Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics have updated checklists of growth indicators approved for monitoring the growth of newborns and younger children, with the aim of giving parents and pediatricians clearer and easier criteria for determining delays in children. Early growth.
According to updated US guidelines issued last week, infants and younger children should be screened for delayed growth.
For the first time since its release in 2004, as part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s developmental surveillance campaign “Find the Signs. Treat It Early”, a group of eight experts in different areas of child development has revised and updated the checklists, which are used across the United States. .
These checklists are familiar to many parents as part of regular check-ups at the pediatrician’s office, and previously used growth indices for the 50th percentile, meaning that only half of children were expected to achieve this result by a certain age.
But the revised checklists will test growth indicators that 75% or more of children are expected to achieve by a given age, eliminating unnecessary confusion and anxiety, while ensuring that children who need assessment and additional resources are accurately identified.
Paul Lipkin, a member of the Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and the Council for Children with Disabilities, who helped with the review, said in a press release: immediately.”
“At the same time, we don’t want to cause undue confusion to families or professionals,” Lipkin added, noting that “reviewing the guidelines through clinicians’ experience in this area and data achieves these goals.”
Additional changes to the Guidelines include:
- Added checklists for children aged 15-30 months, now a checklist for every doctor visit between 2 months and 5 years
- Identify additional social and emotional signs that baby should meet, including smiling on their own to get your attention at 4 months
- Remove the use of ambiguous vocabulary such as “may” or “begin” when referring to certain pointers
- Removing duplicate growth indicators
- Ask new questions that can be used during conversations between parents and pediatricians. For example: Is there anything that worries you about what your child does or does not do?
- Review and expand the range of tips and activities that promote children’s development
In turn, child development expert, Dr. Jenny Radesky, expressed her happiness with these changes, but parents should take into account that growth indicators are not everything.
“It’s a method we’re trying to find out for kids who might have a developmental delay,” said Radesky, M.D., in the Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of Michigan CS Mott Children’s Hospital.
Radesky pointed out that parents should also trust their own knowledge of their children, including what brings them happiness, motivates them greatly, and when they feel that their relationship with them has become more close.
“These aspects of the parent-child relationship are not measured by growth indicators, but are essential to children’s mental health,” she added.