Developmental Disability includes Autism, Asperger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder and other diagnoses. Developmental Delay includes ADHD, Learning Disability, Dyslexia, and others. Then there is GDD and CAPD, and I don't know where they fit in the official structure of diagnostic categories, but I know they are a developmental issue.



I have been working with children with developmental issues for a few years. I use the terms developmental issues to encompass everything from Developmental Disability to Developmental Delay, and even more. In our consulting program we consider them all fundamentally the same. They differ only by degrees. We have developed protocols which succeed with all of the developmental issues. Our approach cultivates your child's unexplored proficiency for maturing.

How many are affected?

All of these developmental issues add up to an estimated 28 million children in the USA. The Census Bureau tells us there a total of 85 million children in the USA. The APA (American Pediatric Association) calculates that one in every six children have a diagnosis for some developmental issue (16.7%). The different associations for all of the individual diagnostic categories of developmental issues all agree when they report that about half of the children with these problems obtain a diagnosis for their problem (that makes it 1/3). And, 33% of 85 million is 28 million children.

That means that 1/3 of all the children in every class have some level of developmental issue. Maybe it shows up as a lack of capacity to focus or control impulses. Maybe it shows up as a lack of capacity to learn basic skills. Maybe it shows up as being clumsy. Maybe it is so severe, the children never learn to connect to the context. Maybe it is mild and only an inconvenience to the child and the teachers.

In whatever form, developmental issues seem to be growing in numbers. We are obviously getting better with our testing. And, we are obviously advanced as a country so that we offer those diagnostic services to more people who otherwise could not afford it. But, I do not think this is the reason we have 1/3 of our children with developmental issues.

When I was a child in school, fifty years ago, I do not remember 1/3 of the children having these types of issues in my classrooms. I remember that maybe 5% to 10% could have had these kinds of issues, but I do not think it amounted to 1/3.

What is a developmental issue?

In basic terms, it is some interruption in the developmental process. All living things have a life cycle. Much of the early phases of that life cycle are involved in developing. From conception to maturity, all living entities move through a series of stages. For us humans, we refer to these as our developmental stages.

For children with developmental issues, they do not move through their stages appropriately. They get blocked at some of the stages. They skip some stages. So, many of the basic learning processes needed for appropriate maturity, are skipped. And, in some cases a child gets blocked in a step and does not pass out of it on to the next developmental step.

I think that all of the unique diagnostic categories are related to some elementary elements. In which developmental stages did the child get blocked or which stages did the child skip? How intense is the ?stuckness?? And, how many stages did the child skip?

What can be done about it?

All of the different diagnostic label associations in the field of developmental issues are clearly speaking on one voice when they say that the 1) developmental process is stuck and that 2) there is no cure.

Academics in this field do not know what to do to solve developmental issues. Nothing that they try affects the developmental process. For decades clinicians have tried everything they can think of to do and nothing works.

After all these frustrating years, they have finally reached an accord that there is no cure. And, now it is officially agreed. All of the diagnostic associations and all of the committees creating the diagnostic specifications agree that there is no cure. Now, they spend all of their research dollars on finding causes instead of creating cures for 28 million children with these developmental issues.

They have tried many things, but they have not tried everything.

With our approach the clients plug the gaps in their movement through the developmental milestones. Our approach cultivates your child's unexplored proficiency for maturing.