What do parents need to know about the newly updated U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) child development milestones? Take a look at what you need to know about these changes, child development, and the impact an early learning environment may have on your child.
What Are Developmental Milestones?
Milestones are markers that help parents, clinicians, teachers, and other early childhood professionals assess where a child's development or skill level is in comparison to a standardized norm. These markers are divided into different areas, including emotional, social, cognitive, physical/motor, and language.
While milestones can help you to understand whether your child is on track developmentally or needs extra help, they aren't set in stone. The CDC's and AAP's news reflect the ability for professionals to shift milestones or reframe the way professionals look at some types of development. Beyond changes made to the milestones, each child may reach the markers at somewhat different times.
Your child is an individual. They might reach a milestone slightly before or after an expected age or age range. A small lag shouldn't always equal a cause for alarm. Instead, your child is possibly on a somewhat different schedule. But when a severe lag happens or a child misses milestones completely, the issue could require assessment and early intervention.
What Are the Recent Changes?
The previous milestone checklist used a 50th percentile or average age approach. This means 50 percent (or half) of all children should meet a milestone by a set age. A group of medical and developmental experts found that this strategy wasn't the most helpful approach to assessing and diagnosing developmental delays and other similar issues.
Instead of using the 50th percentile, the new guidance uses the
75th. In other words, 75 percent of all children should meet each milestone by the set age or time frame.
The updates also include new checklists for each well-child visit between two months and five years, additional emotional and social milestones, the removal of vague language that is hard for parents to understand, the removal of duplicate milestones at different ages, and open-ended questions for parents to use as discussion starters with the pediatrician or child development professional.
What Do These Changes Mean for Parents?
Do these new changes mean you should or shouldn't expect your child to behave, act, move, or speak differently at different times? Even though the checklist has changes, the major milestones (such as when you should expect your child to crawl, walk, or build a block tower) are dramatically different.
The new checklist doesn't set entirely new dates or times for specific markers. Instead, the checklist and percentage allows child development professionals to better detect potential problems and create intervention plans earlier. The earlier intervention begins, the more likely you can help the child succeed.
What Do These Changes Mean for Daycare or Preschool?
Will your child's preschool suddenly change the curriculum or revise the expectations they have for learning based on the CDC's and AAP's new guidance? This isn't likely. Again, the revisions don't move major milestones or create significant changes in general expectations. But they will help your child's teacher to spot a possible issue earlier.
Instead of believing that 50 percent of children won't reach a specific milestone by a set age, professionals will now use the view that only 25 percent won't. If a child is in the 25 percent group, this may raise more red flags than it would have previously.
Are you searching for an early learning environment to help your child develop new skills and abilities? Contact
Riviera Daycare & Preschool
for more information.
