Jamal a 22-Month- Toddler Home Childcare Center.

Jamal a 22-month- toddler home childcare center. He center 2 weeks concerns development. His mother reports pregnancy birth -eventful developed typically. Jamal's mother stayed home 2 weeks ago a full-time clerical job.

Jamal

To fully assess the challenges Jamal may or may not be facing, he should first be assessed by his pediatrician, to determine if he is developing normally. It is possible that he might be socially inhibited within the context of the day care center, and, as a day care professional it is essential not to worry the mother needlessly by giving her a diagnosis the professional is not equipped to give. Jamal has, after all, only been observed for two weeks by this particular employee. If the pediatrician does not believe that Jamal is progressing as he should, he may refer Jamaal to a developmental psychologist who could further assess Jamal using a standardized instrument such as the Battelle Screening Test (BDI)

The BDI can be used on children as young as infants and on children as old as eight, allowing for an assessment of development of the child over time when re-administered. "The full-scale BDI is designed as a diagnostic assessment. The Screening Test is designed to identify children who are at risk for delay and in need of a more comprehensive evaluation with the full-scale BDI. The Screening Test consists of 96 items in the areas of motor, communication, personal-social, adaptive, and cognitive development" (Infant-toddler development, 2013, HHS: 60-61). Given that the main concern for Jamal is developmental delay, this might seem to be a useful instrument to use.

Unfortunately, there are many problems regarding the BDI regarding its reliability and validity. These problems, it should be noted, are not limited to this standardized assessment alone, but are characteristic of many of the difficulties in assessing very young children. The cut-off scores between normal and not-normal are very tenuous. "In many cases (46% of the age levels), the range of raw scores separating a moderate delay (-1 standard deviation) from a severe delay (-2.33 standard deviations) was 0, 1, or 2 points" (Infant-toddler development, 2013, HHS: 60-61). Children at the borderline of different age intervals can have "identical test performance but significantly different scores" (Infant-toddler development, 2013, HHS: 60-61). Children develop so rapidly within this age group that a difference of a few days can be seismic in importance.

The advantage of standardized tests is that it provides a baseline for evaluation. Parents are often very unreliable, given their natural biases in favor of their own children and also that they may compare their child against the child's first sibling alone, or in the case of a first child, have no real context for what is normal development. Pediatricians and daycare providers do not necessarily see the full range of the child's abilities during the small window of time with which they interact with the child. However, an evaluation flagging the child as potentially learning-disabled can be dangerous if untrue, given how difficult it is to lose such a label.