A discussion concerning the walking environment during early childhood

Abstract

This study focuses on walking during early childhood to find out the actual status of living environment surrounding infants, such as domestic setting, means of transportation outside the home, physical activities and guardians’ awareness concerning walking, etc. The study had 120 participants, who are guardians of one-year-old (n=34), two-year-old (n=53), and three-year-old (n=33) infants in the steady walking stage enrolled in nursery classes for zero-year-old, one-year-old, and two-year-old children. Through the research, awareness of the importance of an environment and outside transportation means that encourage walking were identified to be insufficient, while most of the guardians understood the importance of physical activities in early childhood. Infants went out after nursery hours mostly because they accompanied parents who needed to go shopping or do other things. Accordingly, the infants’ modes of transportation were determined by the parents’ convenience. A comparison of time spent on shopping carts and strollers found strollers being used for longer hours in total, while shopping carts occupied more than 80% of the time spent on shopping.