9 - Parent Education in Latino Families of Children with Language Impairment

Summary

This chapter focuses on describing parent education methodology to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse families and their children with language impairment. The authors highlight the need to support parents in mediating the home language with their children. They describe research with a group of Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers of children with language impairment. Their questions focused on whether early literacy intervention in the L1 (Spanish) can support vocabulary gains across languages in bilingual children with difficulty in language acquisition and whether mothers’ home language practices can improve with intervention. The mothers were trained to mediate language interactions with their children by engaging in shared reading and play activities with support for word concepts and grammar. Children who received early literacy support in Spanish made gains across languages when compared with a waiting control group. This chapter explains theoretical perspectives in parent education, research on the benefits of bilingualism, the research design, ethical considerations in parent education, and a description of the materials provided to parents.