What do developmental peds. do?

I know the waits are long, but what happens at the appointment? How long do they spend with the child before making a recommendation/diagnosis?

Re: What do developmental peds. do?

I'm curious as well. What would be the reason to do this as opposed to a neurologist? Which dr do you see first?

Re: What do developmental peds. do?

I don't know what the recommendation is for this versus a neurologist, other than the dev ped may have more experience with what is developmentally appropriate for a child of a certain age as compared to the neuro having more experience with what may be "organically wrong" with the child's brain? Not sure. Both properly diagnosed my DD with the same thing. I saw 2 developmental peds and they each spent approx an hour with DD. Now, that was on an initial visit, so I don't know if that is why it was so long...I imagine so. The neurologist did not spend nearly as long with her. The first dev that I saw, I was not crazy about, and he did not properly diagnose my DD, but it could be that it was too early for her symptoms to have been evident. The second one that I saw, was about 8-9 months later, so by then, her delays were much more significant and apparent.

Re: What do developmental peds. do?

My regular ped recommended a dev ped over the neurologist b/c nueros tend to prescribe to "fix" the problem. we knew we didn't want to go that route and wanted behavior modifications instead.