In China, it is a time when “problem children” are flying around! Many hospitals, websites, institutions, and even individuals are talking about “airplane hands”, “pointed feet”, “head tilting back”, “jerking up”, and “dystonia” every day. “, “myotonia” …… so many parents, so every day on the Internet to look up, look up a symptom to see their children, “Well, my baby seems to have this symptom, will There is a problem?” The more you check, the more you look, the more problems it seems to correspond to. The mother is not calm anymore, she can’t sit still, she carries her child to the hospital, in case she meets a doctor who says, “Well, your child has to be treated, otherwise it may be cerebral palsy”, so then, hospitalization, injection, infusion, hyperbaric oxygen, electrotherapy, everything that can be used is used. The child cries, the whole family has an emotional breakdown, or even some mothers become severely depressed and want to jump off a building. At the very least, this is not the case with a few of my patients. Of course, it is true that some of the children with the above symptoms have developmental problems, but there are a large number of children who are normal, and some of them are actually normal, just that parents do not distinguish. Warm tips When you suspect that your child has a problem, do not just look up some information on the Internet from unknown sources, you can read some professional information or books if you have the ability, and if you are not convenient to check the expertise yourself or still have great doubts, it is necessary to go to the hospital and ask a professional doctor to diagnose. What is early intervention? Early intervention, the meaning of “early”: early can be interpreted as “early in life” or “early in the appearance of symptoms”, but the age at which intervention begins is extremely important to the effectiveness of intervention. The earlier the early intervention, the better. Premature and high-risk infants are best to start after birth. “Intervention” has two meanings: 1. intervention refers to organized and purposeful educational activities that enrich the environment according to the rules of infant and toddler intellectual development, i.e., using tactile, visual, auditory, motor proprioception and vestibular balance to promote infant and toddler intellectual and motor development, facilitate the acquisition of developmental milestones, and reduce developmental risks; 2. The other case is when cerebral palsy is detected or when there is a lag in intelligence and communication skills. This situation can be directly referred to as “rehabilitation”. Therefore, early intervention includes both prevention and rehabilitation and can be understood as two different stages of the same process for children who later show specific neurodevelopmental abnormalities that require special treatment programs (physical, speech, cognitive, educational, behavioral rehabilitation). What kind of baby needs early intervention? It should be done for any baby. For a normal baby, we should understand what the child needs at each developmental stage and how we can provide good developmental support for the child by changing and modifying our living environment and parenting behaviors. For example, we should talk and interact more with our children instead of throwing a cell phone or an iPad to them; for example, we should provide a moderately hard mat for our children when they need to roll over, sit alone, or crawl; for example, we should reduce excessive substitution in our lives and give our children more opportunities to talk or do things, etc. For children with developmental risks (prematurity, perinatal hypoxia, bilirubin encephalopathy, maternal diseases, etc.), we provide preventive interventions to promote the child’s development on the one hand and to prevent some problems on the other. For children who already have developmental problems, early intervention (rehabilitation) can better reduce the occurrence or degree of disability and bring the child as close to normal as possible. What are the misconceptions about early intervention? How to intervene? We advocate early intervention for babies born prematurely, especially those with clear brain injury or other high-risk factors. But the question of how to grasp the degree of this intervention is important. From the perspective of the patients who come to our center, some parents immediately transfer their children to the rehabilitation department for rehabilitation when they are discharged from the neonatal unit, infusing various so-called brain nerve-nourishing drugs and doing various kinds of electrotherapy and magnetic therapy every day. Such treatment down, often found that the child does not grow in weight, sleep is not solid, easily frightened …… more children cross-infection, diarrhea, pneumonia and other diseases. Response: The focus of care and intervention is different for children of different months of age. The first year after birth is the fastest growing year for the child, especially the first three months (corrected within 3 months of age) the child’s growth and development is at a peak. Generally the growth of height, weight and head circumference in the first three months of a child’s life is the sum of the last nine months. Especially for premature babies, there is a catch-up growth process. Therefore, after the birth of the child, to reduce as much as possible the adverse stimulation, to ensure that the child eat well and sleep well, its physical development can be good. The process of eating well and sleeping well is also the process of rapid brain development. During this period of intervention, you can give your child moderate touch, massage, passive exercises, active movement guidance, audio-visual training, etc., when the child is awake, and you can also listen to music, sing children’s songs, chat, etc., while giving more soothing hugs. Even for children with clear brain injury or who have neurological symptoms that require rehabilitation, our intervention should be to ensure the child’s diet and sleep, provide the child with a warm and comfortable environment as much as possible, reduce adverse stimulation behaviors, and then give reasonable rehabilitation training in moderation. Myth 2: The more the early intervention, the better In the process of early intervention for children, some parents are afraid that the intervention is not enough, or afraid of missing which item and delaying the development of the child, so eyebrows and beard a grasp, drugs, hyperbaric oxygen, electrotherapy, magnetic therapy, etc., and even some places have sealed needles, the child tied like a small hedgehog. The child cries and the parents are distraught and tired, but the results are not good. Response: At present, for the early intervention of preterm babies, or even the rehabilitation of cerebral palsy, developmental delay and other diseases, there is no evidence to prove which drugs or hyperbaric oxygen is useful, electrotherapy, magnetic therapy, etc. may only play a small auxiliary role, the most clear and effective treatment is physical therapy. For premature babies, if there is no clear evidence of brain damage and corresponding clinical manifestations, it is recommended that family intervention is the main focus and parents learn some methods of family intervention to perform at home. If it appears that there is brain damage as well as clinical manifestations are also not good, you can go to a professional rehabilitation institution to rehabilitate, but parents should follow and learn to do it for their children when they are at home. Misconception 3: Focusing on gross motor interventions and ignoring other areas Currently, most hospital rehabilitation departments do not have a full range of rehabilitation programs, focusing on gross motor rehabilitation, but not on hand function and language cognition; many doctors only look at the child’s motor development and ignore other aspects of development; moreover, because it is better to observe whether the motor development is normal in the early stages of infancy, many parents only pay attention to gross motor interventions in the early stages of their children’s development. In the process of early intervention, many parents only pay attention to the rehabilitation of gross motor aspects. Response: In preterm infants, the incidence of cerebral palsy is much lower than the incidence of mental retardation, which is more important in the course of a person’s life, and cognitive intervention is also better the earlier the intervention. Therefore, early intervention should be comprehensive, with motor interventions along with cognitive language and other intellectual interventions. Myth #4: It is okay for a child to go to a rehabilitation center for intervention It is common to see this phenomenon in rehabilitation centers: children are training in the classroom while parents are outside the room playing on their cell phones and chatting. This is actually a mistake that many parents who take their babies to rehab make, thinking that if they send their children to rehab and teach them to the teachers, they have nothing to do with them, and that it is the teachers’ problem if the training is good or bad. Response: Who is the subject of early intervention for the child? Parents are the best teachers for their children, and the home should be the most important place for intervention! Therefore, parents should master some intervention methods, carry out family intervention as much as possible, and should be integrated into the daily parenting. In fact, feeding, diaper changing, bathing, and other daily activities can be combined with interventions. By making appropriate environmental arrangements at home according to the child’s developmental age, the child can receive interventions in the course of daily life. However, it should be noted that it is best to go to a professional institution for evaluation and professional guidance when carrying out family interventions. In conclusion, preventive early intervention for premature babies should be done, even for children with no damage, and it will have the effect of promoting development. But it is important to know how to do it in the best way.