The Family That Plays Together . . . Is the Goal of This Special School Program

It’s 6 p.m. in the tidy San Pedro neighborhood surrounding Leland Elementary School, and the clerk in the Alma Street Video Rental Shop is as lonely as a Maytag repairman. “Zeus & Roxanne” and “Honey We Shrunk Ourselves,” the current children’s favorites, remain available.

On this balmy spring evening the streets are eerily empty in a David Lynch sort of way, the jacarandas congratulating each other. One or two children careen around corners on their bikes, and the feckless wanderer can spot two or three mothers with strollers in a 10-block radius. A few dapper men gather in front of the Italian American Club, and the Grandview Methodist Church is closed up for the night.

Could it be in this dysfunctional era that all these little 4.2-member families are snug at the dinner tables? After which they will head directly to the elementary school to spend an hour at something new called “Family Night,” learning how to play with their youngsters?

Stranger things have happened.

“Family Night” is the brainchild of a Leland third-grade teacher named Michele Clayton, who is also a single mother.

Research tells us that one of the most valuable things we can do as parents is read to our children, “but we also need to play together--inside, outside and upside-down!” she says. “The more involved parents are, the more successful children are. . . . They have better verbal skills, they learn quicker and they cooperate better with other people.”

Yes, yes, but can things really have gotten so desperate that we have to be taught how to play with our own children? What kind of disoriented, disenfranchised parent signs up for “Family Night” at the local elementary school?

I wouldn’t know. I didn’t meet anyone who fit that description. The families that came to Leland to play with their children not only knew the rules of the games, they were committed to playing them--in spite of considerable obstacles--and not just on “Family Night.”

Eighty families fill the school cafeteria. They arrive on time, carrying two to three children. In about half of the families, both parents come. There are even some grandmothers and a few uncles.

Each table has a different game donated by a shoe company--Go Fish, Checkers, Old Maid--and is presided over by a teacher or a volunteer. The rule is that families must “travel” together from table to table.

Second-grader Jessica Gamboa is creaming her father, Gerry, at checkers. “I’m learning something here,” he grins.

Samantha “Peanut” Ramirez, who will be 4 in December, is winning a dice game, which only adds to her solemn elegance. Her opponent, sister Gizelle “Jelly,” waits patiently for fate to come around.

Martin and Maria Ramirez’s third daughter died earlier this year, but tonight they are here to have fun and to peel Samantha away from the TV. “She watches three to four hours a day,” her father says. “She won’t even speak Spanish to us anymore!” Gizelle, by contrast, would much rather play a game.

Maria is home with the children during the day and is an active member in the PTA. Martin is home each night by 7, which he considers very late. The family, like most of those in this room, eat dinner together each night.

Leland Elementary’s principal, Jo Brown, whose own mother was home with her until she was in the eighth grade, sees firsthand that fewer families are able to participate in their children’s lives. School psychologists are kept busy with children upset by divorce, angry that Dad doesn’t visit, or saddened when they see other families together. Many children are living with their grandparents. Two-thirds of the 720 students qualify for free school lunches.

That makes it even more important, says teacher Clayton, to make the school work as a community center, “a place for a child to safely come to learn and play and for parents to feel welcome, to create a family, school, community team, a village.”

This is a village that rarely sleeps.

Oscar Amaya, who with his wife, Naomi, has three children, works from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. just so he can be home with his children. Linda Vidovich, with a 3-month-old and a fourth-grader, holds dinner as long as it takes when her husband works overtime, so the family can sit down together.

“You do what you have to do,” says Tina Del Real, who is here tonight with her daughter Samantha Morales, another daughter Victoria “Tori” Suggs (who is also beating every adult in sight at the board game table), Grandma Wendy Armstrong (who looks better rested than anyone else in this patchwork family) and fiance Brian, who works as a casual longshoreman.

At 6:30 a.m. each day, Brian waits on the waterfront until he gets work or they call “no flops” at 10 a.m. Tina works 32 to 36 hours a week and is usually home by 5:45 p.m. They rely on friends and relatives to transport the children from school to baseball to choir practice to home.

“Everyone has their separate lives,” says Tina, “but we’re thinking of trying to do this game night thing once a week together.”

Tori holds up the game board she has just finished making for Brian to see. His face, one side with a long scar that would do Marlon Brando proud, breaks into a huge grin.

“That’s just beautiful, honey,” he beams.