KOREATOWN : Parenting Classes Help Reduce Conflict

Margarita Alarcon sat in the Virgil Middle School auditorium recently next to her 14-year-old daughter, Noemi, waiting to get called up to the podium. They had spent several months learning ways to get along better, and now, for Alarcon, it was graduation day.

She had completed a series of free parenting skills workshops that began at the school last August, an offshoot of a similar children’s after-school workshop called “Let’s Talk” in which Noemi had learned how to do better in school, avoid gangs and improve communication with her parents.

“I supported my daughter in these classes, so she oriented me to several themes,” Alarcon said in Spanish. “Everything we learned was great.”

More than 60 other parents of Virgil students graduated from the workshops, in which they discussed issues such as family dynamics, children’s health, effective discipline, controlling anger and preventing violence, stress management, preventing and dealing with substance abuse, and recognizing and preventing child sexual abuse.

The parents, most of them Latinos, also learned how to deal with the culture clash that can occur when immigrants attempt to rear their children in a new country using the strict ways of the old country.

“It’s different here,” Alarcon said. “Communicating with our children is the primary thing, but we don’t always know what to say to them.”

The parenting workshops, as well as the children’s classes, were sponsored by the school and the federally funded Los Angeles Alliance for a Drug-Free community, which for a year has sponsored classes throughout the city to teach students how to better cope with their environment.

The Virgil parenting class, the third the alliance has presented in the inner city, took shape when the children’s workshop instructors noticed that some students appeared to be having problems at home.

“We found that a lot of kids were afraid to go home,” said Julie Tugend, special projects director for the alliance. “They were having lots of conflict at home, and their parents didn’t listen or pay attention to them.”

The instructors sent material home with the students about forming the workshops, and often approached parents when they came to pick up or drop off their children.

“We didn’t make it out to be a punitive thing,” Tugend said. “They had a big incentive--they don’t want their kids involved in gangs or with drugs. They want a better life for their kids.”

Some parents, like Luz Gonzales, even helped persuade other parents to join the workshops. Gonzales said the workshops have helped her deal better with her 11-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

“I’ve learned that I don’t need to shout at them to communicate with them,” she said. “We need to have better communication at home, so that our children stay out of gangs and in school.”