"Is everything going well with Yuhui?" Zhang asks Liu Cuiping, Xing's mother.

"Oh yes. He hasn't fought with his classmates for months. He gets along with the other kids better," Liu answers as she leads Zhang into one of the three rooms in a courtyard.

"He is fine with his father also, although they still don't talk much," Liu adds.

The room, which the four members of Xing's family take shelter in, is no more than 12 sq m. It is dark even in the daytime and cold, since there is no heat. A large bed takes up almost all the space. On a shelf fixed to the wall rests an antique-looking TV set.

The TV is valued because it provides the household a few moments of entertainment every night when the father, an electric welder, comes back from his 10-hour shift.

Beside the bed is a low table where Liu prepares meals and at other times Yuhui and his younger sister do their homework. In another corner is a cupboard where all the other household appliances are squeezed in.

"Has Yuhui finished the assignment I gave him on my first visit, to wash his father's feet one time?" Zhang asks, keeping notes in a home-visit file that has Yuhui's name on it.

The mother shakes her head and smiles: "He is too shy to do his father the favor."

"Then keep encouraging him. That will improve their relationship," Zhang says.

Zhang used to be a fashion designer and mother. After retirement, she started volunteer work at the non-profit Beijing Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center. The center has been conducting a project on migrant family education over the past year, in cooperation with Beijing's four migrant schools.

The Xing family from Henan province is one of the four migrant households at which Zhang is a family education advisor.

"Many migrant parents entrust school with the overall education of their children. They don't realize that family is also a key factor for a child's growth," Zhang says.

Parent workshops and regular home visits are on offer to inspire fathers and mothers about the importance of love and care with children.

"We tell parents why they should be more involved in their children's lives. And we advise them how to better communicate with their children," Zhang adds.

Zhang recollects her first impression of Yuhui as a small, skinny and unlikable boy who, his headmaster said, was bad tempered and fought a lot.

She found the relationship between the boy and his parents was a bad one. They physically punished him every time he got into trouble. Yuhui didn't listen to his parents and seemed to hate his father.

The families Zhang is in charge of all have different problems, but in Yuhui's case it was a crisis.

"Many migrant parents received little schooling. The only thing they knew to correct children's behavior was physical punishment, when they found scolding useless. They probably learned it from their parents. This explains why some children like Yuhui behave aggressively at school," Zhang says.

Zhang has managed to gain Yuhui's trust. She once asked the boy to give his mother a cup of water and thank her for her love and hardship.

"He did it," Liu sobbed as her hand holding the cup shook with emotion.

"It was an ice-breaking moment, when they felt how much they loved each other," Zhang says.

However, it was a difficult task to persuade the parents to stop the physical punishment since they had got used to it. Plus, some parents, like Yuhui's father, don't believe a good talking to works. Zhang asked them to think of two things: Don't they also feel hurt after slapping their children? And is the punishment effective?

"I couldn't hold my temper at first when Yuhui played on the riverside again," Liu says. "Then I remembered Zhang's words. I tried to calm down and talked to him about how dangerous his behavior was. I had him promise not to do it again. And he has kept his word."

After that, Liu asked her husband not to beat the children any more. He didn't accept the idea, though he has learned to talk more to the children.

"Last month Yuhui asked me when it was his father's birthday and how we would celebrate on that day. It had never happened before," Liu says.