Keys To Identify If Your Baby Has Psychomotor Retardation
Pay attention to achievement and development. This advice is valid because the notion of psychomotor retardation implies, as a provisional diagnosis, that the developmental achievements of a certain child during his first 3 years of life appear in a slow sequence for his age or qualitatively altered.
The first question we must ask ourselves is which professional should carry out the diagnosis of developmental problems? If you suspect that your child has a psychomotor delay, the ideal is to have him evaluated by a specialist, who will be more objective than a family member.
Do you have a psychomotor retardation?
When it comes to our children, we are likely to be unobjective and exaggerate or minimize some assessments. However, it is vital to know when the child during the first three years of life is unable to develop or achieve goals such as walking, playing, or talking, that he could be suffering from a disorder.
In any case, remember that the Primary Care pediatrician (PC) is the most suitable professional to monitor child development. Its role is crucial due to the possibility to make an early diagnosis.
Scientific societies recommend that all children have a regular test called a developmental delay screening . In this sense, it should be done in the context of visits to the pediatrician. The test is crucial to assess your child’s psychomotor development.
According to the notes on psychomotor retardation of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, it is necessary to distinguish global psychomotor retardation. It affects not only the motor acquisitions but also the rate of appearance of the skills to communicate, play and solve problems appropriate to their age.
In this case, it is possible to think that persistent psychomotor retardation in those early years may be a prelude to a future diagnosis of mental retardation. At other times, the delay is only evident in a specific area, such as posturomotor acquisitions (most of the time, accompanied by qualitative abnormalities in muscle tone), language, or social interaction skills.
Attention to the signs of psychomotor retardation
The clinical impression of psychomotor retardation usually arises during the first months of life when the disproportion between observed and expected development for age is verified. Certain children with connatal encephalopathy show poor behavior and signs of neurological abnormality very early, from the first days of life, according to the Spanish Association of Pediatrics.
Evidence of psychomotor retardation begins in some cases from some pathological event that causes brain damage. There are early epileptic syndromes (West syndrome, severe myoclonic epilepsy of childhood, etc.) that lead to psychomotor retardation.
Other times, epilepsies in the early years are symptomatic of pre-existing brain damage. Many children with mild mental deficiency “met” the first milestones of psychomotor development with relative normality. Furthermore, it is only after the second year that a language delay and relative poverty in the game schemes become evident.
In fact, preschool children are frequently consulted for language, learning or social skills delays, leading to the discovery of general psychomotor retardation followed by confirmation of mild or moderate mental retardation.
There are some things to watch out for during the first three years of your child’s life. Here are some of the recommendations offered by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, these are tips that you should remind your doctor:
After the birth:
- It is necessary for the doctor to assess possible risk factors.
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination.
- Observation of spontaneous motor skills, which refers to general movements.
- Screen for hearing loss (otoacoustic emissions, brainstem auditory evoked potential audiometry), hypothyroidism and more frequent metabolic diseases.
2-3 months in psychomotor retardation:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination.
- Observation of spontaneous motor skills and / or classic neurological examination.
- Eventually, a second hearing exam, if the suspicion of hearing loss or particular risk factors persists.
- Evaluation of the family and social environment.
4-6 months:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination with special attention to postural neck and trunk reactions, manipulation, visual behavior, and early social interactions.
- Screening for ocular phia.
7-10 months:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination with special attention to stable sitting, manipulation.
- Basic representative capacities, among which are object permanence, “appear-disappear” games.
- Imitative babbling and first syllables.
12-14 months in psychomotor retardation:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination with special attention to autonomous movement modality, appearance of gait.
- Manipulation with thumb-index clamp.
- Joint attention.
- Proto-declarative gestures and first words.
18-20 months:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination with special attention to quality of independent gait, use of spoon and glass.
- Symbolic and fictional play, intersubjective skills.
- Lexical evaluation, attending to comprehension and vocabulary. At this age he must express more than 50 words.
It is useful to ask parents to say for a minute a list of different words that they have found that the child is currently speaking. Therefore, if we multiply the number of words remembered by two, we will get very close to the real number of different terms that the child uses in his expression.
24-36 months:
- Practice neurological and behavioral examination with special attention to quality of gait and running.
- Basic knowledge of the body scheme.
- I try to use a pencil.
- Image recognition.
- Beginning of syntax (subject-verb-object, some determiners and beginning of inflections).
- Fictitious and trick game.
- Social behavior at home and in the nursery.
From now on you will be able to intuit if your child suffers from a psychomotor retardation or not. In any case, it will always be essential that you go to the doctor to give you his opinion as a professional. Finally, remember that it is essential that if you notice any abnormality in the growth or development of your child, you should always go to the specialist.
