Making a Difference : Mar Vista: Teaching Parents as They Teach Their Children

Young children at risk of failure in school due to poverty or a dysfunctional home life can benefit from a combination of parenting education and quality early childhood programs, says a 1993 report by the U.S. National Commission on Children. This isn’t news to the Mar Vista Family Center, which has offered exactly such services for 16 years in a low-income pocket of this West Los Angeles community. The nonprofit agency offers a predominantly Latino neighborhood a range of family services built around a day-care center that depends on parent participation.

The preschool program serves 34 children from 3 to 5 years old. Parents agree to work at the center and participate in workshops at least once a week in exchange for the free 30-hour-a-week preschool. In an innovative partnership with the UCLA Education Extension, the center also offers training that allows parents to be certified as early childhood educators; the center’s director and six-member staff are all graduates of the seven-month program. Now, to spread the word, they are holding monthly workshops to show parents, teachers and administrators at 14 Los Angeles public elementary schools how to increase parent participation.

Population

Mar Vista-Palms-Del Rey: 113,782

Mar Vista Family Center service area: 5,916

Population by race and ethnicity

Mar Vista-Palms-Del Rey:

White: 56%

Hispanic: 24%

Asian: 14%

Black: 5%

Other: 1%

Persons living in poverty:

Mar Vista-Palms-Del Rey: 11.5%

Mar Vista Family Center service area: 36.5%

Mar Vista Family Center service area

Hispanic: 50%

Asian: 18%

White: 16%

Black: 15%

Other: 1%

Source: U.S. Census, programming bt Times analyst SANDRA POINDEXTER

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

BETTY FACTOR

Founder of Mar Vista Family Center

Our basic education tool with parents and children is a shared responsibility model. The elements are that we raise awareness of family relationships to break (violent) patterns, that we learn alternative behaviors to destructive ones, that we resolve conflicts without resorting to violence, that we respect individual choice and that we share decision-making and problem-solving between the parent and child.

In addition to the child education and daily parent workshops, we have weekly fathers’ groups, mothers’ groups, pre-teen groups, teen groups open not only to the families enrolled in the preschool but to anyone in the community.

Children that are raised with this kind of relationship in the family extend that into the way they relate in the community with other families. What it means for the community is that children raised without violence are not violent with each other in the community. It could help to remove the violence we see on the streets of our community.

ONE PARENT’S EXPERIENCE

LUCIA DIAZ

Director of the child and parent education program at Mar Vista Family Center since 1987

I came (to the Mar Vista Family Center) 13 years ago, in 1981, with my oldest daughter, who is 15 now. I didn’t really have that much knowledge of what the word parent means. I came from Mexico in 1976 from a poor family with 11 brothers and sisters. I worked in a house as a maid. I was 17. I married and had my first child when I was 20.

When my kids started growing up, I started feeling that it was not good for me. I was just staying at home and not doing anything and not having any patience with my children. I can say I was physcially abusing my children because I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t feeling happy about this. Then I went back to cleaning houses, and once my older daughter came with me and she said, “When I get older, I want to clean houses like you.” And then it really hit me: This is not what I want for her. That’s when I knew that if I wanted my daughter to learn to do something different, I needed to do something different, too. I needed to change my life.

My children were in the day-care program. I went back to school and got my high school diploma and started here as a peer counselor, then I became a teacher. I was one of the first parents to enroll in the UCLA extension program to become a preschool educator in 1984, and I received my credential in 1986. Being here as a parent I (learned) how to deal with (my children)--how to guide them, how to communicate with them, how to respect who they are.

RESULTS

800 children have graduated from preschool program.

200 neighborhood adolescents have participated in community improvement, tutorial or group therapy programs.

45 parents have become accredited, employed preschool teachers.