Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
June 12, 2002
Fathers' skills enriched through parenting program
21 men graduate from parenting program at Annunciation School
By Alwen Bledsoe
Dad knows best - or so goes the old adage. But that piece of wisdom has perhaps passed with another era and is certainly receiving an overhaul, or so says Antonio Vazquez, father of four, and one of the men who participated in Annunciation School's Los Padres program. Like many of the men in the program, he said the 14-week parenting course has helped transform his family.
"Like my dad told me, no father in the world is perfect," he said.
The course met weekly from February to May, and in order to graduate, students were required to attend 11 of the 14 courses, each three hours long, said Sheila Karpan, coordinator of the parent enrichment program and a social worker at Annunciation School in Denver. The courses were offered in both English and Spanish, and altogether Los Padres graduated 21 men this year, she added.
"It was a really beautiful experience for me," said Abimael Jurado, father of three, through a translator. "I wanted to be a better father and also a friend to my children."
Like the other three men who spoke to the Register, Jurado speaks about newfound patience and communication skills as some of the greatest treasures gleaned from the course.
They have transformed his relationship with his son, he said.
"I just didn't have any patience with him and now I think I have a little bit more patience," he said. "I talk to him. Now I come in the morning and I drop him off and I pick him up. Before I never came near the school, and so I feel like my eyes have been opened and I feel closer to him. Before I was very strict and now I understand that wasn't the best way to be and I now I talk to him like, `What's happening? What can I help you with? What's going on?'"
Even Cecilio Lomeli's four children have noticed the change in him, he said. Lomeli said he and his oldest son, a 16-year-old, communicated very little prior to Los Padres.
"Now we're talking more, and so he asked his mother, `What happened to Dad? He's changed a lot. I've seen him change since he's been going to these classes. He's different,'" Lomeli said through a translator.
A little smack or shove used to be the way Lomeli showed the kids he was "boss," he said. But now it's different.
"So now I'll say to them `Come here and help me,' and if they don't want to, I'll say, `Why?' and after we've talked, they're more responsive. They want to help me."
Lomeli, like the other men interviewed, is an immigrant from Mexico. And like the other men, he wants to be the kind of father he never had. Their fathers, the men said, were strict and accepted no questioning.
"We didn't want to treat our children the way our fathers treated us," Lomeli said.
Lomeli's father didn't let him attend school past the fifth grade, he said.
"I wanted to be a lawyer," he explained, later adding, "I wanted to go to school and my father said no, we didn't know anyone in the cities."
Instead he stayed on the ranch to help his father farm.
"I didn't want that for my children and so I have my kids in (Annunciation) because I want them to have the best."
Antonia Vazquez is also trying to usher in a new era of fatherhood for his family.
"I never did like my father did. He used the belt and cursed. I don't respect that. It's not nice. The father always saying `I'm the man, always the man. I'm the boss.' Now in my family I tell them I'm a member of a team," Vazquez said.
Later he added: "We work together, we play with my kids. We sing together, we dance together. We have this kind of relationship with my kids."
Juan Carrillo, another participant, has three children.
"We always think we are fine with the kids, and after we take the program we find that we are not so fine," Carrillo said.
He is learning to be more patient with his kids, to spend more time with them, helping out with homework and being a part of their lives. He is also learning to show more of his feelings, he said.
"Now they are more comfortable with me," he said of his children. "They talk more than before. They have more fun. They're laughing all the time. It's a good program. I recommend it for anyone. It helps a lot."
The curriculum for Los Padres and its sister program Las Madres come from the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition Conference. A HUD grant for neighborhood improvements given to St. Martin Plaza, a complex in the archdiocese's affordable housing network, paid for the course, said Karpan. Annunciation may be the only Catholic school involved in Los Padres/Las Madres and does not have access to the same funding public schools do, Karpan added. So the program's future depends on whether or not the school can procure funding for next year, she said.
Lomeli certainly hopes it can.
"My hope is that others, if we have this program (next year), would take it because I have felt changes in myself and I know that they would benefit from it also," he said.
Later he continued, "I didn't ever want it to end because I learned so much. I learned from all the other fathers in the class as well as from the teachers."
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