Developmental Screening for Young Children

Childhood development is the gaining of skills in various aspects of the child's life. It can be monitored using “developmental milestones”; objective targets reached at various stages, generally classified in to four main areas: gross motor, fine motor and vision, speech and hearing, and social and self-help skills. Although each stage of development will be reached at slightly different ages within the normal population, the order that the various skills are obtained by each child remains fairly consistent. Universally agreed ages that a child “should” have reached each skill are well documented, after which the attained skill is classified as being delayed. These milestone ages are important to allow the practitioner to assess if a child has a delay in any or all of the areas of development, and therefore highlight those children needing further assessment. Early intervention is essential for optimising developmental progress in the delayed child. Developmental delay (DD) is a common condition seen regularly by GPs.