Home Environment as a Correlate of Development of Toddlers in Bangalore

Background

Children are born with a sophisticated brain that is preprogrammed to learn and react to its environment. Development in the first three years of life is incredibly quick. An optimal range of development occurs with a stimulating home environment and strong contextual support.

Objective

To observe whether there is difference in home environment between literate and illiterate parents living in urban and rural areas of Bangalore and to correlate the same with the various developmental domains of children aged between one and three years old.

Design

Descriptive cross-sectional study design.

Materials and Method

Through multi-stage cluster random sampling fifty urban families with children aged one to three years old (25 families with both the parents literates and 25 families with both the parents illiterates) and fifty rural families with children aged one to three years old (25 families with both the parents literates and 25 families with both the parents illiterates) were recruited from Bangalore urban and Bangalore rural districts respectively. The parental literacy status was assessed by using the operational definition of literacy stated by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The Home environment was measured by using Infant/Toddler HOME (The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment) Inventory. The development of the children was assessed by using Denver II.

Results

Kruskal – Wallis analysis showed a statistically significant difference among all the four groups in terms of their Home environment (measured by HOME inventory) and development of children in various developmental domains (measured by Denver II) at a significance level of 0.05. Mann Whitney U Posthoc analysis found that there was a significant difference between all the unique pair comparisons in at least one of the variables except between the pair Urban illiterate and Rural illiterate at a significance level of 0.0125. All the developmental domains were positively correlated with total score obtained in home inventory for all the groups except for the Rural illiterate group in Gross motor domain.

Conclusion

The Home environment differs from urban and rural families and also between literates and illiterates and further influencing the development of children aged between one and three years old.