Purpose: This study examined how mothers' question-asking behavior relates to their child's syntactic skills. One important aspect of maternal question-asking behavior is the use of complex questions when speaking with children. These questions can differ based on both their purpose and structure. The purpose may be to seek out information, to…

Maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child clean-up task at 18 months and maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child free-play task at 18 months were tested as independent predictors of child internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, social competence, and language development at 24 months. Participants (n = 292 mothers)…

Parents play an important role in children's language development. To our knowledge, no studies have compared fathers' and mothers' use of gestural and verbal communication in dyadic versus triadic contexts. This study aimed at analyzing similarities and differences in the bimodal communication of parents when they play alone with their infant and…

The secure base phenomenon was ascribed to changes in exploration observed during Ainsworth's Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), related to the quality of the attachment relationship. However, infant temperament was not taken into consideration. The current study aims to replicate Ainsworth's findings regarding infant exploration and attachment…

Cross-case study research was used to explore the school readiness of four 5-year-old children entering kindergarten during the 2020-2021 school year after three or more years of play-based early childhood education at a Reggio Emilia-inspired early childhood education center. Data included a series of three 1-h individual interviews with four…

This qualitative study explored mothers' and fathers' perspectives on children's play through semi-structured interviews. Fifteen fathers and 19 mothers were interviewed using open-ended questions. Interviews were audio-recorded and analyzed using open coding. Several themes emerged related to the definition of play, use of play, play activities,…

A unique component of early childhood involves understanding how caregivers and educators promote children's developmental outcomes, with play opportunities being a key avenue for enhancing these skills. Targeted coaching is one type of support that can tap into active family engagement during playful learning. This collective case study examined…

The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the…

Background: Maternal input plays an important role in influencing linguistic development during the first years of life, and it is evident that mothers adapt their language according to their child's characteristics. Recently, it was demonstrated that maternal input addressed to children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) at 8 months of age is…

Caregivers' goals influence their interactions with their children. In this preregistered study, we examined whether directing parents to "teach" their baby versus "learn" from their baby influenced the extent to which they engaged in intrusive (e.g., controlling, adult-centered rather than child-centered), sensitive, warm, or…

As infants interact with the object world, they generate rich information about object properties and functions. Much of infant learning unfolds in the presence of caregivers, who talk about and act on the objects of infant play. Does mother joint engagement correspond to real-time changes in the complexity and duration of infant object…

The synchronization characteristics of mothers and their 3-year-old children living in large and nuclear family types were examined in a semi-structured play process. Grounded multi-case research was used. The participants of the study consisted of 12 mothers along with their 3-year-old children. Family type (extended and nuclear) and gender of…

The aim of the study is to examine the symbolic play behaviours of the child and mother at home and to determine how the mother participated when playing with her child. The study included 19 mothers and their children with 24-36 months old children from Turkey. The symbolic play that the mother and child played together in their home environment…

In this article, the author explores the question: in what ways do multiracial boys and their mothers explain play and violence in their everyday experiences at school, home, and in their neighborhoods? The author borrows concepts from BlackCrit, Black PlayCrit, and Critical Mixed Race Studies to analyse interview data with Black mixed-race boys…

We investigated the dynamic relationships between children's risky play attempts in a naturalistic setting, their injury experience, and their self-control ability. To test this, we administered surveys to 862 mothers of 3- to 5-year-olds. The results showed that children who tried more diverse types of risky play experienced more injuries in…