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This study investigated the relationship between parenting behaviours and specific language impairment (SLI) in children. Using a case-control design, data on 177 kindergarten children with SLI and 925 kindergarten children who were typically developing were collected using a parental questionnaire. Parents were interviewed about parenting practices classified into the following categories: conversing with children, teaching behaviours, the child's daily routine and discipline. The results revealed that parents of children who were normally developing had engaged their children in particular conversational activities more frequently than had parents with children with SLI. Parents of children diagnosed with SLI tended to teach their children school readiness skills (the alphabet and colours) and discipline their children more frequently. These relationships continued to hold after controlling for maternal education and family economic need with the exception of teaching children colour names. The results suggested that additional investigations that examine the association between these parental behaviours and children's language status through direct observation are warranted.

Studies on specific language impairments (SLI) have demonstrated that SLI aggregate in families. This may be due to the presence of prenatal and postnatal features of a shared environment, such as parental smoking, that has been associated with lowered cognitive and language outcomes in children of smokers. This study explored the relationship between parental smoking and specific language impairments (SLI) in children. Using a case-control design, data on 177 children with SLI and 925 children who were typically developing were collected using a parental questionnaire concerning parental smoking habits. Maternal and paternal smoking during pregnancy, during children's development and continuous smoking during pregnancy and development were significantly related to SLI. However, when parental education was controlled for, these significant associations no longer existed. It is suggested that parental smoking, although not independently associated with SLI, may be an indicator of a parenting environment that places children at risk for language impairments.