Question

Why is understanding a child’s developmental milestones so important, especially communication, social, and emotional development?

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Answer 1

Children are to cross the developmental milestones at nearly expected age limits as they develop normally. The normal development of a child is usually assessed in four major areas of development viz,
1) Motor development,
2) Adaptive behavior,
3) language and
4) personal and social behavior.
Any delay found with it is to be dealt with at most care, as this could be indicative of a number of disorders that may be present with the child ranging from intellectual disability (commonly referred to as global developmental delay till 5 years of age), communication disorders like language disorder, speech sound disorder, childhood onset fluency disorder, social communication disorder, or other pervasive/neurodevelopmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, specific learning disorder etc.(for those topics in the question besides motor developmental disorders or neuronal etiology). Besides from the diagnosis point of view, timely detection of it at an early stage helps in effective intervention as neural plasticity is relatively more at this developmental age.
Also the child could be not achieving these developmental stages without any particular disorder but due to lack of exposure or opportunity due to inadequate parenting or other environmental factors. Non-achieving/ under-achieving of the developmental milestones is bound to have a life long implication. Some of the developmental mile stones if not achieved at appropriate age might be difficult to be achieved or compensated during the later age, especially language skills and social communication skills. Likewise if the child is not equipped with mastery of emotional expression at an adequate age, that can make the child susceptible to later life stress & mal- adaptive coping leading to whole lot of psychiatric/ mental health issues or at the least inadequate adjustment with the society and non-achievement of his/her potentials.