Join Professor of Pediatrics Tamiko Jordan and OTR/L Melissa Idelson as they discuss developmental delays in babies. The most common developmental problem a premature baby may encounter is a developmental delay. The four domains doctors look-out for are: gross motor, fine motor, language, and problem-solving. Doctors judge development based on the time a baby was supposed to be born, rather than when they actually were born. If your baby is not catching up between the first to second year of life, your doctor might suggest a full developmental evaluation.

Transcript:

- The most common developmental problem a premature baby would face is developmental delay. So your doctor may ask you questions in the four domains of development that we think about, the first being gross motor. Those are the large movements like sitting or crawling. The fine motor movements, like the way they use their fingers to maybe pick up Cheerios or small bits of food. The third being language, so how your baby is maybe making sounds or responding to other sounds. The third would be, I mean the fourth would be problem solving, so that would be like turning a cup upside down to get something out instead of reaching in to get it, or dropping something on the floor and looking to see where it went. So we would judge development based on the time that your baby was supposed to be born, so closer to their due date, rather than the day they were born. So say your baby was two months early and you're at the six month checkup with your doctor, we would be asking developmental milestones for a four month old, rather than a six month old. If your baby isn't catching up somewhere between the first and second year, we might suggest a full developmental evaluation with a specialist, and possibly developmental therapy.

- The age between two and three, there is a lot of language development that occurs, so it is often very difficult to be able to know if you need to be worried or concerned about your child's language development. At the age of three, most children have about 450 words. They're using short sentences. They're using language to communicate, to socialize. And at that time, many children are often put in social situations. If they're struggling with using their language to communicate, if they're starting to hit, if they're pushing, if they're biting, if they're avoiding social situations, becoming overly stressed and frustrated and you can see that they don't have the language capacity, that is the time to consult with a speech and language pathologist.