Parental linguistic support in a home environment is associated with language development of preschool-aged children.

AIM: In today's increasingly digitalised society, there is a growing need for information on how parents can support their children's language development at home. We investigated the associations between three types of parental linguistic support and children's language skills in different domains.

METHODS: Between April 2019 and March 2020, 164 children aged between 2.5 and 4.1 years and their parents were recruited via daycare centres in Helsinki. Information on how frequently parents read, told free stories and sang to their children was collected. The children's lexical and grammatical skills and general language ability were assessed using validated instruments.

RESULTS: More frequent reading, storytelling and singing were all separately associated with higher-level expressive lexical and general expressive language ability. More frequent reading and storytelling were also associated with higher-level phonological skills. Only reading was associated with receptive skills. The regression analyses revealed that reading had the highest explanatory value for lexical and general language ability after controlling for the effect of background factors. Furthermore, storytelling had the highest explanatory value for grammatical skills.

CONCLUSION: The results highlight the benefits of parental reading. However, broad use of all parental linguistic activities is recommended to support the development of children's different language domains.