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Disease & Conditions

ADD

ADHD & PDD - What is Developmental Disability?

ADD:

Developmental Disability includes Autism, Asperger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified and other diagnoses. Developmental Delay includes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, LD, Dyslexia, and more. Then there is GDD and CAPD, and I don't know where they fit in the grand scheme of diagnostic categories, but I know they are a developmental issue.

I have been working with children with developmental issues for years. I use the terms developmental issues to encompass everything from Developmental Disability to Developmental Delay, and even more. In our consulting program we consider them all basically the same. They differ only by degrees. We have created protocols which succeed with all of the developmental issues. Our protocol assists the client's suspended knack for maturity.

How many are affected?

All of these developmental issues add up to about 28 million children in the USA. The Census Bureau calculates there about 85 million children in the USA. The APA (American Pediatric Association) tells us that one in every six children have a diagnosis for some developmental issue (16.7%). The different associations for all of the individual diagnostic categories of developmental issues all agree when they calculate that about 50% of the children with these problems obtain a diagnosis for their problem (that makes it one third). And, one third of 85 million is 28 million children.

That means that one third of all the children in every class have some level of developmental issue. Maybe it shows up as an inability to attend or control impulses. Maybe it shows up as an inability to learn writing. Maybe it shows up as a lack of coordination. Maybe it is so intensive, the children never learn to walk. Maybe it is mild and only an inconvenience to the child and the parents.

In whatever level of intensity, developmental issues seem to be growing in sheer volume. We are certainly getting better with our diagnoses. And, we are certainly advanced as a culture so that we offer those testing services to more people who otherwise could not afford it. But, I am not sure this is the reason we have a third of our children with developmental issues.

When I was a child in school, fifty years ago, I do not remember a third of the children having these types of issues in my neighborhood. I remember that maybe 5% to 10% might have had these kinds of issues, but certainly not a third.

What is a developmental issue?

Quite simply, it is some interruption in the developmental process. All living things move through a life cycle. Much of the initial phases of that life cycle are spent in developing. From conception to maturity, all living entities progress through a series of stages. For us humans, we refer to these as our developmental stages.

For those with developmental issues, they do not progress through their steps appropriately. They get blocked at some of the steps. They skip some steps. So, many of the early learning processes needed for appropriate maturity, are skipped. And, in some cases a child is held in a task and does not move forward on to the next developmental task.

I think that all of the unique diagnostic categories are related to some simple elements. In which developmental steps did the child get blocked or which steps did the child miss? How intense is the 'stuckness??And, how many steps did the child miss?

What can be done about it?

All of the different diagnostic category associations in the field of developmental issues are clearly speaking on one voice when they say that the 1) developmental process is stuck and that 2) there is no cure.

Professionals in this field are at a loss to cure developmental issues. Nothing that they try involves the developmental process. For decades academics have tried everything they can think of to do and nothing works.

After all these frustrating years, they have finally agreed with each other that there is no cure. And, now it is official. All of the diagnostic associations and all of the organizations creating the diagnostic definitions have agreed that there is no cure. Now, they spend all of their research dollars on finding causes instead of developing fixes for 28 million children with these developmental issues.

They have attempted many things, but they have not attempted everything.

With our program the children finish flling the interruptions in their movement through the developmental milestones. Our protocol assists the client's suspended knack for maturity.

Rodger C Bailey has degrees in Social Science and Counseling. His world-wide consulting program (in English and Spanish), is unique because it concentrates on the developmental process and consistently gets it operating again. Checkout his Blog and his free Developmental Checklist.