The Herrera family poses for a picture at an ice rink. *February 2024.
SAN DIEGO – When a person or family comes to ECS for help, the goal is not to give them a band-aid and send them on their way but to provide them with resources and support that will last them a lifetime. Hezekiah Herrera, a former Para Las Familias (PLF) parent and current ECS board member, went through therapy at PLF with his two children, and although the family graduated from the program about three years ago, they can still see the impact in their lives today.
Herrera has shared his family’s journey with the ECS community in the past, explaining how he went through a divorce and how that unexpected change, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, created extreme challenges for his children.
“Our family was torn apart by that divorce,” Herrera said. “There was this kind of seismic shift that brought about immense heartache and turmoil into everyone’s life.” When presented with this challenge, he was unsure who to turn to or how to ask for help. “From one day to the next, you’re now a single parent,” Herrera said as he recalled how hard it was to watch his children process this change. The obstacles in front of them seemed too big to take on. “The consistency of the instability was replaced with confusion, anger, and an overwhelming sense of loss,” Herrera said.
Herrera’s parents fostered several children during his childhood, so he was familiar with early childhood mental health services and the importance of forming a secure attachment. He had also heard of PLF years earlier when they were doing outreach. The situation he found himself in was challenging, but PLF was there when he and his family needed someone to turn to.
Herrera’s daughter enjoys arts and crafts at school. *February 2024.
“Together with Para Las Familias, we began to rebuild these broken bonds and started to nurture this secure attachment that paved the way for feeling and a reversal of a lot of that trauma we had all endured,” Herrera said.
Both of Herrera’s children benefited greatly from the services at PLF. His daughter used to have emotional outbursts and often isolated herself. Herrera shared how she used to struggle with transitions, making daily tasks like getting ready for school and entering her classroom each morning hard. “She refused it. She would yell and say, ‘I’m not going to go to school.’ And on the first day of kindergarten, she ran off, tore her clothes off, tried to hop the fence that same day and we had principals, teachers, everybody just running around. It looked like something out of a cartoon,” he said. “It was very challenging.” Now, with the work learned at PLF, her transition time to the classroom only takes a minute. His daughter can express herself, communicate her feelings, and has become what Herrera called a “model student” in the classroom.
His son deals with anxiety and the urge to achieve constant perfection. As a result, he used to become very upset at losing, but now he knows it doesn’t matter. Herrera recalled how, while watching a movie in which a character lost, his son said, “‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you helped people.’” These lessons that PLF has helped children learn at a young age are crucial for future relationships.
Herrera’s son smiles while exploring the outdoors. *February 2024.
Herrera spoke about the importance of viewing disabilities and mental health with inclusivity and understanding, practices that PLF teaches. “Instead of trying to get those individuals with those disabilities to conform with our society, we need to be able to be more accommodating with them,” Herrera said. “ECS provided those lifetime tools to help him [his son] and help those individuals around him better support him.”
During his experience with PLF, Herrera and his children developed a secure attachment style, which has guided their relationship in the years since therapy. When someone told the family to leave a place of worship because his daughter was crying, Herrera said “You know what, we’re going to wait here until she’s ready”... I think something changed in that moment… I think she knew that I was going to be with her through thick and thin, and I wasn’t going to take anybody else’s side.”
Having patience, respecting dignity, and maintaining a healthy structure are key PLF lessons that Herrera applies daily. “I’ve never once had to raise my voice… they know that it’s coming out of a place of love,” he said.
PLF Program Manager Leslie Manriquez-Jimenez and Transitional Age Youth (TAY) Program Manager Karla Alonso worked with the Herrera family as their therapists while they were going through the program. Regarding Hezekiah Herrera’s PLF parenting journey, Manriquez-Jimenez commented that he “really took the program, took the tools he learned here and went with it, and we can see the impact it had for years to come.” PLF aims to equip families with the tools to overcome obstacles not only in their present lives, but years into their futures. The therapists help parents develop a sense of confidence in themselves “and what that does is they test what works with their children and their relationship with that child so, whenever some new behavior comes up, they are able to show up for their kids and trust their intuition. They’re not trusting interventions; they're trusting their intuition and that’s what we’re helping them develop here,” Manriquez-Jimenez said.
Herrera’s children smile together for a photo. *February 2024.
Since becoming the Program Manager at PLF, Manriquez-Jimenez has seen PLF nearly double the number of families they work with and expand to help children ages 6-12. She said, “We see that ripple effect going family-wide and community-wide. The more families we get to work with the more we get to hear them pass down what we teach them.”
In 2022 Herrera became a member of the ECS Board of Directors. When asked to take on the role, Herrera responded “Whatever you need, I am forever indebted.” He expressed how glad he is to see the expansion of PLF’s program reach a larger age range of children. He enjoys the opportunities the board gives him to spread the word on what ECS offers and the impact of its programs, especially as a former client.
“It’s okay to ask for help. We’re not alone in this journey. There are resources and people to support you and your kids through these difficult times that you’re going through,” Herrera said. “At Para Las Familias you’re not a number. You’re family. I’m quite positive of that. That embrace, and that desire for all of us to grow is there.”
Para Las Familias (PLF) is an outpatient behavioral and mental health clinic that provides a range of bilingual early childhood mental health services to low-income children 0 to 12 years old. Therapists at PLF provide screening, assessment, family and group therapy, school observation, teacher/provider consultation, and parenting groups. In addition, PLF also provides adult mental health services and weekly parenting groups. For more information visit https://www.ecscalifornia.org/para-las-familias.
*Caption dates may not be exact.