What does early intervention mean?

With the rapid development of medicine, the survival rate of infants with high-risk mothers is getting higher and higher, and we have to face another problem while rejoicing that the number of high-risk infants is increasing, such as premature babies, low weight babies, intrauterine distress, neonatal asphyxia, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, intracranial hemorrhage, nuclear jaundice, encephalitis, sepsis, severe infectious diseases in newborns, hypoglycemia, multiple births and maternal pregnancy diseases, placental problems, umbilical cord problems, etc. High-risk infants will have 5-6 times the risk of developing diseases such as cerebral palsy or mental retardation compared to normal births. According to the literature, the incidence of mental retardation in children in the normal population has increased to about 2-3 per 1,000, and the incidence of cerebral palsy is about 1.97 per 1,000. If these two diseases are not detected in time during infancy, once they are detected in preschool or school age, the best time for prevention is often lost and treatment is difficult to receive the expected results, and the defects will be permanent. Through tireless exploration and research, medical professionals have found ways to prevent these two diseases, i.e., early intervention from birth can effectively prevent mental retardation and cerebral palsy. Early intervention is therefore particularly important for at-risk children. Early intervention refers to a series of measures to improve the intelligence of at-risk children or to catch up with the development of normal children. How is early intervention done? It means giving early stimulation to the main sensory organs of the body during the neonatal period, such as auditory stimulation, talking to the baby, singing, playing music, listening to the recording of the mother’s voice; such as visual stimulation, moving things with bright colors for the baby to see; another example, tactile stimulation, touching, massaging, changing the baby’s position, etc. Through stimulation to make the child become agile, so as to develop the child’s perceptual discrimination, communication skills, etc. Modern brain science research has found that: infancy is a critical period for intellectual development, and the plasticity of the brain is strongest during this period, and early infancy, after damage to the central nervous system, can still functionally form pathways. One child had the left cerebral hemisphere removed due to disease before the age of 5. As a result of continuous education and learning after surgery, 21 years later, the verbal IQ reached 126 points and the operational IQ reached 102 points, and graduated from college, proving that either side of the cerebral hemisphere can develop advanced language skills, but adults who damage the left cerebral language area rarely have the possibility of recovering normal speech, indicating that the brain of the pediatrician is damaged early in development, and then reaches good functional compensation. Therefore, systematic monitoring and guidance from health care providers as early as possible after birth is the most effective way to improve children’s intelligence and prevent the occurrence of cerebral palsy. Some experts suggest that at-risk children should have a formal neurodevelopmental evaluation every month up to the age of half a year, and every two months after the age of half a year.