Developmental Delays

• Developmental Delays 
• Baby Bumble Bee 
• IAHP-Developmental Delays        
• Wisc. Parents of Children with Developmental Delays/Autism
• Developmental Delay Resources
• Interagency Council on Early Childhood Services
• Keep Kids Healthy
• National Institue On Developmental Delays
• NNCC Caring for Children with Special Needs; Developmental Delays

Information:

 There are more than 300 different labels that are commonly used to describe brain-injured children. The vast majority of these labels are not proper diagnoses, but rather they are descriptions of the symptoms of brain injury.

A proper diagnosis describes where the injury exists in the brain, the degree of the injury to the brain, and the extent of the injury to the brain.

Using symptoms in place of a proper diagnosis almost invariably leads to the attempt to treat those symptoms rather than the brain, where the child is actually injured.

This does not work.

To be successful one must treat the brain, where the injury actually exists.

Some of the labels commonly used to describe brain-injured children are:

cerebral palsy mentally retarded mentally deficient retarded special needs special education hyperactive autistic

epileptic emotionally disturbed spastic athetoid untrainable trainable developmental delay / pervasive developmental disorder

educable dyslexic attention deficit disorder / attention deficit hyperativity disorder persistent vegetative state Down syndrome reading problems learning problems

None of the above descriptions are proper diagnoses, but are descriptions of the results of brain injury.

Common symptoms of brain injury are:

coma blindness visual problems strabismus inability to read inability to read at grade level deafness hearing problems auditory hypersensitivity inability to understand words inability to understand equal to peers sensory problems

learning problems tactile problems inability to move inability to sit up inability to crawl inability to creep inability to stand inability to walk walks poorly inability to run runs poorly inability to make sounds

inability to speak talks poorly inability to write writes poorly hyperactivity poor attention span inappropriate behavior temper tantrums seizures respiratory programs feeding problems sleeping problems

Functional Diagnosis

It is necessary to determine which area of the brain is hurt, to what degree the area is injured and to what extent. After a careful neurological evaluation a child may be diagnosed as having a "severe (degree), diffuse (extent), bilateral (both hemispheres of the brain), cortical (area) injury". The old-fashioned symptomatic labels used to describe such a child might be "mentally retarded", "epileptic", "spastic", "hyperactive", "emotionally disturbed", or others.

These old-fashioned labels are not found in the literature of The Institutes but rather the term "brain-injured". This refers to the entire spectrum of brain injury from profound coma to mild learning problems and every kind and degree of brain injury in between.