22 court-referred abusive families and 23 control families participated in a laboratory play task as part of a larger study on family processes and child abuse (J. B. Reid, 1986). Researchers led each family into a play room, asked the parents to play with their child for a 7-min period, and then asked them to have the child help clean up. Children were aged 3-11 yrs. All sessions were videotaped and coded, with the child’s behavior categorized as passive, verbal communication, aversive, and narrative play. Although control children talked significantly more than abused children, both abused and control children responded equally often to parent initiations of interaction. Parent responses were grouped into positive and negative clusters. Abusive parents showed significantly less positive parenting than did control parents, and they responded significantly less to the child’s initiations of interaction.