Stay with the Baby in His Growth

If you are one of those mothers that likes to read magazines and articles related to how and what a full term baby in different stages of growth should do and be like, well, we suggest you find a place in your house to store all that material. Remember that your specific son or daughter is a unique person that will grow intellectually, physically and emotionally at his or her own rhythm, just like his or her brothers and sisters did, if the baby has any. Do not compare your baby with pre-established patterns or with other children. As your child starts growing, you will see that both the baby’s intelligence as well as the motors skills will develop at the same rhythm of those of a baby that was born full term, with a difference of the weeks or months of prematurity but knowing that that the difference will diminish as the baby grows. It is also possible that the baby is ahead in some aspects and that he or she evolves slower in others. Just in case this helps, in history there were very important people and scientists that were premature babies. Amongst these great people were: Charles Darwin, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Einstein, Churchill, Galileo, Pascal and Borges.

You may even be surprised to see how quickly your baby can learn if you teach him or her.

At around the age of five months my daughter started to look at websites with a lot of interest and today it is only possible to get her to calm down if I give her a website. Truly besides being something fun for a baby, playing with something the baby enjoys such as a website (in the case of my daughter) it is also true that a lot of times people worry that the corrected age will interfere with the baby’s development. Between fourteen months and two years of age, it is probable your child will amaze you with things that he or she is capable of transmitting or doing out of curiosity, but this depends largely on how you have motivated the baby. With this we are trying to tell you to not underestimate your baby for being premature, because like all children, you daughter or son learns from what he sees and hears.

The prematurity of the baby is not a problem that should worry a parent in this sense, but the attitude you adopt in a situation like this in the face of stimulus and interests.

Some parents become so obsessed with the achievements of their premature baby that they force the child, often times getting a contrary response than what they wanted, in other words, complete or partial communication blockage. In all cases it would be convenient to always have the following information in mind:

In the face of a little bit of stimulus the result will be: very little or not response

An excess amount of stimulation: will cause a blockage or no response as a defense mechanism.

In the same way, if there is not good emotional interaction, it is also possible that you will observe that you child does not show any interest in what you are trying to teach him or her. When this isn’t about a stimulation problem (a lot or a little), it might be that without us realizing it, you will need to be the one whom will have to abandon the exchange with the results are not what you expected. If such is the case, think that in front of a baby, the primordial thing is always the process, as the results will arrive on their own.

Approximately at around three and a half years in the case of girls and around four years of age in the case of boys, extremely premature children, in other words, those that were born under thirty two weeks of gestation and underweight, will be ready at that age to level with the rest of the children that were born full term. But like was mentioned before, this is not always this way, and many times the child will only need two years to level.

One suggestion when teaching a child a new activity is to always give the child time to assimilate and that he himself discovers the answer. Keep in mind that just like it is of not use to invade the child with too many toys, it is of no use to invade the child with too much information.