ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews parents’ role in children’s early language development and the features of child-directed speech that promote language learning. It provides to parenting in play and examines how parent–child play interactions support children’s exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play skills through children’s second year of life, and review evidence for cross-domain associations between parent–child play and children’s language development. The chapter focuses on specifically on object play, which provides children with opportunities to engage in joint attention with parents, learn language, and use their imaginations in pretense. It examines how cultural contexts shape parent–child language and play interactions and end with pedagogical implications and future research directions. The chatper describes these features of parent language input and how parents developmentally scaffold word learning in children by modifying their speech to accommodate children’s changing skills.
