SAN DIEGO -- Anita Levario pulls her 3-year-old son Gabriel up onto the comfy chair, and opens up a small yellow book about trucks.

"This dump truck is almost as tall as a house," she reads aloud.

Levario says she has always taken the time to read to Gabriel and her 10-month old son, Nicolas, especially when they were traveling from town to town, homeless.

Few other homeless parents have that luxury. For most homeless adults, it's difficult to make family time amid the chaos of their lives.

"I think families, when they've been in situations where their main concern is food for their children or a roof over their heads, they haven't had the time or the energy to focus on their kids," says Linda Fox, Program Coordinator for Solutions for Kids.

"For them to sit down, have the time to sit down and read their child a book, for instance, is not something that's been on their agenda."

Solutions for Kids hopes to change that. Funded by the First 5 Commission of San Diego, the program is offered to families living at the North County Solutions for Change shelter in Vista.

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'Solutions For Kids' Helps Homeless Parents

It provides parenting seminars, classes, and counseling to homeless parents, whose children are under the age of five. The program also helps homeless adults prepare their children to be ready to start kindergarten.

Fox says the classes are vital because few homeless adults grew up in stable home.

"We find that a lot of the families that are here the parents have come out of really dysfunctional families and a lot of them have drug and alcohol histories themselves and have not been in situations where they've had models of good parenting behavior," says Fox.

"Just simple things like not yelling at your children and watching what language you use with your children, and using physical kinds of punishment. A lot of that is what they were brought up with."

The parenting classes cover everything from healthy family interactions, to the basics, such as the importance of keeping up with doctors appointments.

Levario says that was an important lesson for her to learn, especially how important immunizations are to a child's health. She says got behind in Nicolas's immunizations because, "When you're on the streets it's hard because you go from one city to another and it's just hard to keep up with appointments and stuff."

Once a family has been in the shelter for a while and has established a healthy routine, Solutions for Kids starts fine-tuning parenting techniques.

"Say a mom really wants to work on her anger with her kids, or yelling, we can work out steps that she might want to try that week. And then come back the next week and see how that's going," Fox explains.

Levario, her husband and children now have a stable environment in the shelter. She says her family, like others in the shelter, is there for one thing: "to get housing and get jobs ... and to get our kids situation and to leave."

Her advice to other homeless parents? "Don't give up and ... there's hope, you know. Stay strong," she says. "Live for your kids ... kids come first."