Remembering Developmental Milestones

Ahh....Its been a while since I last wrote in my blogs.Its not that I don’t have the time… its just that there is a lot of ups and down to take care and somehow I loss interest to talk about it. I guess there are times where silence is better than the words spoken. But long story cut short, basically I was not well during the middle of my 5th year, took too many MC, couldn’t fulfill 80% attendance, therefore barred from taking the exams, so currently waiting to repeat 5th year which will be in early July. Okay! *catch breath*

Let me also take this opportunity to wish, CONGRATULATIONS!!! to my fellow batch mates who had made it safely through the pro-exam and will be doing their housemenship sometime in May. May Allah help them get through that.. :)

For those whose wondering how am I taking all these, well it was a bit difficult at first, but after that, you move on ya know~ hopefully this will make me become stronger and more prepared in facing difficult situations in the future…InsyaAllah...

Okay! Lets get back to business~!

We are going to talk about, Developmental Asessment! Or developmental milestone~! This is one of the major ‘will-forgot-info’ of the medical student life, well for me at least. So lets find a more easier way to remember DA. 

If we talked about presenting DA to our lecturer, we will present according to the four developmental field;

1. Gross motor
2. Fine motor and vision
3. Hearing and speech
4. Social behavior

One child can have gross motor developed at 6 month but socially around 9 month or fine motor and vision at 3 month. Therefore, when we want to remember DA, it would help to remember the developmental stages in one particular area according to age rather than what we usually do which is remembering the stages in all 4 field of a particular age. The end result would pretty much be similar, but somehow I find that remembering according to each field is much faster and esiear to understand compare to remembering according to age. If we remember according to age, most of them will only be simple memorization rather than understanding how the child develops.

Therefore, using the DA guide given to us UKM medical student in our 4th year, the Developmental Milestones 0-2 years by Mary Sheridan, I come up with a table of developmental stages according to each field to ease understanding of developmental milestone. 

Basically I divide all field into 3 levels. Why three? Because 2 is not enough and 4 is just too much. 3 is just nice. If you got a problem with that, that's non of my bizweaaak~

Each level may have 2 to 4 age group. Different field is divided differently. Maybe that will make it more confusing, but who cares, this is for me, if you want to remember your way, make your own. Caphice?!

I don’t have time to explain all, if you want to understand just go through the table. I use common sense. Every level have its specific names, these names are given according to what components in that particular level is best be use to assess the development. For example:

• The Object permanence phase in Gross motor is named in such a way because just by assessing whether the baby have object permanence or not can determine which age they belong to, either 6 month or 9 month. Ain’t that cool?? XD
• The hearing phase in hearing and speech is because in that certain age group, the baby most prominent feature or the feature we can assess is the hearing, other feature are less prominent. Same goes for the early table manners phase in social behaviour. In that particular age, most of the things that can help us identify the age is by assessing the food related thingy mejigger. 

Geddit? So go ahead, if you find it useful, please feel free to copy, paste, share, use, print or whatsoever. I hope I can make things a little easier for anyone~

Thank you for reading! Have a happy peads posting! XD

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