“My baby is 1-year-old and his first tooth is yet to appear, is it normal doctor?” “My baby is 11-month-old and still I have to support her head, I am worried?”
These are some queries of the worried parents of children with delayed milestones. An arrival of a baby is always a bundle of joy but if a normal physical and mental development are not achieved within the appropriate time period then it becomes the matter of worries.
Such worries can be tackled with the appropriate knowledge about a normal physical and mental development of the child. Children have different growth rhythm, which is often a familial feature.
Development of skills depends on maturation and myelinisation of the nervous system.
Here, I am presenting the range of normality of some important developmental field.
| FIELD | EARLY | AVERAGE | DELAYED |
| Smiling | 2-3 days after birth | 4 weeks after birth | 8 weeks after birth |
| Head holding | – | 5-6 months | |
| Appearance of first tooth | At birth | 6 months | 14 months |
| Grasping | 3.5 months | 6 months | |
| Rolling over | 18 weeks | 28 weeks | |
| Sitting without support | 5 months | 10 months | 19 months |
| Able to stand | 25 weeks | 10 months | |
| Walk without support | 8.5 months | 15 months | 18-24 months |
| Speech –first word with meaning | – | 9.5 months | 2.5-4.5 years |
Developmental delay or delayed milestones is a delay in the achievement of developmental goal within its appropriate time period. For example: unable to learning to walk by the age of 13 to 15 months old etc. if the child is slightly or temporarily lagging behind cannot be called as developmental delays. Delays can occur in one or many developmental areas like motor area (like walking, grasping things), language (like stammering, words, forming sentence), or social or cognitive area (understanding).
Causes of developmental delay are as follows:
Delayed milestones could be due to Genetic cause (like chromosomal defect), or pre-natal (during pregnancy), peri-natal (During delivery/ parturition) or post-natal (after birth) or it could be idiopathic (without any cause).
Prenatal causes: -excessive mental stress during pregnancy; hypertension (increase blood pressure during pregnancy may affect the foetal growth); Infection during pregnancy (like malaria, typhoid); threatened abortion (bleeding during pregnancy); premature birth; maternal nutrition during pregnancy (undernourished or malnourish mother); Infection and drugs during pregnancy; etc.
Perinatal causes: – mal-presentation; hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the foetus during parturition); obstructed delivery etc.
Postnatal causes: – illness and infection after birth; malnourished or undernourished child; parental attitude; etc
General causes: – genetic factors; environmental factors; familial factors; intelligence and emotional attribute; the general level of health etc.
Homeopathic treatment for delayed milestones:
There are effective medicines for delayed milestones in homeopathic system. However, if the cause is known, homeopathy works better in such cases. Hence, detail history (including paternal and maternal history) is always expected during the homeopathic interview.
Here, I am presenting a list of few homeopathic medicines which have shown their effective results in cases of developmental delays.
The medicines like Calcerea carb, Silica, Calcerea –phos, etc for slow/delayed dentition.
Natrum mur, Calcerea carb, Carcinosin, Calcerea-phos, etc for slow/delayed learning to walk.
Agaricus, kali brom, etc for Speech, slow learning to walk and talk.
Aethuja, Arnica etc for unable to Head holding.
Homeopathic medicine which is selected on the basis of thorough detail history of patient which includes details of disease/symptom, temperament, physical built (physical constitution), causative factor etc gives complete relief and cure without any side effects.(for example, the medicine Calcerea carb will more likely to suit to baby with fat and flabby built.).
However, this is not aimed at advocating self-medication, medicine should not be used without professional help.
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