SOUTH-CENTRAL : Courses Give Tips to Black, Latino Parents

Gloria Bradie always knew that parenting is not an easy job. But when she found herself in a police station after striking her teen-age son, she decided it was time to get help raising her five children.

“If you are a parent, you are going to have a problem,” Bradie said. “I never had problems with my kids when they were young, but when they got to be teen-agers, that’s when the problems started.”

Nearly two years after Bradie was interviewed by police after she hit her son, she spoke before a group of parents and educators about the need for helping parents in communities such as South-Central.

After a referral by a social worker, Bradie is now a graduate of Effective Black Parenting, a 15-week course offered by the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring. The center is part of the Rebuild Our Lives Parent Training Project.

The five-year project, funded by private and public monies, helps African American and Latino families learn to deal with problems by teaching parents culturally specific skills to improve communication with their children. African Americans participate in the Effective Black Parenting course, and Latinos are offered a 12-week course called Los Ninos Bien Educados.

“This is one of the few programs in the country that gives parents the opportunity to look at the cultural clash they are involved with,” said Kerby Alvy, a psychologist and executive director of the Center for the Improvement of Child Care, a nonprofit organization that works with parents.

For Maria and Santiago Cardona of East Los Angeles, the Los Ninos Bien Educados program helped them bridge the growing distance within their family that had evolved into arguments over food and clothing choices.

“You have your own culture, but when you come here this is another culture, and we’ve tried not to lose our culture as we adjust,” said Maria Cardona, a Mexican immigrant who is a mother of 10, at a community meeting for educators and parents in South-Central. “My oldest son had problems with food and clothes. We’d constantly be arguing about these things and we’d both just end up angry.

“After we started the program, I learned a new approach. I let him vent his anger and then we would talk. I told him if you don’t like the food then tell me what you want me to cook, or go out and buy what you want to eat if you don’t like my cooking.”

The parenting programs began as a response to the 1992 riots, Alvy said. “When the riots hit, we said if you really want to rebuild, you have to start with the family. It’s the most basic thing--to prepare a community, you have to work with families,” he said.

The program has already garnered the support of Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and city and school officials.

More than 14,000 of the 37,000 children currently in the county’s foster care system are from the 2nd Supervisorial District, which includes South-Central, Burke said.

Both courses focus on using a building-block approach to helping parents adjust skills they already use. Parents are taught ways to confront their children, how to discipline them and how to learn from their children, Alvy said.

Parents, who hear about the programs either through social service agency referrals or by word of mouth, must commit to attending the classes and are provided with workbooks and assigned homework that often includes working with their children.

Information: (213) 249-8876.