We have been to see developmental ped yearly and my son is 5. He has a neurologicAl and genetic syndrome. One things they do that is helpful is that they will test iq at age 3 and 5 or 6, and then decide if you need further neuropsych. I think the testing that they did At age 3 was a lot more helpful than the county testing and a lot more exact.

Op, if you have a diagnosis and have a plan and team to work on the major issues, I might hold off on the dev ped unless you feel like there are some unanswered questions. If your dd starts to plateau with treatment or starts showing different symptoms, then I would definitely seek out a dev ped.

I've also heard good things for NIH trials for kids with certain diagnoses. Good luck.

Hi 10:54, OP here. I guess I should have just posted my question on your thread, but did not want to derail from your original question which is somewhat different than mine. Re: GI docs -- DD struggled with weight gain as an infant so we were referred to GI specialist, which ultimately led to her diagnosis. I still check in with him via email regularly to make sure her weight is appropriate. Good luck to you!

I do not have insight on whether you need to see the developmental peds, we went for our son as Early Intervention and a Social worker/Play therapist felt our son had AS, and we wanted to have a more thorough evaluation. In our case, the Developmental Peds felt our ds did not have AS (according to the DSM definition), though he certainly has some social emotional delays, which we are working on through his IEP at school.

I did want to mention though, we still see our regular pediatrician for everything else, so it would not be necessary to switch for everything. I did feel that the Developmental Peds. had an incredible amount of dev. knowledge as compared to the regular peds, and teased out some things that were more subtle. Our regular peds suggested we see a Dev. Expert.

Hi - I was OP of "When to see developmental pediatrician." We're about to start all the speech, feeding, and OT therapy. We've pretty much decided to go see a developmental pediatrician. We love our pediatrician too, and even though she's great, she's not an expert in developmental pediatrics. From the responses on the other thread, I came to the conclusion that we think our son has underlying issues for his delays, and now we think we want a developmental pediatrician to really follow his progress... sort of have all the diagnosis and progress come together under one doctor who will focus on all aspects for us. As for gastroenterologist, do you mind me asking what that is for? We have weight issues with our child, and we're just starting to try and figure out which route we need to go for that. We have appt with pediatrician in a month, so of course, we'll ask then.

I am so confused as to whether we need to see a developmental pediatrician, so please share your thoughts! DD has a neurological and genetic disorder, so we already have a diagnosis and know she is/will continue to be developmentally delayed. We have a good team of therapists already (speech, feeding, OT and PT), a great regular pediatrician, are going through Early Intervention, and also have good specialists (neurologist, geneticist, gastroenterologist).

My question is, what benefit would a developmental pediatrician bring to the table? I don't want to leave our regular pediatrician as she is located very close to our house and is extremely responsive to our needs. It appears that some families may use a developmental pediatrician to make recommendations for kids who may not have as specific a diagnosis as we do. We know she's delayed, and we're already doing something about it.

I hesitate to add another specialist to our long list, but if there is benefit to be had, sign me up!