit ambiance, sharing stories of favorite color, best thing my mom ever taught me and why my last relationship ended was something that was as rare as a reality show that’s real.

As we sat and sipped, the conversation flowed from topic to topic effortlessly. With each giggle or hand lingering on my leg, I made mental notes. I like him. He’s funny. He’s attentive. He’s honest. He is ready to settle down. “I know I want kids and that’s been a breaking point for me and my relationships lately,” Winston revealed. “My last girlfriend told me she wanted kids and a year later, she changed her mind. I couldn’t stay with her.” I was intrigued by Winston’s honesty.

Read more at HelloBeautiful.com

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Well, since it looks like the Los Angeles Lakers season will soon be over (don’t come for me Lakers fans, you have to accept it), Steve Nash can now focus on a bigger fight.

A year and a half ago, Nash announced that he and his wife Alejandra would be divorcing.  In the months since, the breakup has been fairly ugly with allegations of infidelity being thrown from both sides as well as rumors that Nash didn’t want to pay child support for their three children. They’ve been locked in a child support battle for months!  Well, an Arizona judge ruled that Nash didn’t have to pay the support because his lawyers were able to prove that his ex has become a millionaire in her own right because of him and still pulls in $30,000 a month.

Further, Nash apparently pays for 90 percent of his children’s medical, schooling and extracurricular activities as well as 82 percent of the nanny’s salary.  Alejandra contends, however, that none of that should matter because he still makes a million more dollars than she does every month.

For his part, Nash says that he believes if he’s made to pay child support, Alejandra will use the money to continue funding her own lifestyle as well as spoiling the kids with lavish and unnecessary gifts.

Isn’t this ugly? Oh and did I forget to mention that Nash is trying to bar Alejandra from moving to Los Angeles so the kids can be closer to their dad because California courts are known for harsh child support rulings and he’d likely be made to pay if they move there.

Sadly, his oldest children, a set of twin girls, are eight and likely old enough to realize that their parents really aren’t getting along at all.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the fighting will die down since they’re still in court.

Based on the information, who do you think is wrong, Steve or Alejandra?

As humans, we know that we have limitations.  None of us are omniscient, all powerful, or can break the barriers of time and space; and we accept that about ourselves.  The only time that it’s difficult to accept the shortcomings of a person is when you are a parent and you’re observing your child.  I would always get so angry and annoyed at my own parents when I felt like they wanted me to be a superwoman of sorts.  Being late was unacceptable, even though one of them sped to work every day.  If I was having a bad day, I was supposed to keep it all inside, but they were allowed to take their bad day out on others.  Even to this day I still feel annoyed with it, but I realize that it’s something that I’m going to struggle with as a parent myself.

My daughter is the love of my life.  Seeing her little head come bouncing toward me is one of the greatest things in this world to me, and I look forward every day to sitting on the couch with a book, her sitting next to me with hers, and watching her mimick every time I turn a page.  I look at her and see nothing but possibilities.  So when she hit her second birthday and she hadn’t started talking yet, I have to be honest, it scared me.

Every parent who’s involved with their child looks forward to the day that their child start’s speaking.  I heard the excitement in my sisters’ voices while they exclaimed that their children said their first words, and there was a bittersweet feeling when I would hear my niece or nephews (two of them are younger than my daughter) talking in the background, while my child only pronounced hard, consonant, guttural sounds.

At the beginning of her life when she would go see the doctor, he would ask questions about her development, and she was always on track, except for when it came to speech.  Each doctor visit I would dread having to feign a smile and say:  ”Well, she’s not really saying those sounds yet, but we tend to communicate strongly on a non-verbal level.”  He would smile back and suggest that I should seek early intervention.

During her last doctor visit he asked me if I’d looked into early intervention yet.  I was honest, told him no, and he asked me why.  That’s when I realized that I was scared of what they might say.  I feel as though my daughter is smart and amazing, but if they reveal her limitations to me, then its something that’s concrete, something that I’ll have to face, handle, acknowledge.  It would shine a light on my own incompetence as a mother, and beckon of light would echo on my child.  They’re right, ignorance is bliss, and I wasn’t ready to give that happiness up yet.

It wasn’t until thinking about my own development, and one of my sisters reminding me that we also needed speech therapy when we were younger. As a child, I stuttered and my sister had a problem pronouncing her words correctly.  However, our parents put us in therapy to help.  My sister reminded me that just because we couldn’t talk didn’t mean that we were any less intelligent than anyone else, and it’s the same thing for my baby.

I feel like sometimes, as African Americans, getting professional help can have such a negative connotation to it. We’re supposed to be strong, and our children will be too.  But, just because you have to get some outside help shouldn’t be a bad thing.  Your child is amazing, but sometimes getting help at the earliest time is the best thing for them.  It can be scary, and it will be scary, but just remember that you’re doing what’s best for your child, and that’s what being a good parent is all about.

Kendra Koger loves her daughter.  You should love her twitter account @kkoger.

Source: WENN

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter may be basking in the joys of motherhood, but sister-friend Kelly Rowland says she’s not quite ready to be about that mommy life and seeing Bey with baby Blue is not giving her baby fever. The “Kisses Down Low” singer recently chatted it up with E! News on the red carpet at the Elle Women of Music event in New York. She honestly revealed to Alicia Quarles that she’s not ready to be a mother just yet and has no shame in admitting it.

“I’m not ready, I’m not ready to have a child. I can be very honest,” she revealed.

“Because right now, I’m a bit selfish, a lot—I was gonna say a little—but I’m still selfish,” 32-year-old Rowland added.

She went on to say that she really enjoys having her time to herself and that she isn’t exactly ready to share it with another person.

“I like my time, I like to wake up whenever I want to and I like to come and go as I please. I don’t know if I’m ready to share that time with another person, I don’t wanna mess them up,” Kelly confessed.

She did, however, reveal that she’s down to babysit baby Blue if ever Bey needed her to. We certainly can’t blame Ms. Kelly for wanting to do her thing before settling down and having babies. It seems that there is a lot more she hopes to accomplish, not to mention her forthcoming Talk a Good Game album, which is slated to drop later this year. It’s hard not to respect her honesty.

Click here to watch Kelly’s interview.