Memory demands made by mothers of very young children are discussed in two studies of joint picture-book reading and one study of mother/infant pairs who looked at family photograph albums. While memory demands made by mothers differed as a function of child's age and linguistic development, at about 15 months of age children were expected to take an increasingly active role in the reading dialogue. Following their earliest demands for recall of the names of individual objects, mothers increased their demands by asking for recall of indirectly specified information. For recognition memory, the case was slightly more complex. Sometimes, instead of pointing to an object and telling the child its name, the mother would name an object and ask the child to point to it. Data indicated that mothers of older children increased the complexity of their demands for recognition memory. Mothers used one clearly mnemonic technique: they related pictured material to their child's personal experience. In all three studies, mothers of young children showed a strong bias to ask their children to report general knowledge rather than to recount specific events from personal past experience. (Concluding remarks focus on the developmental implications of the findings.) (RH)