Sharpen Your
Skills As a Parent

Youth join gangs because they provide support, care, and a sense of order and purpose – all the things parents try to give to their children. Odds are that the more effectively parents meet these needs; the less likely children are to seek fulfillment through gangs. The following are important parenting skills to learn and use consistently:

• Talk with and listen to your child.
• Spend special quality time with each child.
• Put a high value on education and help your child do his or her best in school. Starting when they enter school and continuing through graduation.
• Help your kids identify positive role models and heroes, especially people in your community.
• Do everything possible to involve your children in supervised, positive group activities.
• Praise them for doing well.
• Encourage them to do their very best.
• Know what your children are doing and with whom.
• Find out about their friends and their friends’ families.
• Talk about gangs before they become a problem.
• Tell your child that you disapprove of gangs, and you don’t want to see them involved.
• Remind your child they’re special and worth protecting.
• Make yourself open to help your child with their problems.
• Encourage them to not keep secrets from you.
• Ask them to help you and other parents work together against gangs.

Download our Parent Presentation 2009

What to Look For!

Gangs leave signs of their presence. Your child may adopt some of those signs as either someone who wants to be a gang member, already a gang member or is imitating gang behavior and dress. Your child may be:

• Wearing specific colors or emblems on clothing
• Special hand signals to form letters with their fingers
• Gang symbols or graffiti on their room walls, books and school supplies, or clothing
• Major and negative behavior changes, such as:
• Declining school performance
• Staying out late at night without a good reason
• “Hanging around” with known or suspected gang members
• Carrying weapons
• Possessing unexplained, relatively large sums of money

Please keep in mind that just because your child may be reflecting one or more of these behaviors, it does not mean they are joining a gang. But this should be a warning to you to take a more active roll in your child’s life to correct this behavior.