The project helps us to become wiser about how to prevent mental vulnerability at 9-10 months from affecting the child’s development, well-being and growth in the long term.

Research from recent years has shown that many infants can have transient problems with sleeping or eating or with language or motor development. For only a small group, the problems persist. We know today that these problems and problems regulating emotions, contact and attention may be signs of a mental or physical vulnerability, which risks affecting the child’s development, well-being and weight in the long term, and not least when he or she reaches school age. But we lack knowledge about the factors that determine whether the child gets a positive development, whether he or she continues to be vulnerable or whether he or she gets worse.

Between the age of 9 and 24 months the child goes through a particularly important period of development. This period is very important if we are to prevent children from developing mental health problems and overweight. Therefore, we ask parents to help gather knowledge about their child’s development during this very period.

The knowledge we gain about the development of Danish infants will help us to map factors and development characteristics that are important for the children’s development and give us knowledge about how to avoid that vulnerability in the infant will burden the child’s development and well-being in the short and long term.