The relationship of parent’s nutrition knowledge level and teacher’s food parenting on nutritional status ff pre-school aged children

Abstract

Introduction: Early age is the golden age period of growth and development of children. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the fulfillment of children’s nutritional needs based on the quantity and quality of good nutrition. This study aims to examine the relationship between the level of parental knowledge and the teacher’s feeding pattern on the nutritional status of early childhood at the Jungle School Nature Kindergarten, Sekaran, Gunungpati District, Semarang City. Methods: The total sampling technique conducted this analytic observational study with a cross-sectional design by 24 parents of kindergarten students and 11 teachers or caregivers. The parents’ knowledge and teachers’ feeding parenting styles were obtained from the interviews. The assessment of the nutritional status of kindergarten students was using indicators of WAZ, HAZ, and BAZ. All research subjects had normal nutritional status based on indicators of WAZ and HAZ. Results: Based on BAZ indicators, as many as 12.5% of students have underweight nutritional status, and 87.5% have normal nutritional status. The results of the association test showed that the level of parental knowledge (p=0.533; 0.845; and 0.372) and eating patterns by teachers in schools (p=0.770; 0.896; and 0.597) were not significantly related to the nutritional status of early childhood (WAZ, HAZ, and BAZ). Conclusions: Parents with a good level of knowledge do not necessarily have nutritional problems.