Typically developing children's interactions with peers with disabilities: Relationships between mothers' comments and children's ideas about disabilities

The research reported in this article examined (a) the ways in which mothers talk with their preschool children about physical disabilities and Down syndrome and (b) the relationships between their comments and their children's ideas about disabilities and interactions with classmates with disabilities. Mothers and children participated in a storytelling task that focused on the ways in which mothers talked with their children about people with physical disabilities and Down syndrome. Moreover, children were interviewed about social situations that included a child with a physical disability, and teachers rated children's interactions with classmates with disabilities. We found that mothers and their children talked more about children with physical disabilities than about children with Down syndrome during the storytelling task. Furthermore, children's comments about children with physical disabilities were positively related, and mothers' comments were negatively related, to teachers' ratings of children's social interactions with classmates with disabilities.