As a mother of an infant, and as a family doctor, I like the concept of CDCsMilestoneTracker. However, in doctor language, the sensitivity of CDCsMilestoneTracker is too high and the specificity is too low. If a child is missing any of approximately 10 milestones at each age point, CDCsMilestoneTracker labels them as missing milestones and recurrently urges the parent to bring them in for evaluation. My typically developing infant has been labeled as missing milestones at each age cut off, and I suspect 90% of children would. Fortunately, as a doctor, I’m able to recognize that this is a failing of CDCsMilestoneTracker , rather than a failing of my child, but a mother without as much medical knowledge could be truly alarmed. It would be far more useful if it used a higher cut off for labeling a child as missing milestones, such as if a child missed multiple milestones at one age group, or was missing milestones of a younger age group. As it is, I would not recommend this to parents. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that it is interesting to see what approximately your child should be learning at their age, as long as you know enough not worry if they are missing one or two skills.
