Developmental age of children in their first year of life in Tehran

Abstract EN

Background : The differentiation of human being in life that leads to somatic, mental, verbal and social maturation is called development. The rate of development in childhood is more rapid than other stages of life, particularly during the first year, which is the fastest We decided to evaluate the developmental quotient in 6500 infants, because to the best of our recollection, there has not been a longitudinal study accessing this subject in the first year of life in a large group of children in our country.

This shortcoming prompted us to undertake this investigation.

We studied the developmental age in respect, of grasping, crawling, sitting, walking and social age.

The cases that have been studied were consisted of the healthy children who were referred to Tehran.

health and vaccination centers.

Those who had a definite organic diseases or a clear cut neurodevelopment delay were excluded.

Therefore, the infants who were considered completely healthy children were enrolled in our study.

To evaluate the developmental age of different skills, we used "Munich functional diagnostic" as our assessment test. The result showed that developmental age had relationship to the following factors: maternal educational level, socioeconomic status of the family, the environment which the child was taken care there, and supplementation of iron, vitamins and additional food. At the conclusion of our study we found that the age of development in Iranian children was earlier than Germans infants during the first year of life, as median of developmental quotient was 115.41. Also it was true about the median age of acquiring different skills as follow : Grasping, crawling, sitting, walking, perception, speech reception, speech expression, and social interaction.