This paper presents an exploratory study, using an ethnographic approach, of linguistically and ethnically diverse parents interacting with their children. Subjects included three Persian-speaking families, three Chaldeans, and three Euro-American families; children were aged 4-5 years. Goals were to understand cross cultural communication, examine how families can be connected to the educational process of their child, and provide teachers with an understanding of diverse patterns of communication and learning in the classroom. Specifically, child questions and parent responses from parent-child interactions were examined during a book reading activity within different cultural groups. The most striking finding was the large difference in the number of children's questions between the groups, but particularly between the Euro-American and Chaldean group. The patterns of children's questions were consistent across the three groups, yet the parents' responses showed no consistency across the groups. Valuable information was gathered, in particular, on ways to approach the Chaldean community, where it was found that reading is not a common practice for children because of language differences and book availabilities. Appendix A includes the coding matrix for questions and answers. (NAV)