What are the warning signs of developmental delays?

Slow on milestones: An important part of your baby's checkup visit with the pediatrician is a developmental assessment. Your baby should be reaching his motor, verbal, and social milestones at a steady pace. Babies who are failing to meet those milestones or lagging many months behind other children the same age are children who should be identified early on so that interventions can be made to help.

Delayed milestones: I agree with dr. Roberts. Just realize there has been a delay in some motor milestones by several months like rolling over and crawling since the babies have been put to sleep on their backs.

Increasing the Gap: There are average developmental milestone guidlines. If your child is 3 mos behind in motor skills for example, but is always 3 mos behind, that is generally not a problem. But if they become 6mos delayed, i become worried. Remember children develop skills over a large time variable. If they continue to progress without losing further ground, they are probably normal.

Delay warnings: Children develop at different & widely variable speeds, but there are typical "milestones" that should appear in most kids by certain ages. The most reliable thing to do is some standard review of age-appropriate skills every time she sees her doctor. "ages and stages" is a great checklist tool that you can fill out before the visit by watching what your baby is doing in her natural environment.

Delays: I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The delay itself is present or it's not. The child is not doing what other children the same ages are doing. There is no warning. Do you mean risk factors?

Depends on age: Each age of child has a set of milestones associated with it. So we look to match up milestones with the appropriate baby's age. When we see a missing milestone, we look for grouping and associations. For example, we might see a motor ( muscle movement ) delay in a baby and find an associated change in muscle tone. Delay can be gross motor, fine motor, social, speech, communication.