The CDC quietly changed the developmental guidelines for children. Is it because the vaccine is making kids autistic retards?
>About one-third of milestones like fine motor skills have been bumped up to older ages. Because of the setback, children may worsen their developmental delay, making it harder to provide early intervention, explains Jessica Hatfield, MS, OTR/L, a pediatric occupational therapist for TheraTree Pediatric Therapy.
>"Somebody who was originally one standard deviation below the norm, are now two standard deviations below because it's later and now I have to catch them up even more," says Hatfield. She says not catching early signs right away could snowball into other developmental problems and the financial costs of spending more time in therapy.
>Another controversial change is the removal of crawling as a CDC developmental milestone. Hatfield says crawling should not have been removed because it involves multiple reflexes, from building up neck strength and control, strength for walking, and using both sides of your brain to work together. "When babies don't crawl, that's a red flag that something else might be wrong such as physiological difference in their feet/legs, reflux, inability to integrate reflexes, delay in other less obvious milestones, poor strength and muscle tone so eliminating it as a milestone could cause that red flag to be missed," Hatfield notes.
>One of the biggest CDC developmental milestone changes involves language development. With this revision, the CDC delayed speech and language milestones to older ages. Before, the CDC suggested a 24-month-old would say an average of 50 words, but the new guidelines say a 30-month-old should have a vocabulary of 50 words. However, Kassie Hanson, CCC-SLP, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, says the CDC guidelines on language milestones will cause delays in identifying early developmental issues.
