CDC updates developmental milestones for small children

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added ages to check if your child has reached a developmental milestone: 15-months and 30-months. The speech and language guidelines have some speech therapists concerned.

“Everything is just set back now, so, for example, we get a lot of little ones that come in around the 15-month mark because they’re only saying a couple of words, they’re only saying mama and dada, which is very concerning because at 15 months we need to be saying eight or ten more. So now their new one is saying mama and dada and even just trying to say two words is at 15 months, so right now we look at that and that is delayed we need to intervene here, but the CDC would say that’s fine,” Speech Therapist Kaitlyn Byrnside said.

While a speech developmental delay might be just a delay, experts said you should still get your child evaluated early.

“I’m worried that if parents wait and then their child gets ready to start school things won’t come up until then and then your child’s going to be so behind,” Byrnside said.

Even though it may seem like just a few months, it can be a big step in a child’s developmental timeline.

“From birth to five years that’s whenever a lot of foundations happen so we’re not going to be able to say phrases unless we say those first words,” Byrnside said.

Byrnside said to help your child with speech development, allow them to socialize with other kids their age.

You can find the updated CDC developmental milestones on their website.

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