Play, while complex, is essential for children's learning and development. It is well established in the literature that there is a strong link between children's pretend play abilities and their language skills, particularly in relation to the use of language in social contexts. For many children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), pretend…

Children are members of families and communities, and the languages learnt within these contexts contribute to a child's sense of "belonging, being and becoming" throughout life (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009). Encouraging children to bring their home languages into early childhood education and care…

Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings are increasingly linguistically diverse. About 1 in 4 children including First Nations children speak a language other than English at home. However, while many multilingual children thrive in ECEC, those who are not proficient in English at the start of school experience developmental…

Evidence suggests that parental mind-mindedness is important for children's social-emotional development; however, almost all research exploring mind-mindedness has been conducted with families from Western backgrounds. The current study explored cross-cultural differences in mind-mindedness based on observed real-time interactions between urban…

This guide was created because parents revealed, through extensive social research, that they often received inconsistent and confusing parenting information from different professionals and practitioners across different disciplines, leading to misunderstandings and a lack of confidence about how best to support their children's development. In…

Recent research has demonstrated that parents' beliefs about their children's minds constitute an important environmental factor affecting children's development. One difficulty with this area of investigation is that beliefs are often implicit, unconscious, and not always accessible through direct questioning. This study addresses this difficulty…

Examines the case of two five-year-old twin boys with delayed language development, yet judged to be articulate and successful students in kindergarten. Suggests that the delay appeared because most of their interaction had been with each other. However, through their family they became acquainted with the discourse activities that are valued at…