How to Test Infant Motor Skills to Detect Cerebral Palsy
As a parent, you will observe dozens of things about your infant in the normal course of the baby's development. Normal playing and feeding activities, as well as other daily functions, all provide opportunities to monitor motor skills development. Failure to reach normal developmental milestones, or delayed attainment of milestones, may help you detect a serious neurological disorder such as cerebral palsy. Read on to learn how to test infant motor skills to detect cerebral palsy.
Instructions
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Ask your pediatrician for a chart or timetable of normal developmental milestones and use it as a guideline to help you test infant motor skills. This can help you detect or rule out cerebral palsy.
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Watch for signs that your infant is using only one hand or one side of the body during the first 18 months. This could help your doctor detect a form of cerebral palsy known as hemiplegia.
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Contact your doctor immediately if your infant exhibits drooling or difficulty in swallowing that is unexplained by minor infections, such as a sore throat.
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Monitor indications of hypotonia or floppy baby syndrome, in which your infant shows dramatically delayed motor skills and seems like a rag doll. An infant displaying this syndrome should be tested by his pediatrician to detect or rule out cerebral palsy.
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Test your child's ability to use a pincer grasp to take and hold objects beginning at about 10 months, and report delays in attainment of this milestone to your pediatrician.
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Observe any signs that your child is constantly moving in purposeless and uncontrollable ways, and report your observation to your pediatrician for a follow-up test.
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Begin to monitor your child's progress toward normal walking at about 18 months, for any indication that you have something other than a late bloomer.
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Note consistent toe walking if it appears to be more than a playful form of expression once your child becomes a skilled walker. Toe walking all the time may indicate that your child has a mild form of cerebral palsy.
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Report to your pediatrician any clear indication that your infant's motor skills are regressing.
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Tips & Warnings
A parent's test is not a diagnosis, and should not even be a cause for serious concern unless it leads to a doctor's test of your baby's motor skills and a formal diagnosis of cerebral palsy or another disorder.
Minor delays in attainment of infant motor skills milestones should not be a cause for undue concern. Late bloomers often catch up dramatically, but bear watching until they do.
