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What is Child Development?
What is Child Development?
Children acquire functional skills throughout childhood. The term ‘child development’ is used to describe the skills acquired by children between birth and about 5 years of age, during which there are rapid gains in mobility, speech and language, communication and independence skills.
Many parental concerns about their child’s development are found to be variations of the norm, in which case the parents should be reassured.
What is Development Delay or Disorder?
What is Development Delay or Disorder?
The terminology can be confusing, but:
Delay – implies slow acquisition of all skills (global delay) or of one particular field or area of skill (specific delay), particularly in relation to developmental problems in the 0–5 years age group.
Learning difficulty – used in relation to children of school age and may be cognitive, physical, both or relate to specific functional skills.
Disorder – maldevelopment of a skill.
Disability - in severe cases and where the development has been affected by a genetic or a neurologic condition.
The pattern of abnormal development (global or specific) can be categorised as:
slow but steady
plateau effect
showing regression
What else to look for?
What else to look for?
Other possible features of developmental delay are:
The gap between normal and abnormal development might becomes greater with increasing age and therefore becomes more apparent over time.
It may be the presentation of a wide variety of underlying conditions.
If the underlying conditions is a brain damage. The site and severity of brain damage influences the clinical outcome, i.e. whether there will be specific or global developmental delay, learning and/or physical disability.
It may be genetic, with important implications for the family.
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