Meet Leslie Priscilla of Latinx Parenting

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leslie Priscilla.

Hi Leslie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Before working with parents, I worked with children for many years as a preschool teacher, and the impacts of parenting on children became more pronounced through that experience. In community college, I had fallen in love with child development and the possibility of raising and supporting the education of children in a way that honored their growth and desire to connect. When I got pregnant with my daughter in 2011, I experienced a deeper awareness of the need for me to heal my own childhood.

But I began to feel a deep frustration with not having my story or my culture considered as I read through the many mostly White-authored parenting books in search of alternative ways of parenting to how I was raised which had bred a lot of disconnection and resentment towards my parents in my youth. I felt the conversation around increased empathy, communication, and connection between parents and children to be important, but I didn’t see how this could be applied while still honoring the values I had learned and incorporated from growing up as a first-generation Xicana with Mexican immigrant parents. I knew my childhood wasn’t all bad and that my parents’ circumstances had contributed to how they were able and not able to parent me and meet my needs.

This frustration grew into a drive and passion for working with Latinx parents, specifically those who also wanted to break the cycles of violence that they grew up with while sustaining the beautiful parents of our culture.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been both smooth and not so smooth. Because I am in a position where parents and caregivers are looking to me for guidance on raising their children, I really challenge myself to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. It’s easy to tell parents that children’s tantrums are a result of their brain being flooded with cortisol and to utilize certain tools that will keep them regulated enough to stay with their children through that storm. What’s not easy is actually doing that in my own home 100% of the time. I tell parents, and myself, that we are all a work in progress and that we cannot expect to be perfect because we will put an additional pressure on ourselves that actually will not serve us or our children.

Another challenge has been recognizing what we are up against when it comes to a culture that very much celebrates and has normalized the use of the Chancla and authoritarian parenting practices that have hurt us as children. Not all of us have yet been able to acknowledge this. Daily I get sent DMs and messages from people sharing other accounts that are creating whole entire clothing lines celebrating la Chancla and thousands of comments under them laughing and supporting this message which ultimately harms Latinx children and our people. I have had to take many deep breaths and remember that I won’t be able to single-handedly #EndChanclaCulture in this lifetime but I do have a big role to play in planting the seeds of the trees underneath which my great grandchildren will sit one day. People will send me accolades but tell me that they don’t feel brave enough to share the posts that I share on their own accounts because they are afraid of the backlash from their Latinx family. It is definitely an uphill battle but I show up every day ready for it and knowing that the movement and community is much larger than me and that one day the majority of our people will be on board with decolonizing our parenting and liberating our familias from this oppression that begins in childhood, in our heads and hearts, in our homes, and in our communities.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Latinx Parenting is a bilingual organization rooted in children’s rights, social and racial justice and antiracism, the individual and collective practice of nonviolence and reparenting, intergenerational and ancestral healing, cultural sustenance, and the active decolonization of oppressive practices in our families. We are a trauma-informed and healing centered organization that is centered on building strengths and advocacy for Latinx families specifically.

We offer both online and in-person education opportunities that are anchored in parenting and reparenting practices. These offerings are not limited to parents; we also work with professionals and organizations so that people who work with Latinx families can be culturally sustaining in their practices. We also offer 1x workshops that are usually designed around what the community is needing and will soon also be opening up a Membership community called “El Pueblito.” This community is modeled after the village that my mom grew up in Chihuahua, Mexico so that parents can deepen their sense of feeling held and seen by others on similar journeys.

The work we do is unique in that we are intentionally working on decolonizing parenting specifically for Latinx families and we see this as a social justice movement. We want to make information available in a way that acknowledges and honors the richness and resilience of our culture rather than ignoring it and celebrates our own unique individual journeys within that culture as well. Most of the gentle parenting pages out there barely, if at all, address the tremendous impact of culture on our family dynamics. We are very aware of the challenges of having to navigate the parenting pressures from Anglo-American culture AND the pressures coming from our families and extended families. We are faced with a dilemma of feeling like we need to choose. We personally experience those challenges too! What we hope to convey is that there is a way to practice parenting with nonviolence while also being proud of our roots. We believe that being connected to our children can and should co-exist with remaining connected to our culture and that our needs are all equally important. We often have to remind ourselves that our ancestors also knew the inherent worth of children and many of these practices we see in our culture that treat children as “less than” are very much a product of conquest and colonization.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
People don’t know that I am constantly making mistakes in my own parenting journey. I mess up! A lot!!! I think people have this idea of parenting coaches as people who must have it together. However, it is precisely because I have made so many mistakes that I have been able to humble myself enough to remind parents of their own humanity and capacity for healing through the opportunities that parenting gives us to self-reflect.

Pricing:

• Our pricing ranges from $37 to $600+ depending on what the offering is but we always provide scholarships that are funded by our organization to make our offerings available to those who need or want it but might not be able to afford it. At this point we do not receive large sponsorships or donations.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@latinxparenting.org
• Website: https://www.latinxparenting.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latinxparenting/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latinxparenting
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/latinxparenting