Original Research Article
Year: 2020 | Month: February | Volume: 10 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 242-247
Mother’s Knowledge on Child’s Developmental Milestones and Parenting Skills in Kanchipuram District, Tamilnadu - a Descriptive Cross Sectional Study
Arulmurugan Karuppannan1, Thilagavathi Ramamoorthy1, Ashok Rammamoorthi1, Lakshmisree Ravichandran2
1SRM School of Public Health, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Kancheepuram-603203, Tamil Nadu, India
2Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Center, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Kancheepuram-603203, Tamil Nadu, India
Corresponding Author: Arulmurugan Karuppannan
ABSTRACT
Mothers’ knowledge of child development is closely associated with the positive child developmental outcomes. Mother plays an important role in assessing the child’s development on observations by identifying their appropriate developmental milestone. Past research reveals that there is a strong relationship between the demographic characteristic and Mother’s Knowledge and it is strongly influence on the child nurturing development. In India, is very less known with regards to the level of knowledge that mothers exhibit about child development and parenting.
Methodology: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among 174 mothers who have children less than 3 years living in Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu, India. Participants were administered by KIDI. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to measure the means, standard deviations,and percentages.Chi-square test was used to compare the association between the groups.
Results: The results of our study showed that the level of maternal knowledge about child developmental milestones in Kanchipuram is relatively low. Among the developmental milestones, physical and language milestones have the least knowledge. And majority of parents have the average knowledge on parenting skills.
Discussion: The lacks of knowledge among the individual mothers of their child’s developmental milestones were examined at a given point in time. One conceivable explanation for this finding is that mother’s in kanchipuram are not competently knowledgeable about their child’s developmental norms and their milestones that may be associated to the lack of communication to child specialist. Therefore, a lack of exposure to such sources of information may deprive mothers from valuable knowledge about normative child development.
Key words: Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory (KIDI)