Child Dev and Dev Milestones

child development

process of growing from infancy to adulthood; skills are developed to learn increasingly complex topics

• typical, delayed, or atypical

• range of development depending on contextual factors (genetics, social and physical environment, culture. etc.)

• cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, adaptive behavior

horizontal development vs. vertical development

horizontal: look at multiple skill domains at one time point

• at 2 years old what is the typical fine motor, gross motor, visuomotor skills

vertical/longitudinal: look at one skill domain across many time points

• gross motor at 1 yr, 2 yr, 3 yr, etc.

child development as a dynamic process

interaction between neurophysiological systems, contextual environment, social emotional responses

• environment, task, individual

• complex; no rigid preprogrammed set of milestones or development outcome

• sensitive to change

culture and child development

WEIRD- western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic vs. Non-WEIRD

• nature via nurture

developmental milestones

skills that child achieve at a typical point set by experts; guides, not fixed-norms; cultural significance to set the milestones (crawling important in US but not Jamaica); compared to normative data- 75% of children crawl by X months

CDC Milestones Checklists

checklists for parents and professionals, designed for parents; communication tool not a screening/assessment tool; dev monitoring tool; no set criteria on when to use this tool, good to use at wellness checks, identify need for additional screening 

• Change from 50% to 75% to include more kids 

• Took out crawling because it’s complex and not cross cultural

• Open ended questions to facilitate conversation

• Took out duplicates and vague wording 

• Data collected in 2019- can’t blame covid for delays

infant reflexed

primitive automatic motor or survival responses necessary for health; start in 3rd trimester-through 1st year of life; reaction, position/stimulus that initiates it, positive response (what happens if reflex doesn’t go away), integration (no longer have a positive response)

• rooting

• ATNR- turn head to side; getting out of birth canal

• Moro- startle if they are dropped