The study examined the effects of children's reading ability, children's sex, and mothers' educational level on mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral reading practice. Seventy-six mother-child pairs from a suburban, middle-class community participated. Accelerated and at-risk third-grade readers took home a tape recorder and a third-grade science text to read aloud to their mothers. The conversations were audio-taped, professionally transcribed, and coded. Results indicated that conversations between at-risk readers and their mothers were marked by frequent error correction interventions, while those between accelerated readers and their mothers were characterized by children's extensive verbal involvement. A richer language interaction was observed in conversations between mothers and daughters compared to mothers and sons. High school-educated mothers used significantly more error correction interventions than college-educated mothers, despite equal numbers of accelerated and at-risk readers in each group. College-educated mothers asked significantly more high-level questions than high school-educated mothers. The study highlights the importance of the quality of at-home reading experiences for at-risk readers and the effects of text difficulty and children's reading ability on mothers' helping behaviors. The findings suggest that at-risk readers benefit from more error correction interventions, while accelerated readers benefit from more verbal involvement. The study also found that mothers of daughters engaged in richer conversations compared to mothers of sons. The results have implications for educators and practitioners in understanding and improving at-home reading practices.The study examined the effects of children's reading ability, children's sex, and mothers' educational level on mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral reading practice. Seventy-six mother-child pairs from a suburban, middle-class community participated. Accelerated and at-risk third-grade readers took home a tape recorder and a third-grade science text to read aloud to their mothers. The conversations were audio-taped, professionally transcribed, and coded. Results indicated that conversations between at-risk readers and their mothers were marked by frequent error correction interventions, while those between accelerated readers and their mothers were characterized by children's extensive verbal involvement. A richer language interaction was observed in conversations between mothers and daughters compared to mothers and sons. High school-educated mothers used significantly more error correction interventions than college-educated mothers, despite equal numbers of accelerated and at-risk readers in each group. College-educated mothers asked significantly more high-level questions than high school-educated mothers. The study highlights the importance of the quality of at-home reading experiences for at-risk readers and the effects of text difficulty and children's reading ability on mothers' helping behaviors. The findings suggest that at-risk readers benefit from more error correction interventions, while accelerated readers benefit from more verbal involvement. The study also found that mothers of daughters engaged in richer conversations compared to mothers of sons. The results have implications for educators and practitioners in understanding and improving at-home reading practices.