Premature infants are born before full term, and their body functions and systems are less developed than normal infants, and their immunity and resistance, as well as their mobility and physical development, are lower than normal infants, so extra attention should be paid to the care of preterm infants. At the same time, the physical training methods for preterm infants are different from those for normal infants.
What are the methods of physical training for preterm babies?
Because the body of preterm infants are not well developed, so in training early field and physical fitness should pay attention to the child’s own ability and conditions, can not be forced to implement. For preterm infants limb mobility training, parents can help the baby to do some simple gymnastics every day, the activity of the baby’s limbs, slowly let the baby cooperate, to develop habits.
For premature babies, the best tactile training is from birth. Parental touch for premature babies can not only calm the young child’s psyche and soothe the child’s cranky emotions. You can also help the child massage, so that the child with the parent’s movements to match the action, which can exercise the child’s mobility, but also exercise the child’s ability to cooperate with others.
In addition to the visual stimulation for preterm infants is also particularly important. Parents should let their preterm babies touch more objects around them and let them observe more things in life, which will make them interested in the things around them. Then take the initiative to touch the thing, to touch it. Exposure to different is objects will make the baby have different feelings, which will help the baby to know more things and understand more things.
Parents must pay attention to the safety of young children when they are doing physical training on their preterm babies. You can’t just emphasize physical training for preterm babies and ignore the importance of safety, thus causing serious consequences that are more than worth the loss. For the physical training of premature infants to do sensory and hands-on integration is the best training. Let the child as a whole training to get the effect is often more than the single training gains. And physical training for preterm infants can also reduce the incidence of mental health disorders in young children.
In order to prevent developmental abnormalities in at-risk children, parents should give scientific guidance on anticipatory interventions for psycho-behavioral development based on the characteristics of children’s psycho-behavioral development, focusing on the continuity and stage characteristics of development according to the principle of individualization.
Neonatal period
1) Emphasize the importance of mother-infant communication and encourage parents to have more contact with their newborns, such as talking, smiling and hugging;
2) Learn to recognize the cries of the newborn baby, soothe the emotions and meet the needs, such as breastfeeding on demand;
3)The newborn baby can be practiced prone after 1 hour of feeding, and passive baby exercises can be performed 1 to 2 times a day;
4) Touch the newborn, let the newborn see faces or bright toys, listen to pleasant bells and music, etc. to promote the development of their sensory perception.
1~3 months
1) Pay attention to parent-child communication, talk and tease with the baby with emotion during feeding and nursing, respond to the baby’s voice with a smile, voice or nod, and emphasize eye contact;
2) Exercise the infant’s head and neck movement and control ability through prone, vertical holding exercises, passive exercises, etc;
3) Increase moderate auditory, visual and tactile stimulation, listen to pleasant music or toys with loud sounds, and use brightly colored toys to attract infants’ attention and tracking.
3~6 months
1) Encourage parents to raise their infants themselves, actively identify and respond to their infants’ physical and psychological needs in a timely and effective manner, and gradually establish a secure parent-child attachment;
2) Cultivate regular eating and sleeping habits, and play parent-child games such as looking in the mirror, hide and seek, and find the source of the sound with the infant;
3) Create a rich language environment, talk more with the infant, imitate the infant’s voice to encourage the infant’s pronunciation, and achieve the purpose of “communication response”;
4) Encourage infants to roll over freely and practice sitting properly; let infants reach out more to grasp toys and objects of different textures to promote the development of hand-eye coordination.
6～8 months
1) Parents should accompany and pay more attention to the infant, expand the range of activities under the condition of ensuring the safety of the infant, and encourage contact with the outside environment and people;
2) Call the baby’s name often and say the names of objects in the home to develop the baby’s ability to understand language. Guide the infant to pronounce “ba ba”, “ma ma”, etc. to increase their interest in pronunciation;
3) Help infants practice sitting alone, crawling and jumping under the armpits; practice reaching for distant toys, passing toys with both hands, tearing paper and other hand coordination and finger pinching actions to improve hand-eye coordination.
8～12 months
1) Help infants recognize the different expressions of others; divert their attention when they have negative emotions such as anger, boredom, and unhappiness; give encouragement and support when they are frustrated;
2) Enrich the infant’s language environment by talking to the infant and looking at pictures frequently. Let infants make actions and expressions according to instructions, such as answering to names and waving “goodbye”;
3) Help infants practice crawling on their hands and knees and learn to stand and walk while holding objects; provide infants with safe toys such as cups, blocks and balls to develop hand-eye coordination and relatively accurate manipulative skills;
4) Increase imitative games, such as clapping “welcome”, squeezing toys with loud sounds, patting dolls, and dragging blankets to obtain toys.