Mother-child conversations at 36 months and at pre-kindergarten: Relations to children's school readiness

Abstract

The contributions of mothers' and children's oral language to children's school readiness were longitudinally examined among 75 low-income mothers and children. When children were 36 months, mothers' and children's lexical diversity, mothers' wh-questions, and children's PPVT-III scores were assessed from play interactions. At pre-kindergarten, mothers and children shared a personal narrative, and various aspects of mothers' and children's narratives were coded. Children were assessed on their knowledge about print, letter-word identification, mathematical skills and sustained attention, and scores were combined into a single factor of school readiness. Structural equation analyses yielded two pathways to school readiness. Mothers' wh-questions and lexical diversity predicted children's PPVT-III scores at 36 months, which in turn predicted children's school readiness. Mothers' 36-month lexical diversity predicted mothers' narrative prompts, which related to children's narrative contributions. Children's narrative contributions in turn predicted school readiness. Mother-child conversations support the school readiness of children from low-income backgrounds.

Parenting predictors of cognitive skills and emotion knowledge in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers

“…Future studies should examine whether there are indirect influences of parental inferential language on children's literacy and math via effects on children's language skills. Support for similar mediational models has been found in prior studies (Cristofaro & Tamis-LaMonda, 2012; Forget-Dubois et al, 2009). Further research is also needed to understand the optimal proportions of parental inferential language input at different stages of development.…”

Family-based training program improves brain function, cognition, and behavior in lower socioeconomic status preschoolers

“…Most notably, children in the PCMC-A group made greater gains on standardized measures of language and IQ. These results are particularly important because children's IQ and early language abilities are predictive of school readiness and later academic achievement (4,7,(48)(49)(50)(51). Parents of children in the PCMC-A group also reported greater improvements in child social skills and reductions in problem behaviors.…”

Promoting parent academic expectations predicts improved school outcomes for low-income children entering kindergarten

“…Mediation was expected, given prior research linking these parenting behaviors with children’s academic success (Cristofaro, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012; Zimmerman et al, 2009). A prior study of REDI-P suggested that children made more academic gains during intervention when their parents had high levels of warmth and responsiveness at baseline; conversely parents gained more warmth and responsiveness during intervention when they had low levels at baseline (Mathis & Bierman, 2015).…”

“…REDI-P also encouraged parent-child conversations, by providing games with embedded questions, and by providing ideas for interactive dramatic play (Madden, O’Hara, & Levenstein, 1984). The focus on increasing high-quality parent-child conversations was based on research demonstrating the importance of parent-child conversations to language development (Zimmerman et al, 2009), and evidence that parent use of open-ended questions promotes academic school readiness (Cristofaro & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012). In order to support child social-emotional learning, the content of REDI-P stories and parent-child activities featured the characters and social-emotional skills introduced in the Preschool PATHS Curriculum at school, emphasizing cooperation, caring, compliments, emotional understanding, and self-control (Domitrovich et al, 2007).…”