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Poster #105 - Motor Development and Parental Supervision Practices: A Longitudinal Study.

Fri, March 22, 2:30 to 3:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

In Canada and the United States, unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 through 18 years old and is among the top causes for emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and permanent disabilities. For infants, majority of injuries occur in and around the home particularly when they are acquiring new motor skills. Thus, given that this time-period is marked by many developmental transitions, caregivers must be able to accurately predict their child’s next milestone in synchrony with adapting parent safety strategies in order to prevent injuries. The aim of this current study, therefore, was to examine parental supervision practices over the course of three developmental time points: pre-mobile (i.e. sitting), becoming mobile (i.e. crawling), and independently mobile (i.e. walking), with the goal of being able to determine what motivates parent change and how well they work to prevent injury-risk behaviours and injury occurrences during infancy. Parent-infant dyads (N = 83) were recruited, with infants (n = 40 males, n = 25 females) being tracked for an average of 6 months. Results revealed that
infants injury-risk behaviours were predictable and stable across motor development, with infants engaging in the same types of activities that resulted in injury occurrences across time. A path analysis revealed a bi-directional relationship between infant risk behaviours and injury occurrences, such that the more risk behaviours infants engaged in, the more injuries they experienced. Although parent reports indicated the ability to prevent predictable risk behaviours from occurring, the results revealed that infants were engaging in the same risk behaviours across developmental time points. Thus, although infants were demonstrating stability in their risk behaviours across time, parents were not adjusting safety precautions accordingly in order to prevent injuries from occurring. Environmental modifications emerged as the most prominent method to decrease infants injury risk across all stages of motor development and although parental supervision was a strategy that was employed, results indicated that caregivers did not change their level of supervision across developmental time points (i.e., supervision remained at ‘not looking at the child and but listening closely). Thus, when parents do not incorporate all 3 dimensions of active supervision (see figure) and rely on just one aspect (e.g., visual or auditory) without the added component of proximity, the level of supervision remains insufficient to decrease injury-risk to infants. Given that many of the child factors that contribute to injury-risk behaviour in older children and youth do not routinely apply to infancy, the present study makes a significant contribution by showing that infants developmental competencies influence infants injury risk and emphasize that parents must be able to respond and adjust their safety precautions in order to match their infants current developmental capabilities.

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