THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH STATUS, LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT,AND BEHAVIOR IN YOUNG

The study investigated whether young children’s health status is signifi-cantly related to their performance on measures of intelligence, lan-guage, and behavior, as well as parents ’ concerns, stress, and perceptions of their children’s development. One hundred twelve 3 to 5 year-old children, recruited from a large pediatric practice and three developmental preschools, were assigned to groups based on their health status. A series of Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) were used to examine differences between groups. The results showed that health sta-tus was strongly related to children’s cognitive and language develop-ment, parents ’ stress, and parents ’ concerns. Children with special health care needs demonstrated poorer cognitive and language skills in comparison to healthy peers. Parents of children with special health care needs also experienced greater stress and had more concerns about their children’s development than parents of healthy children. The results sug-gested that health status should be included as part of early identification screening programs and taken into account when developin