Family involvement is key to the acquisition of early literacy skills, but what about families who don't speak English in the home?

Parents can emphasize communication in any language, says Maria Sera, Ph.D., professor at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development. The most important thing is for parents to actively engage their child in conversation, beginning at birth, and to read to the child regularly. If this happens in another language, the child is still learning essential building blocks of literacy, such as connecting sounds to meaning, Sera said.

As a child reaches school age, it is important for parents to remain very involved with their child's development. Without English skills, parents are not able to help with homework, read along with the child in schoolbooks or story books, quiz students in spelling and other activities that many of us take for granted with our own children.

Many community-based resources have sprung up to meet this need. By providing whole families with programs, they not only help young children prepare for school, but also enable the adults and older children to learn how to function better in American society.

One example is the Women's Association of Hmong and Lao (WAHL), a St. Paul-based program that serves the Hmong community. WAHL works with the Minnesota Department of Education's Early Childhood Family Education(ECFE) program to develop and provide services that include parenting classes, preschool, English as a Second Language and others. At the Mt. Airy Community Center in St. Paul, there are Head Start, ECFE and other programs operating almost around the clock, and many are geared toward helping Hmong families understand the American culture and become literate in English.

"There are many services, but too many families don't know what is available," said WAHL's site coordinator Mouafu Mouanoutoua. "By coming to classes, they learn not only about cultural differences but about other available resources." For example, at the morning ECFE preschool, parents spend the first half-hour in class with the children, participating together in the activities. On a typical day, this would include lots of songs, stories and games that are conducted in English, with key words and concepts also presented in the Hmong language. After 30 minutes, parents go to another classroom for lessons in everything from shopping in American supermarkets to proper nutrition and hygiene for newborns and toddlers.

Because the Hmong culture and its traditions are so unlike American culture, the needs of Hmong parents extend beyond learning a new language. In addition to ESL classes and workshops on daily living skills (like negotiating the public transportation system), Hmong parents can learn parenting skills relevant to life in America. For example, Hmong parents are striving to learn new ways to set limits with their children, including their teens, said Mouanoutoua.

But back in the morning class, the children are focused on learning language skills. The teacher at ECFE has laid out a dozen donated books for the parents and children to choose from, and they can take any one home to keep. For some, it may be the first book they've ever owned, but the hope is that it will create a hunger in both the child and the parents for many more.

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