How you can help your baby with developmental delay achieve their motor milestones
What is developmental delay?
The term developmental delay is used in a very general way when a baby does reach developmental milestones within the expected time frame for their age. These milestones encompass various areas of growth and skill development, including physical, cognitive, communication, social, and emotional domains.
Children typically follow a predictable sequence of developmental milestones, such as sitting, crawling, walking, talking, and acquiring social skills. However, when a child lags significantly behind their peers in achieving these milestones, it may indicate a developmental delay.
There are many reasons why a baby may not achieve their milestones in the usual way including pre-term birth, difficult birth, Down syndrome, generalized joint hypermobility, low muscle tone autism to name a few.
However, no matter what the reason is for the developmental delay, these babies and toddlers have the capacity for learning new skills given the right opportunities for practicing age appropriate tasks that have been adapted to allow them to succeed.
Help your baby learn new skills Preterm infants and those who have experienced a difficult birth and maybe some injury to the brain, are at risk for attention and perceptual-motor difficulties which may affect their ability to learn new motor skills, achieve their gross motor milestones on time and impact on performance of fine motor tasks needed for school, especially drawing and handwriting. |
Hemi Hands |
Baby and toddler hand activities
Activities and games for training hand function
Help your baby achieve their motor milestones
Ideas for improving your baby's motor development
Help your toddler
Ideas for training toddler movement abilities
Babies with low muscle tone and joint hypermobility
Low muscle tone: what is it and how does it affect development?
Joint hypermobility: how it affects your infant's development
Babies who scoot on their bottoms
Why do some infants bottom shuffle? Does it matter in the long run?
Late learning to walk
Late learning to walk: how parents can encourage walking
Developmental Gym for Babies and Toddlers |