MIAMI -- The parents of 14-year-old Michael Hernandez visit their son in prison -- but now they say the boy they see is not the boy they knew.

Michael is charged with the murder in February of his friend and classmate, Jaime Gough, and now he spends his days in a special wing of an adult prison.

In this exclusive series of Local 10 interviews, Manny and Kathy Hernandez, Michael's parents, talked to Rad Berky.

"As far as how he is doing -- it's very difficult, very difficult to say sometimes," Manny Hernandez said. "He just doesn't feel, like, I don't really feel that he is fully aware of everything at this point."

Michael Hernandez is the youngest prisoner in the Turner-Guilford Knight Correction Center. It is an adult facility, but also makes special housing available for juveniles like Michael.

Janelle Hall, with the Department of Corrections showed Berky around a juvenile unit and its Spartan cells, each furnished with nothing more than a toilet and sink, a table and a mat for a hard bed.

Hall said, "This is jail ... it's meant to be hard."

Kathy Hernandez said, "They can only have clothes taken to them every six months. They have to be certain colors, and I guess they assume you know all this, which we didn't."

His parents described for the first time about their difficult visits with Michael.

They must sit on one side of a glass now and try to have a conversation with their son, who they may no longer touch or hold at will.

EXTRAS Jaime Gough Memorial Fund Interactive Excerpts From Hernandez's Journal (file takes time to load Share Your Thoughts

"And you are shouting back and forth, and so you try to get closer to the glass and you have to look up to see if he really heard you and he does the same thing on his side," Kathy Hernandez said. "It's very hard. It is very hard."

They don't talk with Michael about the murder or the strange journal he kept or the hit list of potential victims. Instead they try to talk about world events, or sometimes just what he had for breakfast or lunch.

"It's a very hard hour to be there because you can't touch him," Kathy Hernandez said. "You can't have a normal conversation. Sometimes we run out of things to talk about." While most of the visits are through glass, once a month the jail allows what are called contact visits where people can hold each other's hand again or put their arms around one another.

In the three months Michael has been here, his parents have had only one contact visit.

"The contact visit has to be initiated by Michael who is a 14-year old child," Kathy said. "So, he is supposed to know all this, too? So, it's very difficult, very difficult."

There is a concrete recreation yard, but even the basketball hoop is covered by wire. All of the juvenile inmates are still being educated. Each day Miami-Dade teachers come in and hold classes.

As an eighth-grader, Michael is continuing a middle-school-level education, and jail officials say he is never a problem.

Hall said, "Nothing as far as controversy. He's just a very quiet individual and ... causes no trouble at all."

Life for Michael now is far from what his parents say they ever imagined and if he is convicted as an adult, his prison term could last the rest of his life, with no hope of parole.

"My hope is that Michael is a child and to say that a child cannot be helped is not right and to say that a child should be charged as an adult is not right," Kathy Hernandez said.

Thursday this series continues at 6 p.m. with a look at the anguish of this family. The pain they feel is obviously not the pain felt by the Gough family, but Berky says it is clear it is a very real pain.

Click here to watch the video of this interview.

The Hernandez Interviews:

Part I

Part II