Parenting Interventions Are Essential For Normal Infant Development

The birth of a sick infant and /or premature baby and the admission of the baby to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is often an emotionally challenging and stressful time, stressing most families to the limit of their ability to cope (Bachman & Furlong, 1997). Common feelings of parents of a baby in NICU include feelings of grief, loss and trauma, with the added challenge of figuring out how to have a meaningful and rewarding relationship with a sick and often physically unresponsive baby (Davis & Stein, 2004). Having a baby admitted to NICU can have implications for the overall family functioning, relationship between parents, bonding and attachment, and the physical and mental well–being of the infant and their family (Barbosa, 2013).

There are many characteristics and challenges of infant’s development. The following topics describe and explain the different stages of development, the reason why attachment is so important, what it means and the different styles of attachments, the different reflexes, Piagets’s theories and why breastfeeding it’s so important and why it’s not practice as much today which I believe are the most important factors of child development.

This qualitative study are gathering data on premature babies who are at high risks for neurodevelopmental and behavioral outcomes in the neonatal intensive care unit other known as NICU. The purpose of this research is to decrease their deficits in language, attention, cognitive development, communication delay and their executive functions. According to the researchers, to minimize the premature infants’ deficits is allowing constant maternal physical contact, verbal soothing, breastfeeding, odor and heat exchange and eye contacts in the NICU. Their main focus is to make sure the premature infants have constant access to their maternal figures to allow them to lower their odds of neurological deficits and behavioral outcomes and enrolling the premature into Family Nurture Intervention (FNI). FNI is a new intervention program designed to overcome their flawed effects of maternal separation and the NICU environment on the premature infant (Welch, M. G 1203).

Patteson, D. M., & Barnard, K. E. (1990). Parenting of Low Birth Weight Infants: A Review of Issues and Interventions. Infant Mental Health Journal, 11(1), 37-56.

Massage is beneficial for increasing self-awareness about tension, stress, emotions and habitual response patterns that may aid in prevention of relapses.

The participants consisted of two women admitted to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences with specifics concerning the mothers lacking the ability to properly care for their infants. The age of the infants was 6 months and 1 year. During this stage of an infant’s life is when bonds of love and trust with their parents are critical for social and emotional development. This is the reason the families as well as the mothers of these infants were concerned that the mothers were experiencing difficulties with expressing emotions, interacting, giving affection, and caring for their infants. These women lacked the basic parenting skills and their difficulties included talking to the infant, singing to the infant, or protecting

The phases of human development can also be culturally defined through lifestyle aspects such as diet and exposure to disease. The postnatal stage of child development is crucial to the growth of the child and through survival aspects of different cultures, children develop at different rates in different ways to increase chance of survival. As researched by Anthropologist Barbara Piperata, "In Brazil's Amazon River basin the suboptimal nutrition and exposure to infectious disease have resulted in less-than-optimal growth." The childrens exposure to disease it lowers the growth rates compared to American children. When Piperata compared Brazilian boys and girls, "the males are more sensitive to environmental insult." This is a possibility

An additional characteristic of children at this stage is their ability to link numbers to objects (Piaget,1977). To develop the mathematical capability of a child in this stage, the child’s skills might be improved if he is allowed sufficient opportunity to do something on the environment in unrestricted (but safe) ways in order to start building concepts (Martin, 2000). Evidence suggests that children at the sensorimotor stage have some understanding of the concepts of numbers and counting (Fuson, 1988).

Newborn children experience a few development spurts and commonly twofold their introduction to the world weight by 4 months. Specialists prescribe selective breastfeeding until 6 months of age and keeping on breastfeeding until 12 months. Only breastfed newborn children regularly require vitamin D supplements, as bosom milk is not a decent wellspring of this vitamin. Around 6 months, you can begin presenting strong nourishments, for example, iron-strengthened rice grain or pureed meats. Specialists prescribe presenting one nourishment at once so you can check for resilience and sustenance hypersensitivities.

As social workers and some parents, we know that children go through their developmental stages. Their four things that we know about child development and “they are children are genetically predisposed to certain characteristics, but the brain of young children is still developing. Secondly, children go through these stages and at each stay they need assistance from caregivers to help progress to the next stage. Thirdly, the expectations caregiver grossly affect whether the childhood will be a nurturing experience or not. Lastly, all children are different in growth milestone and caregivers should not expect no to children to accomplish the task the same.

Research has consistently revealed that children born preterm have a greater risk for learning-related problems as they progress through infancy, preschool, and elementary school. Children placed in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, also known as the NICU, have a more difficult journey ahead in their development compared with children born full term. This can result from a number of instances that occur during the child’s earliest moments of life. One main source of difficulty and worry when caring for a preterm child is the relationship between parents a child, formed inside the walls of the NICU and carried out until adulthood. It is imperative to study and understand the degree in which the way parents respond in these shocking and unsettling

“During the first 2 years of life- the developmental period we refer to as infancy to toddlerhood- change is more rapid and more dramatic than any other 2 year period” (99, qI) . Our brain is made up about 100 billion neurons if not more that are constantly going through change and development. These neurons communicate with each other through something amazing called synapses and glial cells. Although all the neurons we have developed prenatally they undergo much more growth during childhood. During the infants first 2 years “the growth of neural fibers and synapses take place at an astonishing pace” (figure 4-1). The brain goes through a growth spurt during infancy and toddlerhood, during birth the brain only weights about 25% of its adult

Infancy through preschool age is a very important part of a child’s life. This is the period of a child’s life when development is crucial. “Parenting during the first months of life is believed to be crucial to cognitive, social and emotional development. Infants who are well cared for by warm, supportive caretakers are more

Prenatal massage is another way for father and mother to bond with the unborn baby. Massage helps the mother relax muscles and promotes a state of well-being. Massage also helps to improve and lymph circulation and blood bringing oxygen and nutrients, resulting in greater viability and better nourishment to the unborn child.

Moore conducted 30 studies including 1,925 mothers and their babies. The study showed that the babies interacted more with their mothers, stayed warmer and cried less. These babies were more likely to be breastfed and to breastfeed for longer, if they had early skin-to-skin contact. These babies were also more likely to have a good early relationship with their mother, but that is difficult to measure. There was another study conducted with eleven women, their ages vary from 23 to 38. All of these women are having a cesarean birth. Of these eleven women there are eleven babies. The babies took between five to eight minutes to achieve skin-to-skin contact with their mother; and the duration of the time was between 12 to 62 minutes. The main theme that came from this experiment was “mutual caregiving.’ The term ‘mutual caregiving’ refers to the infant 's deep emotional connection to its primary caregiver, which is often the mother. This is a tie that bonds them together and when the infant is in contact with the caregiver the infant will feel joy, comfort and safety. In rodent studies, the pups who had the least attentive contact from their mothers were the ones whose health and