When it comes to a child, there’s so much to think about, especially during the first few years of life! Luckily, your ESDM team can help you work through all of the developmental domains using the ESDM’s developmental checklist. If you join our G-ESDM program, an ESDM Practitioner will go through the ESDM Curriculum Checklist, a developmental assessment tool, but just so you feel a little more in-the-know, here’s a little breakdown of each one.
1. Receptive Communication – Receptive Communication is how a child understands the language and communication spoken to them. Your child could show difficulties in this domain if they do not respond when you’ve asked them to do something, to your songs or other play actions.
2. Expressive Communication – Expressive Communication is how your child communicates with you or others. Often behaviours of concern can arise if a child has something they’d like to communicate but can’t figure out how to yet.
3. Social Skills – This domain is about creating and maintaining relationships with others. Your child may simply not respond to your bids for attention or they may have difficulty communicating how or what they’d like to play to a peer.
4. Imitation – Imitation is seeing a person perform an action or hearing a person make a sound or word and then attempting to complete the same action, sound or word. Children with autism often have trouble with imitation due to social difficulties.
5. Joint Attention – This is when a person will coordinate their attention with another person on something interesting. An autistic child may find this hard to do because they need to pay attention to both an object and a person at the same time.
6. Cognition – Cognition is a process to learn and understand through thought, experiences or senses. Cognition develops our understanding of how things work and what processes look like.
7. Play – Often referred to a child’s “job,” play is an essential setting to develop social skills, problem solve and enhance learning to gain symbolic play. A child with Autism may exhibit repetitive play or play themes.
8. Fine Motor – Fine motor is the utilising smaller muscles to manipulate objects for actions like grasping, holding a pencil or pinching together.
9. Gross Motor – Gross Motor is the skill of coordinating whole-body and large muscle movements. This is essential for daily tasks like running, walking, climbing, sitting, etc.
10. Personal Independence – This skill set encompasses daily living skills such as toileting, eating, helping with chores, grooming, etc.
11. Behaviour – Behaviour is only utilised in Level 1 of the ESDM Curriculum Checklist, and this domain is used to ensure a child can participate fully in the play-based intervention without harm to themselves or others.
Now you’ve got a great basis for understanding all the components of the ESDM Curriculum Checklist. Using this framework, you can discuss concerns in any domain with a professional of your choosing to make sure your child is on track!
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