The protocol aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of an intervention geared to significantly improve functional competence for preterm infants with fetal growth restriction (FGR). Incidence of FGR is estimated to be as high as 5% of the general obstetric population. Preterms with FGR are doubly jeopardized. Aside from much higher mortality rates they also show significantly increased morbidity rates, including significant learning disabilities and school failure (>50%). The intervention's underlying premise holds that it is far more effective to support the immature brain, which is compromised by FGR, to develop optimally before the infant reaches full term rather than to attempt to ameliorate increasingly deviant development after deviance has occurred. The goal of the project is to show the effectiveness of individualized developmental care and intervention, which begins with the FGR preterm infant's admission to the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) and extends to 2 weeks (w) after full term equivalent age or 2w CA (corrected age for prematurity). Intervention in the NICU is considered more advantageous for the infant's later development than delay of intervention until after discharge home. The proposal maintains that the last trimester of gestation is a critical period for brain development, especially when compromised by FGR. In-NICU intervention at this critical brain development time is expected to reduce the infants' hypersensitivity and reactivity while in the NICU, and to lead to reduction of the high incidence of behavioral problems in infancy, which frequently foreshadows later behavioral and learning problems as well as school failure.