Social contexts of development: Parent-child interactions during reading and play

Abstract

The study purpose was to describe parent—child engagement and parental guidance of children’s participation in literacy-related activities at home. Of the 37 families who participated in a home-based multimethod assessment of storybook reading and play activities, 13 were considered low income. The children’s mean age was 60 months. Parents read two storybooks with their child and engaged in a 15-minute play session with toys related to the stories. Results indicated that the overall amount of guidance provided did not differ due to income level of the families. Certain findings indicated that middle income parents provided greater support for early literacy learning, in that they engaged in more teaching during reading, made more connections between the book and the play episode, and reported reading to their children daily. However, regardless of income or education, parents provided high levels of support to sustain the children’s interest and engagement in both activities, using social connections such as humor and personal references. The extent to which both teaching-oriented guidance and socio-emotional involvement in early home-based literacy activities may be linked to enjoyment, motivation and success in subsequent school-based literacy experiences warrants further investigation among economically diverse families.