Police Program Aids Parents in Handling Teen-Age Rebels : Workshops: Bilingual sessions target mothers and fathers of children who ditch school, belong to gangs or become violent.

NORTHEAST LOS ANGELES —  Lena Navarro has always distrusted law enforcement. “I’ve never, never, never in my life supported any police activity,” she said. But now she’s turning to police officers to help her with the most personal of problems--raising her two children.

Navarro is one of about 60 parents attending weekly classes sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division. Taught by two police officers and two psychologists, the bilingual workshops target the mothers and fathers of teen-agers who have problems ranging from ditching school to belonging to gangs to physically abusing their parents.

Supporters of the program say police officers’ involvement in the classes gives parents a much needed sense of strength, as well as practical advice that ordinary counseling might not provide.

Since she started to work with the police, Navarro said, her children have become more cooperative. “The ultimate encounter you’re going to have is with the law, and who better to teach you the relationship between everyday problems and the law besides (the police)?” she said.

Navarro said her 13-year-old daughter had relatively minor brushes with the law--one involving a loud party--before police officers recommended her to the program. Although she admits that her daughter is not as badly behaved as some youths, Navarro, who was raised in a strict family in the Philippines, is frustrated by her daughter’s rebelliousness.

“My children are being raised in a completely different situation,” she said. “I don’t know how to deal with it.”

Since beginning the workshops, Navarro has decided to send both her children to live with her parents in the Philippines at least until the end of the school year, but she is, nonetheless, staying in the class.

Like many of the parents in the program, Navarro, whose husband died five years ago, is raising her children without the help of a father. “What (single mothers) want is someone strong,” said Katherine Coleman, a counselor with the Los Angeles Unified School District who refers parents to the program. “They’re worn-out. They’re run-down.”

By teaching parents strategies to deal with troublesome children, Coleman said, the program can also help prevent child abuse.

At a recent Tuesday night workshop at Marshall High School, Officer Steve Ochoa--dressed in a tie and jacket--led parents through several lessons in a 71-page booklet called “A Parent’s Guide to Changing Destructive Adolescent Behavior.” Ochoa, who works for the Hollenbeck division, advised his students on how to deal with runaways, children who threaten suicide and those with violent behavior.

The workshop was a testament to how bad things have gotten in some families. A mother described getting badly beaten by her teen-age daughter, who, she said later, had also helped “trash” her house during a “ditching party” she hosted for her gang-member friends. Another mother described a daughter who refused to take anything she said seriously. A father compared his teen-age son’s attempt to run away to watching him drown. The voices of parents sometimes conveyed anger and desperation.

The workshops clearly take the side of the parents and stress the importance of laying down rules. Officer Katherine MacWillie, who initiated the program at the Northeast Division, said she discourages children from attending for fear they would learn how to defeat the parenting “tactics” their parents learn.

During the class, Ochoa told parents that their children often cannot be persuaded by reason because they respond emotionally to situations. What’s more, they aren’t always truthful, he said: “Generally speaking, kids are going to lie and deny about everything.”

Kenny Diaz, a 15-year-old LAPD explorer, watched the proceedings with an approving eye from the doorway. Such meetings “really do help,” said Diaz, who had volunteered to assist MacWillie at the evening classes. A program in which parents and teen-agers both attend support groups at Luther Burbank Middle School helped straighten him out, he said.

Ochoa tried to get parents in the class to see things from their child’s perspective. That is what James Kholos wants to do. A former police officer, Kholos complained that his son has gone from an “athletic, highly successful individual to an aficionado of heavy metal” music and has had at least one confrontation with police. “You have to do more than just set an example as a mentor,” he said. “You need to see his level.”

MacWillie, herself a parent of two children, is the guiding force behind the parenting program. She also acts as a kind of counselor, giving advice to parents and their children, providing referrals, helping parents find runaways and even attending classes at local schools to see how a child is faring. MacWillie said she will also tell uncooperative parents on welfare that they can go to jail if their children do not attend school.

MacWillie likes to tell the story of how a hardened gang member who had hit his mother several times exposed his feelings to her when she brought him down to the police station one day. He tearfully told her that he felt that his mother didn’t love him. “A lot of these kids don’t feel love,” MacWillie said.

MacWillie, who has worked for the Northeast Division since June, has earned the admiration of parents.

“She has become almost like . . . the older sister to me,” said one mother, who asked that her name not be used. “If things are bad, then she asks us to come over to the station.”

In adopting the parenting program, the Northeast Division is following in the footsteps of the Hollenbeck Division, which has given these same seminars to as many as 3,800 parents over the past two years, said Hollenbeck Officer Donna Alvarado.

The program was designed by a clinical psychologist, an education specialist and an 18-year veteran of the Pomona Police Department who was having trouble with his own teen-age son. MacWillie said 250 parents were invited to attend the classes, which cost $10. That fee also covers transportation, baby-sitting and workbooks. The program targets six schools in the Northeast area.

One of the goals of the parenting class is to reduce truancy, which MacWillie regards as a warning that a child is having difficulties. An estimated 90,000 of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are absent from school every day for one reason or another. The district has only about 180 counselors, such as Coleman, whose job it is to ensure kids go to school.

MacWillie promised no overnight miracles for parents taking the class. “A lot of these kids have been misbehaving for so long,” she said.

Navarro said she was initially skeptical. “Your first reaction when you get there is to be repelled or go against it, just like in traffic school,” she said.

At the Tuesday night session, Navarro seemed to resist Ochoa’s lesson about how to create the right atmosphere to confront an errant child without interruption: Taking the phone off the hook. Closing the door. Ignoring the doorbell. Turning off the TV or radio. Navarro said she found the suggestions extreme.

“Is there a justification why a parent should have to go through these things?” she asked, with evident frustration.

MacWillie, who had been watching from the sidelines, was quick to respond, taking what could almost be described as a stern parental tone. “These are your children. You love them and you want the best for them,” she said. “You’re either going to pay now or pay later.”