Enhancing adolescent parent interactions in communication through facilitative playgroups.

Abstract

Adolescent pregnancy can impact the educational attainment of adolescent mothers and language development of their children. However, support services and interventions can mitigate these risk factors. Adolescent mothers have shown success in implementing various language facilitation strategies (LFS) with their children when coached. We developed a triadic language intervention in a facilitated playgroup context to supportadolescent mothers' use of language strategies when interacting with their children. The current pilot study utilized apre-test,post-testdescriptive approach toanalyzedifferences inadolescent mothers'language use and parenting behaviors and their children'slanguage useafter participation in facilitated playgroups. All adolescent mothers demonstrated enhanced parenting practices. Changes in mothers' and children's language from pre- to post-test were variable across participants. While this pilot study shows promising evidence of the utility of a triadic intervention situated in playgroups with adolescent families, further research is required to address the limitations of this study.