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Value of parents' estimates of children's developmental ages
1Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232, USA.
Insights
Parents
Area of Science:
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Child Psychology
- Early Childhood Development
Background:
- Early identification of developmental delays is crucial for timely intervention.
- Parental input is a valuable, yet often underutilized, source of information in child development assessments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the efficacy of parental estimates of children's developmental ages as a prescreening tool.
- To determine if parents can accurately identify developmental delays through age estimations across various domains.
Main Methods:
- Two studies involved 234 children (birth to 77 months) in pediatric well-child care settings.
- Parents provided overall developmental age estimates and domain-specific age estimates.
- Children underwent standardized screening measures for intelligence, speech-language, and behavior.
Main Results:
- Overall parental age estimates showed 75% sensitivity for detecting developmental problems and 90% specificity for typical development.
- Domain-specific estimates were 81% sensitive for fine motor, language, gross motor, or behavior issues.
- Parental estimates were not influenced by child's age, gender, race, or parents' education/experience.
Conclusions:
- Parental age estimates offer a sensitive indicator of global development but lack detail for targeted referrals.
- Domain-specific estimates can help differentiate developmental from behavioral concerns, though specificity is limited.
- Parental age estimation shows promise for identifying children needing further developmental screening.
Objective:
To determine whether parents' estimates of children's developmental ages can function as a prescreening technique.
Design And Participants:
Parents of 234 children from birth to 77 months of age seeking well-child care in pediatric offices were queried in two separate studies. In the first study, parents were asked to give an estimate of their child's overall developmental age and, in the second study, to estimate ages in each of six developmental domains. Children were administered a range of screening measures of intelligence, speech-language, and adoptive behavior.
Results:
The overall age-estimate, if less than chronologic age, was 75% sensitive to likely developmental problems and, if equal to or greater than chronologic age, was 90% specific in identifying children likely to have typical development. Age estimates for each developmental domain were 81% sensitive to likely developmental problems if less than chronologic age in the domains of fine motor, language, grass motor, or behavior, and 62% specific if equal to or greater than chronologic age. Estimates at or below chronologic age in receptive language or personal-social domains were 90% sensitive and 43% specific in identifying likely behavior problems. There were no differences in the accuracy of parents estimates on the basis of children's age, gender, race, parents' level of education, or parenting experience.
Conclusion:
Parents' overall age-estimates provided a sensitive and specific indicator of global developmental status, but insufficient information about strengths and weaknesses to enable focused referrals for services. In contrast, discrete patterns of age estimates in each developmental domain sensitively discriminated children with developmental versus behavioral problems, although specificity was limited. Age estimates appear to be a potentially helpful method for identifying a subset of children in need of thorough screening, although further research is needed on a larger sample given diagnostic rather than screening tests.