# Delayed gross motor development



## jollymum

Hello everyone :winkwink:

Apologies in advance for the essay!

I haven't used these forums sine my ds was very young, I hope you and your lo's are all doing well :flower:.

I'm not sure if this is the correct place for me to post, please feel free to redirect me if it is best suited else where.

I have a beautiful little boy who is 14 months old and yesterday he was referred to a child development specialist. We have to wait 8 weeks for the appointment but I am driving myself crazy thinking about the possible outcomes. Here is some background:

LO was full term + 14. He was induced and the labour was quite traumatic. He got into some difficulty and was delivered via ventouse.

For the first few months of his life he developed a flat spot on one side of his head which, I think, may have been due to the fact that his neck was very stiff on one side (my GP is useless and no proper examination was done)

He has always fed well and has good fine motor control, language development seems OK and he interacts well with others around him.

However, in all areas of gross motor development he is extremely far behind his peers - he was late holding his head up and he couldn't sit unaided until he was 8.5 months old. We got him a jumperoo when he was about 5 months old and although he spent a lot of time in it he never once attempted to bounce in it. He has never once attempted to pull himself up to standing, although he will stand for a while if I place him holding on to the sofa. When I hold him upright he just stands very still - he has never once made any attempt to put one foot in front of the other. He doesnt crawl, again, he has never made any attempt to. Over the past few weeks he has started to bum shuffle but he always leads with one arm and drags the opposite leg. Around the same time he learned how to sit himself up from lying on his tummy.

He is just so 'still' compared to his peers, its like he's just not interested in walking. I'm so sick of people telling me he's lazy and he'll catch up, I just dont know what to think. I feel like people look at me and think its my fault. The health visitor was wonderful yesterday and decided a referrel was the best option for him. When I asked her if she thought there was a problem she replied that she had a few ideas but would rather wait for us to get a proper diagnosis. I have since been google-ing like crazy and now have all kinds of ideas in my head.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Has anyone got any idea what the problem could be? 

Sorry for the long post ladies, I think I just needed to get it all down. I have been in pieces the past 24 hours and just want some answers.

Thanks so much for reading if anyone made it this far!

Love and respect to you all :hugs:


----------



## Wantapink1

My DS1 is under the child development centre too
For what seems the same as you 
He wasn't reaching his milestones 
But he is eventually catching up 
But he never rolled til 6mth
Sat up at 10mth
Crawled at 1yr
Walked at 18mth
Also he never really spoke til he was over 3 years old 
He is still undergoing tests & speech therapy 
But thought id let you know you are not alone x


----------



## jollymum

Thanks so much for your reply. I'm sure he will catch up, I'm just getting sick of people asking me why he isn't crawling/walking yet. 

It does help to know we're not alone x


----------



## Wantapink1

When people asked me my reply was 'all children do things at different times & stages in their lives & all manage to do everything as you don't have 5 years olds going to school in nappies & crawling 

By the way boys pick up everything a bit slower too xx


----------



## sun

My son was about your son's age (13 months) when he started to roll/get himself into sitting and start crawling. He was assessed at 18 months as having Gross Developmental Delay (GDD - gross motor skills delayed). He is 2.5 now and although he is slower and less capable when it comes to running/climbing/jumping/etc he is doing so well. In my experience they really start improving once they get mobile - the work it takes to crawl/scoot/pull up really makes a difference. 

The "diagnosis" of GDD doesn't really mean much though. It is pretty vague - but that's mostly because at his age (18mo at the time) it is hard to predict what the issue could be. So they remained as unspecific as possible until they could do further assessments, and offered us physio and speech therapy (my son also has a speech delay). No idea what or if he will be diagnosed with something else in the future, but for now he is doing so well. Amazing considering at a year he couldn't even roll over. :thumbup: He makes me so proud every day


----------

