Seeking Professional Guidance

Studies have shown that when parents have a concern about their child’s development, they are often right

You know your child best, so if you have concerns about how your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, or moves for his or her age, talk with your child’s doctor immediately and share those concerns.

Talk to your pediatrician about developmental screening:

• All well-child care visits should include specific questions about your child’s development and behavior. Your
doctor also does more formal assessments of your child’s development, called screenings, at 9, 18, and 30 months and autismspecific screenings at 18 and 24 months.
• A screening can also be done at any point―whenever there’s a concern about development whether it be a parent or a pediatrician’s concerns. These screens look at all areas of development—language/comm

Advocate for your child:

• Complete a milestone checklist for your child’s age (CDC page)
• Fill out a milestone checklist using Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Milestone Tracker app or print a checklist from CDC website. If your child is between ages of the checklists, use the checklist for the younger age.
• Share this information with your pediatrician

Get an Evaluation:

An evaluation by health care professionals with varying specialities can be helpful for diagnosing Autism and other challenges that often come with developmental disorders. Your child may have been evaluated by a:

• Developmental pediatrician: a pediatrician with additional training and expertise in treating children with developmental, learning or behavioral differences
• Neurologist: a doctor who diagnoses and treats disorders that affect the brain
• Psychiatrist: a doctor who diagnoses and treats mental, emotional and behavioral disorders
• Psychologist: a doctor trained to help people learn to cope more effectively with life issues and mental health problems and evaluate developmental concerns
• Certified Behavior Analyst: A professional who understands how the environment affects your child’s development and assess development needs across a variety of areas, as well as behavioral concerns.
• Speech and Language Pathologist: A professional that work to prevent, assess, diagnose, and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitivecommunication, and swallowing disorders in children and adults.
• Occupational Therapist: A professional that treats injured, ill, or disabled patients through the therapeutic use of everyday activities. They help these patients develop, recover, improve, as well as maintain the skills needed for daily living and working.
• Physical Therapist: A professional who can evaluate your child’s gross motor development.
• Multidisciplinary Team: A team of professionals with different areas of expertise, which we include many of  the above professionals, as well as the parents. This team should include those who have extensive experience working with infants and toddlers. They know about the important areas of development. That includes language, social skills, hearing, and vision.

Disclaimer: A proper diagnostic evaluation should include a multidisciplinary team; however, this is currently difficult to find in Bahrain. This approach gathers a holistic view of the child’s difficulties and different goals can be identified and prioritized.