Enhancing adolescent parent interactions in communication through facilitative playgroups

Abstract

Adolescent pregnancy can impact the educational attainment of adolescent mothers and language development of their children. However, support services and interventions can mitigate these risk factors. Adolescent mothers have shown success in implementing various language facilitation strategies (LFS) with their children when coached. We developed a triadic language intervention in a facilitated playgroup context to support adolescent mothers’ use of language strategies when interacting with their children. The current pilot study utilized a pre-test, post-test descriptive approach to analyze differences in adolescent mothers’ language use and parenting behaviors and their children’s language use after participation in facilitated playgroups. All adolescent mothers demonstrated enhanced parenting practices. Changes in mothers’ and children’s language from pre- to post-test were variable across participants. While this pilot study shows promising evidence of the utility of a triadic intervention situated in playgroups with adolescent families, further research is required to address the limitations of this study.

Breaking Cyclic Intergenerational Literacy Deficits: Describing Linguistic Interactions Between Adolescent Mothers and Their Young Children

“…Data were obtained from two separate sources. Dataset A was collected for the purposes of the current study, starting in 2019, and Dataset B originated from a retrospective analysis of the pretest phase of a 2018 study (Abarca et al, 2023). The aim of said study was to assess the impact of a parent-implemented intervention on AMs’ use of language facilitation strategies.…”