Do Australian children carry out recommended preventive child health behaviours? Insights from an online parent survey

Abstract

Aim To investigate (i) the proportion of Australian children who do not adhere to preventive child health behaviours, (ii) clustering of child health behaviours, (iii) the proportion of parents who are concerned about not meeting recommendations and (iv) parents' access to and interest in information on ways to establish healthy habits in their child. Methods A cross‐sectional online survey of 477 Australian parents of 0–4‐year‐old children assessed the degree to which children meet key child health recommendations (diet, physical activity, oral health, sleep, pedestrian/vehicle safety, screen use, sun safety, personal hygiene, medical care), examined clustering of health behaviours and identified parents' greatest concerns. Results A significant proportion of children do not meet recommendations for many preventive child health behaviours. More than half of the parents report infrequent toothbrushing and dentist check‐ups, less than the recommended vegetable consumption, excessive consumption of treats, not wearing safety equipment, excessive screen time and screen time during meals, child inactivity, insufficient sleep, not covering coughs and sneezes, insufficient hand and nail hygiene and inadequate sun protection. No clustering of life‐style risk behaviours was found. Areas of greatest concern to parents are vegetable consumption, toothbrushing, covering coughs and sneezes, screen time and wearing sunglasses. Conclusions While the majority of Australian parents have accessed child health recommendations, relatively few consistently implement health‐protective practices with their children. Parents are concerned about this and interested in receiving information. Future research should investigate barriers to following guidelines and how parents can best be supported in establishing healthy habits.

Healthy living practices in families and child health: 5-year follow-up of Taiwan Birth Cohort Study

“…10 Therefore, a feasible approach to ensure children's future health is to encourage parents and families to establish healthy practices or habits with their children. 24 For example, restricting both child and parental television-viewing time early on would decrease television exposure. 25 This study also identified that the association between CHLPF and children's health was sustained and remained stronger in the low-income families.…”

“… 10 Therefore, a feasible approach to ensure children’s future health is to encourage parents and families to establish healthy practices or habits with their children. 24 For example, restricting both child and parental television-viewing time early on would decrease television exposure. 25 …”

Development and validation of the parenting and child tooth brushing assessment questionnaire

“…The qualitative data from our previous surveys were used for conceptualization of the scale. 26,27 Data from these surveys demonstrated themes related to self-efficacy (eg twice-daily battle), beliefs (eg busy routine), emotional reactions (eg child said they were tired, so didn't brush), knowledge (eg age appropriate toothbrush and toothpaste), control (eg physically restraining), structured strategies (eg prompting to keep mouth open) and child-level behavioural constraints (eg tantrums) which determine the child's tooth brushing behaviour. Most health behaviour change theories focus on specific individual, social or environmental determinants, while SCT postulates that a behavioural practice is a result of the interaction between personal characteristics, environmental factors and attributes of the behaviour itself, termed as reciprocal determinism.…”

“…Brushing with fluoridated toothpaste at least twice daily remains the universal recommendation to avert this most preventable of dental diseases, 3 but is among the preventive health behaviours with the lowest adherence in Australian children, with around a third of children aged under 4 years 4 and 5‐6 years 5 not following these guidelines. Moreover, >30% of parents of children aged 7‐8 years do not assist them in brushing, 5 and <50% of parents are concerned about their children's current frequency of parent‐supervised tooth brushing despite low proportions of children engaging in twice‐daily brushing 4 …”

“…about their children's current frequency of parent-supervised tooth brushing despite low proportions of children engaging in twice-daily brushing. 4 Although most parents seek information and guidance on preventive child health practices, knowledge transfer does not necessarily translate into the desired behaviour from parents (ie parent-supervised tooth brushing in children). 6 Parent confidence, skills, self-regulation and self-efficacy all play important roles in promoting healthy behaviours in children 6,7 and are important correlates and predictors of general and context-specific parenting practices.…”