Like many parents, I remember visits to the pediatrician’s office during my daughter’s early years as overwhelming: a whirlwind of weights and measurements, rushed conversations about sleep training, breastfeeding, and tummy time, all while trying to keep the star attraction (my moving baby) from derailing everything.
Visits were especially painful when someone handed me a heavy electronic tablet with prompts to answer what seemed like a never-ending list of questions about my daughter. Was she sitting? Make eye contact? Name objects? Crawling? Talk? Sleep?
Many parents like me take for granted the slightly awkward, but very necessary, rite of passage of completing developmental screening questionnaires, usually during pediatrician visits at nine, 18, and 30 months.
But as I recently reported in an article published in partnership with The New York Times, many parents never see the screening tests, the results of which are often the first step in diagnosing a disability or developmental delay — and getting their child’s life-changing help.
Nationally, only about 36 percent of parents report getting tested in the previous 12 months, according to the latest National Survey of Children’s Health. In New York state, where I have focused my reporting, that figure drops to 28 percent.
The state Council on Children and Families announced a campaign this month to help address the problem. And a growing network of grassroots organizations, in New York and across the country, called Help Me Grow, is taking its own approach: offering screenings and information about child development at libraries, farmers’ markets, zoos, wherever families are.
As Kate Ryan, director of the Adirondack Birth to Three Alliance, says, when it comes to screenings, “it’s extremely important to do them early and often.”
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This story about developmental screening was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to our higher education newsletter.
Postdevelopmental screening outside the doctor’s office appeared first in the Hechinger report.
