Developmental delay and therapeutic interventions in the early years of life according our experiments

Introduction: The early years of the life including infancy and toddler years, are the most important developmental stages. In this way, improving child's developmental statusin the first years of life will have a significant impact on establishing his or her developmental status in future years. Therefore, the researcher and colleagues have conducted numerous studies to improve the developmental status of the child in the early years of life. This article is a short report about studies by the research team on developmental interventions in the early years of life and the results of these studies. Methods: This study is a systematic review of all studies conducted by the research team on developmental interventions in early years of life in children at risk of developmental delay. The articles from the above studies have been published in the valid journals. Results: The researchers initially designed a developmental Stimulation Package in infants at risk of developmental delay using the integrated review method. Then this developmental stimulation package was tested in the infant population residing in the foster care. Preliminary results showed that foster care infants were evelopmentally significantly lower than the normal peers. According to the Denver instrument, the implementation of the developmental stimulation package had a significant effect on the gross motor and fine motor scores. Also, the weight of the children who were developmentaly stimulated increased significantly compared to the control group. In the next study, a developmental Stimulation Package for the early childhood (۱-۳years) was designed based on the West Virginia Early Learning Standards Framework. The package was then implemented in children with celiac disease. The results of the study showed that, based on the Baylay instrument, developmental stimulation had a significant effect on the fine motor development of children with celiac disease. The same package was also applied to infants residing in foster care; whose results indicated a positive impact of the above package on the gross and fine motor development of them. Conclusion: The results of these studies indicated that developmental delay could be alleviate if identified and intervened in early years of life. During the above studies, we designed two developmental stimulation packages, one for the infancy stage and one for the toddler stage. The results of which indicated their positive effects on developmental outcomes in the high-risk population.

کلیدواژه ها:

Development ، Infant ، Toddler.