What's global developmental delay?

Slow development: The term of global developmental delay is being used more by pediatricians to describe children who are not meeting their usual milestones. Four areas of development can be assessed: gross motor, fine motor, social and verbal. There are many standard scales to assess a child by age, even before two years old. Special scales are used if there are associated disorders.

Significant delays, : with age-equivalent performance of 1 1/2 std. deviations or more below the mean in 2 or more developmental domains: cognition, receptive/ expressive communicatiion, social/adaptive & fine/ gross motor skills + how a child processes information presented verbally or visually. GDD is a diagnosis for kids thru age 4. Below-normal cognitive & adaptive skills at 5-6 is termed Intellectual Disability.