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How to ensure your premature baby has an emotionally healthy life
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- Bernadette Melnyk, PhD., RN , Dean, The College of Nursing, OSU
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Bernadette Melnyk, PhD., RN
Dean, The College of Nursing, OSU
Your first instinct in caring for a tiny preemie might be to be overprotective but that may not be what's best for your growing child. Dr. Bernadette Melnyk describes how parents can ensure their premature baby has an emotionally healthy life.
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Transcript
How to ensure your premature baby has an emotionally healthy life
I think the most important thing that I can tell a parent about how to help your child long term when they are
born prematurely is not to overprotect that child and treat them really fragile. There are so many children
who are born prematurely that end up having emotional and behavioral problems because of the way they
are parented.
Because they were born prematurely, again, a lot of times parents see those babies as fragile and as a
result of that, they overprotect their children as they grow. They are afraid to discipline those children. They
are afraid to limit set with those children, and as a result their children end up not developing good self-
emotional regulation.
So we do see a lot of behavioral and emotional problems later on in children of per-terms, not because of
the prematurity, but because of the way they have been parented as fragile little children.
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