Children who appear disabled at 2 or 3 are not necessarily doomed to a lifetime of disability. These young adults were able to achieve much more than we expected. |
Our study should provide hope to parents for an equivalent, if not better, future for their premature children. |
Parents should be hopeful that with intervention, children can adapt and show improvement and function well in society. |
They were doing just about as well as children born of normal birth weight. A similar number were employed and education levels were similar. |
What we found, to our pleasant surprise, was that extremely low-birth-weight babies -- although one-quarter have disabilities -- at young adulthood seem to have adapted fairly well. |