Mother' responsiveness to the needs of preschool children correlates with their development at urban area

ABSTRACT

In addition to food, sanitation and access to health facilities children require adequate care at home for survival and optimal development. Responsiveness, considering a mothers/care-givers prompt and appropriate interaction with the child, is a vital parenting tool with wide-ranging benefits for the child from better cognitive and psychosocial development to protection from disease and mortality [Shonkoff and Philips, 2000]. The purpose of this study was to examine mother's responsiveness to the needs of preschool children in relation to their assessed development at MCH center. The total sample consisted of 138 mothers with their preschool child. The instruments used were Identification data sheet, Socioeconomic Questionnaire [Fahmy and Sherbine, 1985], Knowledge Questionnaire, Attitude questionnaire, Maternal Responsiveness Interaction questionnaire [Wenk and Stock, 1990], and Denver II Scale [Frakenburg, 1994]. Results showed that mothers responsiveness behaviors were correlated positively to the developmental achievement of preschool children in the all domains [personal-social, language, gross-motor, and fine-motor] of child development except for fine motor one [r= 0.279, p<0.000, r=0.211 p<0.000, r=0.25, p<0.000, r= 0.074, p<0.109]. The study results recommended that community health nurse should enhance mother's knowledge and behaviors to be responsive to the needs of preschool child focusing on personalsocial needs that ultimately leads to improved developmental outcomes. Intervention about mother's responsiveness should be integrated into child survival strategies to increase chances to meet the Millennium Development Goal contributing to decrease children deaths