Protection versus overprotection?

All children are precious, but when they arrive early and give you a real scare, I think you cling to them even more tightly. Sometimes your need to protect them is very real - if, for example, they are prone to lung infections following chronic lung disease, or have other medical issues which require them to avoid anyone likely to be infectious. KEMH recommended that I avoid taking Talia into shopping centres and other crowed places for the first few months, and that she not attend childcare for her first two years, as she had struggled to breath for so long and came home after 11 weeks of CPAP with O2 and another week just with oxygen via PBF. Fortunately for us, she has had no lung or chest problems since discharge, but I know other prems who are in and out of hospital every winter and come down with bronchiolitis as easily as some kids come down with a cold. So precautions are important, and despite what your family has to say on the subject, if you want your child kept away from Granny because she has a cold then your decision should be respected!

However, as the years pass and our little ones grow and amaze us that anyone so tiny could come so far, sometimes I wonder if we maintain that sense of vigilence for longer than we need to. A while ago, a friend told me of a colleague, a psychologist, who had done some research involving premature children. Her unofficial summary of his findings was “The kids were normal but the parents were not.” From what I remember her saying, he had not found evidence that premature birth lead to increased psychological problems - but he did feel that the parents of those ex-prems were much more anxious than parents of full term kids, and worried about their kids much more than parents of other kids he had studied. When I mentioned it to some other prem mums, they admitted they had noticed it themselves - for example, if their child had flu-like symptoms they would tend to panic and go directly to A&E rather than waiting to see a GP.

After that conversation, I decided I really needed to consciously try not to overprotect my prem. I am relaxed about the common cold and “normal” germs - and thankful for a child with a great immune system despite her unpromising start. After a year and a half, I started using childcare. But some things are harder. I read an article in a parenting magazine last year entitled “cottonwool kidlets”.

The level of protection your child needs will change as they grow older. Obviously very young children have no ability to determine danger so they rely on their parents to keep them safe, however the problem emerges when parents are unable to let go of their growing child and allow them to explore their own independence. Parents have to be careful about over-protecion because a child can pick up on separation anxiety and can also become anxious. And we know anxiety in early life can lead to anxiety and even depression in adulthood. Anxious children can become timid, shy and develop social phobias like a fear of meeting new people. This can be tough on them when they start school. Parents need to give children safe but effective opportunities to play and explore, and to learn to cope and self-soothe.

It all makes sense… but it’s not always easy from a parent’s perspective. My child is already much more timid than her peers and takes a long time to adjust to situations where there are crowds or she is separated from me. It might be just her personality and nothing to do with her prematurity, but either way I hope I can help her to grow more resilient, and to keep myself from becoming an over-anxious parent.