Early stimulation of children with risk factors for mental retardation

Background: early stimulation is a word used in educational and clinical practice to refer to the care of children who need additional stimuli for their development. Objective: to describe a pedagogical strategy for the direction of early stimulation process in children from zero to two years with risk factors for mental retardation. Methods: research conducted in five communities in the Santiago de Cuba province to take care 26 children born with risk factors for mental retardation, their families, promoters and executors of the Educate your child Program. For their evaluation, a case study and a pre-experiment for the individualized attention to these children were developed, which allowed early detection of the insufficiencies which could interfere with their development and take the necessary actions for their attention regarding diversity. Results: all the children performed the 100% of activities at the end of the second year, but within each stage there were variations between them; emotional bond with family and promoters with children was always assessed as positive above 90%. Democratic communication style prevailed. During the stimulation, the emotional bond of the family with the child was positive in 97.6% and the mood in 92.3 %. Conclusions: the results achieved corroborated the effectiveness of this proposal.