Earlier this year, crawling?which was previously considered a milestone reached around 9 months?was removed from the CDC?s main milestone checklists for babies in the United States, to the surprise of many parents and paediatric development experts. Walking was also bumped forward to 18 months (instead of 12 months) and talking is now listed as a 15-month milestone, instead of at the 12-month mark.
?Some of the changes?including removing crawling?inadvertently send the message to parents and caregivers that certain milestones no longer matter, when that just truly isn’t the case,? says paediatric physical therapist Kaitlin Rickerd, who sees kids at her New York State practice and runs the website and popular Instagram account Milestones and Motherhood.  While the checklist changes were ostensibly made to improve early identification of developmental delays and discourage a ?wait and see? approach, Rickerd believes the new checklist is going to have the opposite effect. She says there?s an ?unintended possibility that these changes could instead result in referral delays, delay evaluations, lengthen the course of treatment, and impact subsequent developmental milestones.? 
Here in Canada, doctors and organizations like the Canadian Paediatric Society don?t use the same reference schedules and milestone lists as the U.S. More common in Canada are the CPS?s  Caring for Kids site, the Rourke Baby Record (a guide developed by family medicine doctors in Newfoundland),...