Collaboration-focused parenting beliefs support interaction quality and child language skills.

What is it about?

Strong early language is associated with lower risk of long-term adverse academic, social, and health outcomes. Children's interactions with their parents before age 5 support their language skills. Strengths and needs within the child, caregiver, and the environment can influence language development. Much research has focused on documenting group-level trends in children's language skills based on socioeconomic status. Systems-level supports (e.g., universal free pre-K) can help provide equitable access to high-quality early language experiences. However, individual family strengths and needs vary regardless of socioeconomic status. This article demonstrates how knowledge and beliefs about parenting might be more informative for individual clinical decisions than group-level characteristics such as socioeconomic status.

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