One highly plausible explanation is that the parents may not recognize the value of serving as models for their children. Thus, an implication is that many of these parents may need support to show them how to maximize incidental learning opportunities. This unplanned learning arises daily in the process of completing their regular routine tasks such as cooking, shopping for groceries, paying the bills, and reading the mail. Encouraging parents to engage in literacy events in the presence of their children will help them to realize that they can have a powerful influence on their children's literacy development. By encouraging children to participate in some way during these activities through observation, repetition, social interaction, and problem solving, these parents may be able to capitalize on a previously untapped natural way of learning for their children. Since incidental learning is situated, contextual, and social it may be highly effective and could constitute a socialization process and accumulation of increased cultural capital, while helping to form a habitus towards literacy.

Based on this point of view, parents may help by creating a climate that not only fosters incidental learning opportunities, but that also encourages literacy events embedded in play. For example, when children take school literacy home and "play school" with their siblings or peers, they are using role playing as a powerful force to practise what they have observed at school. They imitate what they have seen by practising their script in dialogue. This type of play motivates children by using language in a communicative and authentic context and is appropriate for all age groups and skill levels. Children acquire knowledge by building on previous representations. As they practise and become more familiar with the experience, their script becomes more complex.