Preschoolers were taped while individually interacting with each of their parents. Tapes were transcribed and the language forms used by children and parents were counted. These forms included constructions involving the contraction "let's"; colloquial lexical items such as "whatchamacallit"; tag questions such as "You're going, aren't you?"; direct commands; and polite forms. Compared to mothers, fathers used more constructions involving "let's" when speaking to their children. When speaking to their daughters, fathers used more colloquial lexical items and tag questions than did mothers. Regardless of the gender of the parent with whom they were speaking, girls used more direct commands and colloquial lexical items than did boys. Compared to boys, girls asked more questions when speaking to their mothers and more polite forms when speaking to their fathers. A reference list of 12 items is appended. (BC)