The well-being of children has received increasing attention in recent years. Nevertheless, we lack adequate brief self-report tools that enable us to consider young children’s well-being in policy evaluations and educational research. This study describes the adaptation and first validation of theSwedish version of How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS), a subjective well-being questionnaire suitable for children aged 4 to 12 years, which was originally developed in the United Kingdom (UK). Descriptive statistics with analysis of psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are based on the perceived well-being of 228 children in preschool and school aged 5 to 8 years old. The CFA endorsed a good fit to a one-factor model, and the scale showed moderate internal consistency (rα = 0.63). The results are largely in line with the findings of the original HIFAMS. We conclude that the Swedish version can be applied in early preschool/school settings and could provide first-hand information about children’s well-being from the first years of education until elementary school grades. Practitioners in early education settings might benefit from HIFAMS assessments when seeking to understand children’s current well-being to provide support to children with special educational needs or children at risk for mental health issues. Researchers could use the HIFAMS to standardize child well-being evaluations in policy evaluations and interventional studies.

Language skills play a vital role in academic achievement and support reading and writing acquisition. Language skills also enable children to interact with others and develop social abilities. Given the predictive value of early language skills for academic attainment and their connection to social interaction, they have been suggested to be an indicator of well-being as well. However, children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds present lower scores than their peers with a majority language background on standardized language tests, such as vocabulary assessment. In the current study, we examined the relationship between language and self-reported well-being in the school context, based on data from a community sample of 85 five-year-old children attending eight preschools in three Swedish municipalities. Language skills were assessed through measures of vocabulary (receptive and expressive) and narrative skills (MAIN) and were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Narrative ability and vocabulary skills were correlated, but they appear to be distinct constructs. Exposure at home to the majority language was positively associated with vocabulary skills, while narrative ability was not strongly associated with language background. Language skills and well-being were not significantly correlated in the total sample, but post hoc analysis revealed that language background may affect the association. A novel contribution of this study is empirical data on language performance from a community sample with a large proportion of children with diverse language backgrounds. The relationship between subjective well-being and language skills warrants further investigation.

Additional language learners are at risk of presenting lower language skills in the majority language compared to peers. These differences in language skills have been observed at an early stage of education and may impact academic achievement later on. A randomized trial with a switching replications design was performed in Swedish preschools to examine the effectiveness of small group dialogic reading, aiming to promote oral language skills. The sample comprised 85 children with diverse language, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds attending nine preschools in three school districts. Dialogic reading was conducted by ten teachers, trained in dialogic reading and coached by three special education teachers. The dialogic reading intervention was feasible in preschool context and children progressed in their oral language skills during the intervention.