This is a descriptive study of the quali ty of early caregiver-child interaction in one low socio-economic community of Addis Ababa. An observation was made as a major technique using video recording for 10 minutes for each 30 caregiver-child pairs and the caregivers were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaire for background info rmation. The observation scale depends on the reDP 8 theme of interactional behaviors comprising 17 items measured on , a 4-point scale rating as: I (minimal); 2 (moderate); 3 (good) and 4 (very good), which were grouped into two categories (emotional and cognitive behaviors). The analys is has employed descriptive, one-sample t test (to indicate whether the sample mean is different or the same from the specified levels of quality) and the major maternal background characteri stics such as maternal age, level of education, monthly income and fa mily size were seen against the quali ty of emotional behavior and cogni ti ve behav ior using non-parametric procedure (spearman's rank correlation). The study revealed that the nature of the quality of interactional behaviors among mother-chi ld pairs was poor,the emotional behavior was predominantly observed than the cognitive aspect although; it was not expressed appropriately in most of the couples aJ)d out of mothers' characteri stics only mothers' education has showed significant positive correlation with emotional and cogniti ve behaviors. Finall y, the situat ion in the study suggest that much effo rt have to be made to bring bellcr positi ve quality of early caregiver-child interaction in the community therefore, all concerned bodies must work hard jointly in coordi nated and integrated manner.