Abstract

Children are the cornerstone of a country’s long-term development. This has been recognized by target 4.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which emphasizes on ensuring the highest possible quality of early childhood development (ECD). A crucial component of ECD is socio-emotional development. According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster survey (MICS) 2019, about one-third of children in Bangladesh are not on track for achieving adequate socio-emotional development. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the level of caregivers’ stimulation is associated with child socio-emotional development using data on 9445 children aged 3-4 years from the Bangladesh MICS 2019. The response was a binary variable indicating adequate socio-emotional development if the child got along well with other children, did not kick or bite other children, and did not get easily distracted. The exposure variable of interest, level of caregivers’ stimulation, was constructed from six stimulation activities and defined as the number of distinct activities the caregivers engaged in with the child in the 3 days preceding the survey. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between the exposure and response while adjusting for possible confounders. To examine the separate effects of each stimulation activity on outcome, a second model was fit containing binary covariates representing each of the six stimulation activities. Contrary to popular belief, the study found a negative association between the level of caregivers’ stimulation and child’s socio-emotional development. Among the six activities, only singing with child was found to be positively associated with the outcome while controlling for other risk factors. The study concludes that in the context of Bangladesh, the type of activity rather than the number of activities may be more important in influencing child socio-emotional development.