ABSTRACT
Because I was a doctoral student in a university that was and continues to be committed to temperament research, it is not surprising that the work of Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess became a central theme of my research. The expression of temperament as a dynamic interactional phenomenon, as well as a “goodness-of-fit” model, has continued to be the guiding force in my clinical practice with healthy as well as high-risk infants. Although Thomas and Chess's New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) (Thomas & Chess, 1977) began when the infants were 3 months of age, mostly because of the relative instability of temperament characteristics in the early weeks of life, I believe that it is our responsibility to begin anticipatory guidance concerning individual differences on the first day of life. It is with this in mind that I have structured this article in honor of Thomas and Chess. This chapter explores factors contributing to behavioral individuality in the neonatal period for both full-term and preterm babies. It discusses how parents can be helped by clinicians to understand the particular behavioral styles of their infants in order to accommodate their individual needs. Although this chapter has some material overlapping with Dr. Hertzig's excellent presentation in this same collection, the difference is that my emphasis is a primary care, anticipatory guidance perspective.
