Do you have concerns that your child is not meeting the developmental milestones expected at their age? Tracking and monitoring your child’s development is important for detecting possible delays to ensure an early intervention for the chance of achieving the best outcomes. We advise all our families to stay up-to-date with the AAP’s recommended checkups so that we can monitor if your baby’s development is on track and intervene if needed. Here’s what families need to know about developmental delays.
Developmental milestones include behavioral and physical skills and capabilities expected during certain stages of a child’s life, such as motor, sensory, communication, and feeding skills. Motor milestones can be your baby using their hands to support themselves, being able to sit up, crawling, standing, and walking. Sensory milestones involve the senses, such as noticing and tracking objects, making sounds to express feelings, and observing different shapes, textures, and sizes of objects. Communication milestones include language and social skills such as recognizing words, using gestures like nodding or shaking the head, and developing speech. Feeding milestones include latching onto the nipple/bottle for breastfeeding/feeding and beginning finger foods and solids.
The most common type of developmental delays found in children is communication and language. However, speech delays can be temporary and will typically resolve on their own. If your child has a speech delay, we recommend interacting and playing with them often, reading books to them, and sharing different gestures and sounds that they can make to communicate and express themselves. When these do not resolve a language delay on their own, your child may need additional support from a speech therapist.
There is no single cause of developmental delays, but complications at birth, your child’s environment, or medical conditions can be contributing risk factors. Some delays like speech might indicate a sign of hearing loss or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it’s important to note that there’s a difference between developmental delays and developmental disabilities. While developmental delays can eventually be outgrown, developmental disabilities are lifelong. If you’re unsure if your child has a developmental delay or a disability, call our office so that we can screen and evaluate them to determine if they have either one.
You can find a helpful resource to use for a list of milestones that are expected in each age group during the infant and toddler years on the Pathways website here. If your child was born prematurely, you will need to adjust their age when tracking their milestones. To do this, take your baby’s actual age in weeks and subtract it from the number of weeks they were preterm. For example, if your baby was born 10 weeks ago but 2 weeks earlier than their due date, the corrected age is 8 weeks. In this case, you would assess your child’s development based on what’s expected at 8 weeks.
If you have any concerns about possible developmental delays, schedule a visit with us. We can advise you on the best course of action to take and the type of therapy your child might need to help with their delay with the goal being to give them the supports they need to help them thrive and succeed!
