Developmental problems are amongst the most commonly diagnosed disabilities in children. Most of these problems are birth defects and affect the functioning of one or more body parts of the child. These problems are also commonly referred to as functional birth defects. Developmental problems can be of various different types such as nervous system disabilities, which can affect the functioning of the spinal cord, brain and/or the nervous system like autism, down syndrome. Again, there is sensory related disabilities, which are related to complicated defects at time of the birth like Williams Syndrome and fragile X syndrome. You might even see metabolic disorders that affect the metabolism of the body like hypothyroidism and phenylketonuria. Again, there are degenerative disorders, which cannot be diagnosed at birth, but show symptoms only later like Rett Syndrome.
There are a lot of different therapies that have proven to benefit children with developmental problems. The children who suffer from down syndrome can make use of speech therapy and in some cases surgeries can be conducted to correct heart defects. For children with autistic patterns, a combination of speech, social, physical, emotional and language therapy can be used. There are daily oral hormone treatments that are given to children who have hypothyroidism. Amongst all the other forms of difficulties in children, it is the developmental problems that are the most serious as they affect the most crucial and central parts of the human body.
There are no peculiar symptoms of children having such problems. However, if parents of growing children notice any irregularities in the learning capabilities of the child, they should immediately get the child checked for any kind of such developmental problems. It is said that children with these kinds of defects do not recover entirely by timely diagnosis and assistance can help them overcome their disability to quite an extent. Apart from the medical aspect of it, there are also a lot of social, psychological and emotional problems that are faced by people with these developmental problems. The unfortunate fact that these special children cannot perform all the tasks that normal children can perform so easily makes them an object of discrimination. As a result of this, they end up having low self esteem and lack of confidence. It is required that the parents of these children should be supportive at all times and encourage these children in everything they take interest in.
As far as the functional abilities of children with developmental problems are concerned, there can be no generalization. There have been instances where these special children have performed better than normal children. Hence, it can be said that the combination of medical therapy accompanied by strong support by friends and family is the key to making a child with developmental problems s close as normalcy as possible.