WISCONSIN— The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated the language and communications milestones; this included a major shift in what is now considered a child developmentally “on track.”

However, several speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists said the new guidelines could actually delay a child’s development.

Jennifer Eggert is a speech-language pathologist with Medical Support Services. Eggert is an advocate for early intervention and said the CDC guidelines provide a baseline that pediatricians use when evaluating a child’s development.

She said some children could miss out on early intervention with the new guidelines.

Under the new guidelines, crawling is no longer listed as a milestone; walking is not expected unti l18 months, but was previously listed as a 12 month milestone. In terms of language, the CDC now said children should be able to point to body parts when prompted at two years old, as opposed to one. The CDC also said at 2 and half years old, children should be able to say 50 words, but speech pathologists would actually expect 200 words or more, plus the production of phrases, by age 2.

“For example, in speech and language, we would expect a two-year-old would be going through a massive language explosion and they would be putting words together almost have 200 words but the CDC is saying they need to only have 50 words,” Eggert said.

Speech-language pathologists go by the developmental milestones that the American Speech and Hearing Association sets forth, and right now with the new guidelines, there is a big difference. 

The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics said the goal was to help parents more clearly identify issues like autism or other social-communication disabilities earlier.

The revision included adjusting milestone benchmarks to reflect the behaviors and skills that research shows 75% of children at that age typically show. Prior, the benchmarks were from what 50% of children were doing. 

Experts stressed this checklist is not a screening or evaluation tool and should not replace formal testing. These new guidelines were not updated because of the pandemic. 

Read the updated CDC developmental milestones, here.