Parents Plus: A Parent-Implemented Intervention for Preschool Children With Developmental Language Disorders

Area of Science:

• Child Development
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Parent engagement is crucial for early intervention services for children with disabilities, particularly language disorders.
• Parents often require specific training to effectively support their child's language development during early childhood.
• The Parents Plus intervention aims to equip parents with skills for fostering language development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To preliminarily test the efficacy and social validity of the Parents Plus intervention for parents of children with developmental language disorder.
• To assess the impact of the Parents Plus intervention on children's language skills.

Main Methods:

• A small-scale randomized controlled trial involving 31 parent-child dyads.
• 16 dyads received the Parents Plus intervention (online training and coaching in focused stimulation).
• 15 dyads were assigned to a control condition.

Main Results:

• The Parents Plus intervention demonstrated potential in enhancing children's vocabulary and morphosyntactic skills.
• Parents reported high social validity, finding the intervention's goals, content, procedures, and outcomes acceptable.
• The intervention utilizes focused stimulation, an evidence-based strategy.

Conclusions:

• The Parents Plus intervention is a promising, socially valid approach for supporting early language development in children with language disorders.
• Findings suggest implications for educational practices and highlight the need for future research in parent-mediated interventions.