Mothers’ Awareness of Developmental- Milestones and Advantages of Early-Identification of Delayed-Milestones among 18 Month Old Children Attending Immunization Clinics in Colombo District

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Developmental milestones are set of age specific tasks children can do at a certain age range and this process of development can be optimized by timely interventions given through stimulations by mothers. The aim was to assess mother’s awareness of advantages of early identification of delayed milestones among 18 month old children attending to the immunization clinics in Kolonnawa and Dehiwala MOH areas. A descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted among 421 mother and child-pair of 18-months. A pre-tested -interviewer-administered-questionnaire and a checklist were used to collect data. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 17 package. Assessment of Knowledge of Developmental-milestones was good among 73.9% of mothers. Majority (n=387,93.5%) of mothers agree the importance of developmental-milestones and considerable proportion (n= 188,45.5%) were not aware of certain conditions which need medical attention by 18 months. Only <20% mothers were able to correctly identify age-appropriate development-milestones which needs attention. However, 82.6% (n=342) stated developmental-disorders can be identified early and majority (72.6%, n=301) by parents. Nearly 36% of were not aware of facilities available for children with special-needs. Higher proportion of mothers with good knowledge seek advice from midwife in case of a developmental-delay and this was statistically significant (p<0.05). Interestingly, mothers with good knowledge on milestones did not consider certain delays need medical attention by 18 months (p<0.05). Mother’s should be educated on the availability of early-intervention and facilities.