Peculiarities of Physical and Neuropsychological Development of Early Age Children who Lack Parent Care

Tinatin Ghonghadze, Nino Manjavidze, Ketevan Matiashvili, Tamara Zhorzholiani

Department of Pediatrics, Tbilisi State Medical University, Georgia

The physical, motor and psychosocial development has been studied in early age children (3 - 24 months old) who lack the family environment. Neurologic (N), expressive (E), receptive (R) and cognitive (C) functions are assessed by BINS (Bailey's Infant's Neurodevelopmental Screener). The results of the study are compared to the developmental indicators of children who grew in families. In the case of deprivation syndrome, in children who lack parent care there is the evidence of delayed physical development with disharmonic type. The indicators of neurological clusters are decreased; expressive and cognitive functions show significant impairment. As the child grows we see the improvement of Neurological and Receptive clusters, but expressive and Cognitive functions show marked depression. There is still the evidence of previously mentioned deviations during the time of two-year monitoring. The results of the study show the significance of the family environment and of the biophysical union between mother and child on the processes of child's development; it also shows the importance of implementation of the multidisciplinary model in institutional houses for the development of children.

Keywords:  early age children, lack parent care, children's institutional houses, deprivation syndrome (psychosocial), physical/neuropsychological development