Knowledge and anxiety levels of mothers about the development of their children aged 0-36 months

It is important for mothers with 0-36 months children to have accurate information about the developmental stages of their children, to follow the healthy growth and development of their children, to identify existing or potential problems early, to enable easier adaptation to the role of motherhood, and to control the anxiety caused by having a child. In this study, it was aimed to determine the knowledge and anxiety levels of mothers with children aged 0-36 months about the development of their children and to establish the relationship between them. This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with 139 mothers with children aged 0-36 months, who applied to the pediatric outpatient clinics of a training and research hospital in a province in the Central Anatolia Region between February 2021 and October 2022, and agreed to participate in the study. Research data were collected with "Mother and child information form", "The Caregiver Knowledge of Child Development Inventory (CKCDI)" and "Beck Anxiety Scale (BAS)". Statistical analyzes of the obtained data were carried out with the SPSS package program. T-Test and Mann-Whitney U test were used in the comparison of scale scores between two independent groups, One-way ANOVA test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to compare the scale scores between three or more independent groups. Correlation analysis between total scores was performed with Spearman Correlation analysis. 60.4% of the children of the mothers in the study were boys, and the average age was 22.41±10.13 months. It was found that the mothers' knowledge about child development was at a moderate level, mean CKCDI score was 20.07±6.37 and their anxiety was at a mild level with a mean BAS score of 11.31±9.46. The differences between the mean CKCDI scores according to the age, income, family type and planned pregnancy status of the mothers were not significant (p>0.05), and the difference between the CKCDI mean scores were found significant according to the educational status, employment status and the number of children they had (p<0,5). The difference between the mean BAS scores of the mothers according to certain descriptive characteristics and the difference between the mean CKCDI and BAS scores of the mothers according to certain descriptive characteristics of their children were not significant (p>0.05). It was determined that there was a low, negative and insignificant relationship between the mothers' CKCDI and BAS total scores (r=-0.082, p>0.05). As a result, it was determined that mothers with children aged 0-36 months had moderate knowledge about the development of their children and had mild anxiety. Mothers are expected to have a complete or almost complete degree of knowledge regarding their children's development because they are largely responsible for monitoring the healthy growth and development of their kids. It is advised that individual and group education programs and information studies be carried out by pediatric nurses to raise the knowledge level of the mothers about the development of their children and to lessen their anxiety because in this study, the knowledge of the mothers about the development of their children is not at the expected level. Keywords: Anxiety, mother, level of knowledge, growth-development, pediatric nurse