There’s no question that violence is a serious problem in our country with recent mass shootings like those at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Chicago and the surrounding area are not immune to the violence either. With 272 homicides in Chicago from the beginning of 2015 through Aug. 2, community leaders are trying everything to curb the violence.

That includes stopping violence before it starts, by teaching parents how to relate to their children, teaching them to show love and express anger effectively and set limits on their behavior.

That was one of seven points listed by Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin in his plan to reduce gun violence in Chicago, and it was applauded by Arturo Baranda, parent program manager for Midtown Educational Foundation. Midtown, a not-forprofit sponsored by Opus Dei that runs after-school and summer programs for boys from fourth through 12th grade, and Metro Educational Foundation, its companion program for girls, include parent education at every session.

The first thing Baranda does with the parents at Midtown and Metro is help them figure out their own identity.

“We have parents who get married, who have children, and have no idea who they are,” he said. “We try to give them a box of tools to sort that out, and emphasize the importance of always trying to be a better parent.”

The next thing is to help them figure out who their children are, and understand that their children are always changing, and that parents must listen and pay attention to learn what their children need at any given time.

“The kids give you a lot of information you ignore,” Baranda said. “When the kids go to school, they come back home as a different person, because there are other influences on them. You have to learn who they are in this new day.”

Because parenting is an ongoing challenge, parents are asked to meet at least briefly each week when their children are at the center, he said. The idea is to help parents focus their children on the future and decide what it is they are called to do, as well as to give their children age-appropriate responsibility.

“Otherwise, we are going to have people who are sheep instead of shepherds,” he said.

Maryville’s Strengthening Families program at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, 4640 N. Ashland Ave., also takes advantage of the time children are busy in religious education, offering discussions and speakers for parents, said Jose Sanchez, who runs the program. About 180 families took advantage of it in its first two years, he said.

“It’s really about how parents transmit their principals, transmit their values to their kids,” Sanchez said.

Meetings are in Spanish, and most of the families are of Mexican background, although some hail from other Latin American countries. Participants take time to talk about their cultural values and identify those they see as positive and those that are negative, he said.

For example, there is sometimes a tradition of excessive physical punishment passed on from one generation to the next. If parents want to change that, it can be important for them to find a way to pardon their own parents so they can move on, Sanchez said.

“It’s almost a process of reconciliation, even if their parents or grandparents have died or aren’t here,” he said.

Speakers address topics such as how to properly hold and care for newborns, and to make sure the babies do not get shaken even in fun, Sanchez said. Discussions also cover showing respect for all family members verbally as well as physically.

“When we talk about violence, we talk about language in the home,” he said. “For small kids, parents are everything. Parents are their model. And it’s important for us to be a good reference for them. Eventually, kids are going to become independent of the parents. The important thing is for us to build the self-esteem and the identity in the early years.”

For Amy Kendal-Lynch, director of Maryville’s Crisis Nursery, parenting education has to start very early. The Crisis Nursery provides a safe place for parents who have no other resources to leave children up to age 6 while they deal with whatever has cropped up, be it an urgent medical appointment or a job interview or just a need to breathe for a few hours.

The nursery also hosts parenting classes open to all twice a month, Kendal-Lynch said.

“In our minds, it starts very young,” she said. “Our intention is for parents to gain information about discipline and positive ways of reinforcing good behavior. We are trying to lay some basic foundations of how kids are.”

Part of the problem, Kendal- Lynch said, is that parents, especially parents of very young children, are often cut off from communities of other parents, and they might not know what normal development looks like, so they might expect too much from young children, or not realize when they need to seek help.

They also might just need someone to commiserate over the struggles of raising young children, she said.

Parents often find informal support networks when their children start school, but for mothers of infants and toddlers, it can be difficult.

“That’s where there needs to be more support in the Chicago area,” Kendal-Lynch said. “There’s not a lot of parenting classes in the areas that need them most.”

Having such classes could help alleviate violent behavior toward children and reduce the likelihood that children will use violent behavior themselves as they grow up.

“It goes back to parenting stress,” she said. “We want to decrease the maltreatment of children, but to do that we have to decrease parenting stress. It really does take a village. You can’t do this by yourself.”