The Importance
of Parent-Child Communication
"When parents are unable to talk to their
children, they cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings,
or wisdom about how to cope with their experiences. They cannot teach them
about the meaning of work, or about personal responsibility, or what it
means to be a moral or ethical person in a world with too many choices
and too few guideposts to follow. What is lost are the bits of advice,
the consejos parents should be able to offer children in their everyday
interactions with them. Talk is a crucial link between parents and children:
It is how parents impart their cultures to their children and enable them
to become the kind of men and women they want them to be. When parents
lose the means for socializing and influencing their children, rifts develop
and families lose the intimacy that comes from shared beliefs and understandings."
(Wong Fillmore, 1991, p. 343)
From: Wong Fillmore, L. (1991). When learning
a second language means losing the first. Early Childhood Research Quarterly,
6, 323-346.