Changes for the yellow brick road: the new developmental milestone chart.
I am a nationally certified speech pathologist and I thinker’s a good thing that the The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated the developmental milestones. What does this mean for you and your child? For review, developmental milestones are skills that children achieve at particular times from birth to six years. For example most children are expected to react to loud sounds by two months; Look at a familiar object when you name it by 15 months; and say about 50 words by 30 months. Every child is different and has their special way of attaining motor, emotional, communication and cognitive skills. Yet there is an expected level of development that has been established via years of research and observation of the infant population. Previously the CDC checklist showed developmental milestones that 50% of children had achieved. Now the revised checklist features milestones reached by at least 75% of children. One reason for the change is to discourage parents from waiting too long to address suspicions of speech and language delay. If you suspect that your child is not communicating on age-level, please talk to your pediatrician and seek a speech-language evaluation from a speech pathologist. Don’t wait! You and your child will be better for it.
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