Abstract:

Aim: Parents play an important role in children’s language development, specifically in the development of vocabulary. There are studies in the literature that have investigated the relationship between parental behaviors, parental stimulation, and children’s vocabulary. This study aims to examine the relationship between parental disciplinary practices and the vocabulary of children with suspected developmental language disorder (DLD). Subjects and Method: This study included 72 children with suspected DLD between 24 and 48 months of age and their parents (M = 34.22, SD = 6.52). Data were collected face-to-face at the Speech and Language Clinic of Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Hospital. For data collection, a demographic information form, The Turkish Test of Early Language Development (TEDIL), Turkish Version of the Language Development Survey (DIL-TAR), and the Parenting Scale were used. TEDIL was administered to the child by the clinician, while DIL-TAR and the Parenting Scale were completed by the parent. Descriptive analyses and Pearson correlation tests were conducted with IBM’s SPSS 21.00 software package. Results: According to the findings of our study, the mean number of words in children’s vocabulary was 77.5. The mean score obtained on the parenting scale was 109. A significant positive correlation was determined between children’s vocabularies and parents’ disciplinary practices (r = 0.97, p < 0.01). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the vocabularies of children with suspected DLD increase as the functionality of parental disciplinary practices increases.

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