Tracking Developmental Progress

As part of our consulting business specializing in the movement through the developmental milestones, we needed a method for demonstrating movement through the developmental milestones over time. The result is our free Developmental Checklist. Our clients use it to track the movement through the developmental milestones of their children. It is useful for parents of children with developmental difficulties to see and understand the status of their children’s movement through the developmental milestones. It is also appropriate for all parents to understand and to track the movement through the developmental milestones of their children, whatever the developmental situation.

Developing this checklist

When we began consulting with parents about their children’s movement through the developmental milestones, we found out that many parents do not understand much about the movement through the developmental milestones. Families would tell us stories about what their child did new this week, but they had little understanding that their child was providing data about the developmental step on which the child was working.

Helping parents understand the movement through the developmental milestones

We needed something that helped parents understand the movement through the developmental milestones. We needed something that guided parents to watch for important developmental signals. And, we needed something that would quantify a child’s movement through the developmental milestones. We tried several different forms, looking for something that was appropriate for parents and caregivers, ourselves, and to other service providers who worked with the children.

We did not want to develop a diagnostic tool. We wanted something to help parents understand and to track movement through the developmental milestones of their children.

One of the objectives we had for the format was to have a better way of describing the overview of the status of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones. The standard method is to describe the child’s developmental age as a single number of months or years.

What about this developmental age?

There are numerous difficulties in this way of doing things. For example, what are the developmental steps used to decide the ‘age’ of the child? Do we use walking or talking? Do we use gross motor, fine motor, social/emotional, sensory (, etc. . .) steps? Which of these steps is better at showing the child's age?

Even more of a problem is that for each milestones (commonly established at 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months), a child with developmental difficulties will have completed some tasks and not completed others. These children have begun some tasks and not completed them. They have begun some other tasks and completed them. And, they have not even started some tasks.

Broad-based developmental improvement

In our program the clients close the empty places in their movement through the developmental milestones. When we reported to the parents the status of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones we wanted to give a visual representation of that broad spectrum developmental improvement.

If we are only using some narrow, limited set of developmental steps to define the developmental ‘age’ of a child, in one month’s progress we might miss movement through the developmental milestones in areas not used to calculate that ‘age.’ In one month a child might not make progress in the steps used to define the ‘age’ and make a lot of progress in other developmental steps. We decided our task was to show the broad spectrum developmental improvement that children were making, so we wanted something to describe that.

What about developmental warning-signs?

In the 12-month and 24-month milestones, there are some items which are not developmental tasks. There is also an additional group of items, shown in our Developmental Checklist as “6+ years.” These sections are developmental warning-signs.

These items are thought to be warning-signs of likely developmental difficulties. By themselves, when a child is demonstrating behaviors shown in these items, this does not mean that there is a developmental problem. If a parent sees multiple of these items, the parents might think about testing and diagnosis. Our Developmental Checklist is no used for diagnosis, only a professional can do that kind of testing and diagnosis.

Visual Overview

We wanted to give parents the big picture of the broad spectrum developmental improvement. Our Visual Overview page provides a method for seeing that. It shows the current state of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones across each of the milestones. It also shows any of the developmental warning-signs the parents has identified.

Line-items details

Our free Developmental Checklist report also shows how the parent responded to each of the items, from each of the milestones. If parents want to use the checklist on a monthly basis, or to use it at the end of each milestones, these items specifics makes it easy to keep track of the answers marked the last time they used it.

Other service providers

We designed the checklist report to be appropriate for medical, psychological, and educational service providers. They will find the information appropriate for tracking children's movement through the developmental milestones.