PDD And APD: What Is Developmental Delay?

Developmental Disability includes Autism, Asperger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified and other diagnoses. Developmental Delay includes ADD, LD, Dyslexia, and others. Then there is Global Developmental Disorder and Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and I don't know where they fit in the official structure of diagnostic labels, but I know they are a developmental difficulty.

I have been working with children with developmental difficulties for years. I use the terms developmental difficulties to encompass everything from Developmental Disability to Developmental Delay, and even more. In our consulting program we consider them all fundamentally the same. They differ only by degrees. We have developed protocols which work with all of the developmental difficulties. Our program awakens the child's unrealized keys for becoming age-appropriate.

What is the magnitude of this problem?

All of these developmental difficulties add up to about 28 million children in the USA. The Census Bureau calculates there a total of 85 million children in the USA. The APA (American Pediatric Association) reports that one in every six children have a diagnosis for some developmental difficulty (16.7%). The different associations for all of the individual diagnostic labels of developmental difficulties all agree when they report that about 50% of the children with these problems obtain a diagnosis for their problem (for a total of 33%). And, 33% of 85 million is 28 million children.

That means that 33% of all the children in every class have some level of developmental difficulty. Maybe it shows up as an inability to focus or sit still. Maybe it shows up as an inability to learn reading. Maybe it shows up as an inability to kick a ball. Maybe it is so intensive, the children never learn to connect to other people. Maybe it is mild and only an annoyance to the child and the parents.

In whatever level of intensity, developmental difficulties seem to be growing in percentages. We are obviously getting better with our diagnoses. And, we are obviously advanced as a culture so that we offer those testing services to more families who otherwise could not afford it. But, I am not sure this is the reason we have 1/3 of our children with developmental difficulties.

When I was a child in school, many years ago, I do not remember 1/3 of the children having these types of difficulties in my classrooms. I remember that maybe 5% to 10% could have had these kinds of difficulties, but certainly not 1/3.

What is a developmental difficulty?

Quite simply, it is some blockage in the developmental process. All living things have a life cycle. Much of the initial phases of that life cycle are spent in developing. From inception to maturity, all living things progress through a series of milestones. For us humans, we call them our developmental milestones.

For those with developmental difficulties, they do not progress through their milestones appropriately. They get blocked at some of the milestones. They skip some milestones. So, many of the basic learning processes needed for appropriate maturity, are lost. And, in some cases a child is held in a stage and does not pass out of it on to the next developmental stage.

I think that all of the unique diagnostic labels are related to some basic factors. In which developmental milestones did the child get blocked or which milestones did the child skip? How intense is the 'stuckness?' And, how many milestones did the child skip?

What can be done about it?

All of the different diagnostic category associations in the field of developmental difficulties are clearly speaking on one voice when they say that the 1) developmental process is blocked and that 2) there is no cure.

Researchers in this field do not know what to do to cure developmental difficulties. Nothing that they try affects the developmental process. For decades clinicians have tried everything they can think of to do and nothing works.

After all these frustrating years, they have finally agreed with each other that there is no cure. And, now it is official. All of the diagnostic associations and all of the groups creating the diagnostic definitions agree that there is no cure. Now, they invest all of their research dollars on finding causes instead of developing fixes for 28 million children with these developmental difficulties.

They have tried many things, but they have not tried everything.

With our work the children round out the chinks in their movement through the developmental steps. Our program awakens the child's unrealized keys for becoming age-appropriate.