Project parent: a preschool speech program implemented through parents.

The effectiveness of parents as teachers of speech production skills was assessed by comparing changes in the phonological skills of their children, made during a period with no intervention, to changes that occurred when parents served as teachers, and by comparing those changes with changes that occurred in a contrast group who received no intervention. Twenty children, 12 in the experimental group and 8 in the contrast group, served as subjects. All children were between 4 and 5 years old at the beginning of the study. Parents were taught, in weekly sessions, to model, reinforce, and in other ways to teach their children. Both teaching goals and teaching materials were provided, and progress was monitored weekly. The speech production skills of children in the experimental group improved significantly when parents did the teaching. This was true for both within-subject and across-subjects comparisons.