Parental structure and ways of interaction in relation to the development of impaired newborns in the first year of life.

In a follow-up study of 144 newborns at high neuropsychic risk the parents were interviewed during the hospital stay and the infants were followed up one week after discharge and at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months of corrected age. The protocol included pediatric examination, neuromotor assessment, caring observation and assessment on the Brunet-Lézine developmental scale at 16 and 12 months of corrected age. An attempt was made to correlate the parents' personality structure, present experience and capacity for attunement with the infant to his development and wellbeing. After the exclusion of 11 infants with severe neuropsychic sequelae, the sample was made up of 133 infants. It was found that: despite prolonged hospitalization, in some cases for over 3 months, most of the parents by the end of the hospital stay and nearly all within a month of discharge, even if their own structures were pathological or they were suffering from reactive depression, managed (sometimes with the help of the staff) to achieve attunement with their child. This enabled him to fulfil his competences, catching up quickly in performances as soon as the parents were able to understand his messages; after 6 months of corrected age blocks and regressions emerged, related to the pathological structures of the parents or to problems bearing on their own conflicts with adverse effects on the child when he started his separation-individuation process.