Nutritional Status of Preschool Children in Relationship with Maternal Nutritional Knowledge, Attitude and Practice

Study shows maternal attitudes and feeding practices significantly impact preschoolers' nutritional status, whereas maternal knowledge alone shows no direct association.

Dr. Preeti Kochar, Dr. Win Win Myint | August 4, 2026

ABSTRACT

Background: Early childhood is the critical period during which diet and nutrition influence their proper physical growth and intellectual development. Malnutrition among children in developing countries remains to be a primary cause of illness and mortality. Objective: The aim of this study is to identify nutritional status of preschool children aged between 3 to 5 years and to determine the nutritional knowledge, attitude and feeding practices (KAP) of mothers. Methods: A Descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in the targeted study population of 244 preschoolers and their mothers from 3 selected government preschools in Yangon. Children’s weights and heights were assessed by using properly calibrated equipment. Mothers of those children were interviewed by using pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire to collect information related to nutrition knowledge, attitude and practices. In order to accomplish the research objectives effectively, output data of WHO-Anthro (3.2.2) software and SPSS 22.0 version (IBM Corp) had been transformed into Excel for presenting frequency tables, cross-tabulations and Chi-square tests. Results: A total of 244 of mother-child pairs were included in the study. Among all children, 75% had normal weight for height. Moderate and severe wasting were 17.6% and 6.1% respectively whereas only 2 of the children found overweight, that was 0.8%. Similarly, 23.1% of children were moderately underweight and 5% were found severely underweight while 71.9% of the children weighed normal. In addition, 86.5% of children height were normal but 13.5% of children were stunted in which only 1.6% were found to be severe stunted and 11.9% were moderately stunted. Mother’s high and low levels of knowledge, attitude and practice were 43% versus 57%, 32.4% versus 67.6%, 41.8% versus 58.2% respectively. Maternal attitude and practice were significantly associated with growth of the children. There was no significant association between maternal knowledge and children’s nutritional status. Conclusion: This study found out that maternal attitude and feeding practice had more influence on children’s growth than higher level of mother’s knowledge on nutrition.

Nutritional Status of Preschool Children in Relationship with Maternal Nutritional Knowledge, Attitude and Practice

ABSTRACT

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