Family Influence On Language Development

A child’s environment can influence their entire life. Family members are often a large part if not the largest part of a child’s environment. By that standard we could assume that family members impact a child’s development and more specifically their language development. Throughout my research I found the impact of siblings on vocabulary competences and parental home literacy involvement on school readiness. The article Sibling Structure and Educational Achievement: How Do the Number of Siblings, Birth Order, and Birth Spacing Affect Children’s Vocabulary Competences? by Claudia Karwath, Ilona Relikowski and Monja Schmitt is a great resource for understanding how a family can impact a child’s vocabulary and early education. According to

Baker’s article Fathers’ and Mothers’ Home Literacy Involvement and Children’s Cognitive and Social Emotional Development: Implications for Family Literacy Programs examined the, “relations between fathers’ and mothers’ home literacy involvement at 24 months and children’s cognitive and social emotional development in preschool…using a large sample of African American and Caucasian families” (Baker, 2013, p. 184). Baker’s research has expanded my own research by looking at how parent involvement in literacy can improve a child’s school

184). According to Bronfenbrenner and his ecological theory, “adults in the child’s proximal environment likely have the most influence on the child’s cognitive and social emotional development. Particularly important are the close proximal processes or relationships within these contexts that are postulated to drive the development of the child” (as cited in Baker, 2013, p. 185). Although the majority of these studies discussed have focused on the mother’s role rather than the father’s role, “cognitively stimulating parent-child interactions,” in literature during the early childhood period, “promote reading, math, and social emotional skills prior to kindergarten” (as cited in Baker, 2013, p. 185). In Lily’s case, she has received this “cognitively stimulating parent-child interaction,” on a regular basis from a very young age, but Jack has not been as lucky. When he was younger, Jack was rarely read to from a