BOX 5-1
An Example of Parent-Child Literacy-Oriented Interactions

A visit to the home of Jaime, 5, and Danny, 3:

Danny has just gotten up from a nap and is lying on the floor, not quite awake yet; Jaime has been watching Mister Rogers and is playing with his blocks and dinosaurs in the living room. In the corner there is a little bookshelf with 20 or so children's books, including three that are due back to the library the next day. (Making sure they are back in time will be Mom's job, since it is her day off from work.) There are also some puzzles, a magnetic board with letters, and a canvas bag filled with plastic farm animals. Dad is sitting on the sofa, reading the newspaper. In a few hours, after the boys' mother comes home from work, he will be leaving for his job as a night guard.

Dad takes the boys into the kitchen for some juice and crackers. As they finish he asks them if they want to hear a story.

"Yes!" they both say.

"Let's read Tacky the Penguin," Jaime says.

"No, I want the caterpillar," Danny whines.

"No! We read that last time!" Jaime says.

Before they can continue arguing Dad steps in. "Cut it out you guys; we'll read them both. We read The Hungry Caterpillar last time, right? So let's start with Tacky, and then we'll read the caterpillar story, OK?"

The boys seem satisfied with this. They go back to the living room and sit on either side of their father as he begins to read the story of a funny penguin named Tacky. The boys listen intently, sometimes asking questions about something that catches their interest in the pictures. Their father answers; sometimes he says he doesn't know. Danny has apparently forgotten he wanted the caterpillar story; he too is engrossed and recites the rhyming lines and claps the beat as his father reads them. They finish Tacky and then read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

"OK, guys, I've got some stuff to do, then I'm going to start making dinner before Mom comes home. You can play here or in your room. I don't want to hear any fighting, OK?" Dad goes to the kitchen, gets a stack of bills and his checkbook from the drawer, and sits at the table to write checks.

Jaime stays in the living room and plays with his blocks and dinosaurs.

Danny follows Dad into the kitchen. "I want to write!" he says.

"You want to write, too?"

"Yeah," Danny says.

Dad gets a blank piece of paper and a not-too-sharp pencil and puts it next to him. "OK, sit here and write with me."

Danny climbs on a chair and takes up the pencil. He begins to write, intently, and makes a series of squiggles:

"Hey, buddy, that's pretty good," Dad says. "What did you write?"

Danny uses the eraser end of the pencil as a pointer and sweeps slowly across the marks he has made. "Daaa....nnnn....yyy," he says, slowly and deliberately. Danny had seen his brother, who was learning to write his name, do the same thing many times.

"How do you write Daddy?" Danny asks.

His father writes it for him and then continues writing checks.

Danny writes a little longer and then goes to join his brother in the living room, who by this time has tired of blocks and dinosaurs and is looking at a big book of nursery rhymes from around the world. He has heard some of these so many times he has memorized them and is reciting them quietly to himself as he points with his finger in the general vicinity of the words he is saying. Danny listens.

Jaime, suddenly aware of his audience, holds the book up, as his kindergarten teacher does, and "reads" to his younger brother.

Danny listens for a few minutes, then says, "I want to read!"

Jaime, a little impatient, says, "Danny, you can't read yet. Look, this is an A, this is an M . . ." and he points to letters that he can recognize on the page.

Danny listens and watches. He starts to make another plea for a turn to read when they hear the key in the latch.

"Mom's home!" Jaime says. He drops the book, and both boys go running to the front entrance.

In the next few hours, the family will have dinner, talk about how the day went, and then Dad will leave for work. Mom will clean up the dinner dishes, play with the boys, and give them a bath.

Finally, just before bed time, they climb into Jaime's bed and Mom tells the boys to choose a book to read for a bedtime story. The boys again argue over what book she will read, and each boy takes a different one from the shelf they have in their room.

"I know," Mom says, "Let's finish Frog and Toad, since we've got to take it back to the library tomorrow."

"Yeah!" both boys say almost in unison, and they run to the living room to get one of the library books.

"Hey, don't run!" Mom calls out. But it's too late; they're already in the living room arguing over who is going to take the book to Mom.