5 Effective Therapies for Global Developmental Delay

You’re sitting in your pediatrician’s reception area with your baby for your routine well visit. While you wait your turn to see your doctor, you can’t help but compare how your baby stacks up against the other babies in alertness, smiling, and talking.

It’s natural to have concerns about your child’s healthy development, but how do you know if your child is developing at the right pace? And more importantly, what do you do if you think they aren’t hitting those typical milestones? Every child is different, say the highly skilled therapists at High Quality Home Therapy. In this blog, we share our insights on developmental delays, and what therapies can help if your child is lagging behind.

Child development and global development delay

Let’s initially explain global development delay. Chances are, in the nine months preceding your child’s birth, you read some parenting books, or your parents or grandparents prepped you on what to expect during the first few years of your child’s life.

While it’s true that you can glean some great information on all those exciting milestones, such as the first time your baby smiles at you or their first words when they are likely to roll over for the first time or crawl. All these milestones are parts of child development.

Specifically, child development is all about the physical, emotional, mental, and social aspects of how your baby interacts with you and the world around them. What makes child development complex is that while there are general timeframes for milestones, it’s not an exact science because every baby grows and develops at a different rate.

The term developmental delay is used to define an issue in an isolated area as language, motor, or social skills. Roughly 17% of all American children experience at least one developmental delay. In contrast, global developmental delay, or GDD, indicates that a child is significantly lagging in several areas of development.

Many therapies and programs are available

The good news is that most children with one isolated delay evidentially catch up with their peers without interventions. For children with global developmental delays, there are a variety of programs and therapies that can help get them back on track.

Since global developmental delay manifests differently from patient to patient, treatment plans are highly customized to target the areas where your child needs some extra help.

At High Quality Home Therapy, our highly skilled speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists are available to work on a multi-disciplinary team to help children tackle developmental delays.

Speech therapy

Our certified speech therapists assist patients with language and speech delays who have difficulty vocalizing words or understanding what the words mean, making communication challenging. If the developmental delay includes communication and social interactions, we also offer social skills groups to help patients enhance their communication skills.

Physical therapy

If your child’s developmental delay is movement-related, such as having problems rolling over or walking or holding objects like a baby bottle, sipping cup, utensils, or even throwing a ball, our physical therapists can create exercises and programs to address gross motor skills and fine motor skills.

Occupational therapy

Similarly, our occupational therapists focus on movement-related development delays by helping patients master or improve their ability to do everyday tasks, such as feeding themselves, getting dressed, and toileting. Our occupational therapists also address social skills issues like interacting and playing with other children and adults.

Applied behavior analysis therapy

Another treatment option to address developmental delays in social skills is applied behavior analysis therapy. Therapists use tactics such as positive reinforcement to address social issues while enhancing communication and language skills.

Individualized education plans or IEPs

If your child is a preschool student, educational-based programs are also an effective way to address global developmental delays. By their nature, IEPs are dialed into your child’s special needs. IEPs typically cut across all areas where your child may experience delays, such as cognitive, social and emotional, communication and language, and fine and gross motor skills.

If you have concerns about your child’s development, contact High Quality Home Therapy in Stamford, Connecticut, today to book an evaluation. You can use our online tool to schedule an appointment.