The teaching behaviors of Mexican American mothers were examined using an e
veryday task and a school-related task. The sample consisted of 37 Mexican
American mother-child dyads. The children's mean age was 50.8 months (SD =
6.1). The results indicate that when instructing the everyday task, mothers
relied on the use of various verbal utterances to guide their children to
task competence. When teaching the school-related task, the mothers relied
on the use of nonverbal instructional behaviors. This suggests that mothers
instruct their children in a complementary fashion, altering their general
strategies with respect to the task demands on the children. Regardless of
the task, the mothers followed an instructional pattern that is consistent
with a Vygotskian framework.