When to see developmental pediatrician?

[Anonymous]

DS has qualified to received services from Fairfax County. I'm reading about developmental pediatricians. At what point do you go see a developmental pediatrician and why? We were set up with speech and occupational therapy, but what's developmental pediatricians for, of the others therapies are supposed to help him improve? Sorry - it's obvious I am new to this all.

[Anonymous]

I didn't find a DP terribly helpful. DP assessed my daughter's development and told me she was not meeting her milestones and was behind in her development. Well, I already knew that! If your child is getting OT and ST, I don't think you need DP.

[Anonymous]

We saw a developmental pediatrician when the OT we were working with from the county suggested it. He was not responding as fast or well as she expected him to. He was 11 months. We found seeing the Dev Ped very useful. The tests he did ruled out things that may be causing the problem and one of the tests (a genetic test) essentially told us that is probably why he is having the problems. It also alerted us to other issues he may have and we saw several specialists to rule those out. We see him every 6 months and he makes recommenations of therapy or other things we could pursue. It is totallyup to you if you want to pursue the things the DP suggests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We saw a developmental pediatrician when the OT we were working with from the county suggested it. He was not responding as fast or well as she expected him to. He was 11 months. We found seeing the Dev Ped very useful. The tests he did ruled out things that may be causing the problem and one of the tests (a genetic test) essentially told us that is probably why he is having the problems. It also alerted us to other issues he may have and we saw several specialists to rule those out. We see him every 6 months and he makes recommenations of therapy or other things we could pursue. It is totallyup to you if you want to pursue the things the DP suggests.

oops, pp here, the OT actually suggested seeing a Dev Ped, but we were lucky to have a very good - alert OT

[Anonymous]

What would be a perfect solution is a (separate from a hospital) facility where there were numerous dev ped working alongside speech therapists, ot, psychologist, etc. I have found it frustrating to have to see 4 different people and making them all communicate. It's frustrating enough to need these services not to have to jump through hoops to make it work smoothly. Kennedy Krieger is the closest I have found for this but it's not an option because of the location. Any other place like this that I have missed in No Va?

[Anonymous]

Do you feel like you have a typical kid who is behind in a couple of areas or do you feel like you have a kid who has a disorder of some kind which is causing him or her to be behind? If it's the latter, if you need to find a cause, then the dev ped is a good place to start. If you're just talking mild general delays then you probably don't need one.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your replies! They have been very helpful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you feel like you have a typical kid who is behind in a couple of areas or do you feel like you have a kid who has a disorder of some kind which is causing him or her to be behind? If it's the latter, if you need to find a cause, then the dev ped is a good place to start. If you're just talking mild general delays then you probably don't need one.

For me, this has been one of the hardest things to try to discern about my own child. I am not sure I have the experience to know the difference between the two, especially when delays and related behaviors are subtle and/or inconsistent.