Ep #114: When to Worry (and When Not To) About Your Child’s Milestones with Jordyn Gorman

Hello friend and welcome back to this podcast and getting to talk all about raising healthy kid brains and all that comes with that. Today we’re going to be talking about something that I feel like almost every parent probably experiences, maybe every parent, and that is wondering about milestones and what’s going on with that.

And this topic was really interesting to me because very recently, someone very close to me was posting about this online and trying to get help and saying, “Hey, my baby, I’m concerned about them and that maybe they’re not hitting their milestones.”

And this person has reason for worry, right? Because they have an older child that is on the spectrum and they just are—there’s almost just that, this worry and this panic because we care so much about these little humans and want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can and making sure they’re getting the resources and help they need.

So my guest today, incredible human, Jordyn Gorman, she’s a licensed speech language pathologist and she’s the founder of Eat Play Say. And so she’s created this incredible hub of speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and they kind of can provide the whole gamut of all of these different things that we’re looking for as far as milestones.

And so because they have this, what they’ve been able to do is create some really cool things around taking the milestone list and actually helping you figure out what to do with that and how to use it, right? Instead of it just being this big list, what to know about it, how to try to get some of these reactions out of your child, how to see if they can actually do these things or not. And if they’re doing it the way that an evaluator would be looking at it.

She also talks about how to get an evaluation and when to get an evaluation and how you can get that for free and how they’ll come to your home to do it for you and all of these different resources. And it’s just so practical and so helpful.

And then the other thing that Jordyn shared that I felt like was so beautiful to share with us was just some of the resources they have around how we can be not necessarily a therapist for our child, but help them start making progress in things and sometimes even to the point that they don’t need a therapist to come in, but even to start helping them make progress and start developing to prevent additional problems from forming.

And she shares a story of her own son and what happened and even with her background, how she was second guessing herself when her doctor was saying, “We don’t need to be worried yet, it’s okay.” And so it’s very relatable and I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast, where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow, and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves, because, you know what? We all really need and deserve that, too. I am your host, Amy Nielson, let’s get ready to start the show.

Jordyn, welcome to the show.

Jordyn Gorman: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.

Amy: So you get to do fun things. You were telling me your practice, you have a variety of different types of therapy and you’re looking at a whole child. So that sounds amazing. And we’re going to be talking about some of those things today. But before we get into it, I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you got into this. You had a story that was personal about how you got into this to begin with. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jordyn Gorman: My mom, unfortunately, contracted bacterial meningitis when I was 16, and she made a full recovery. Let’s just start out with that. Everything was fine, but it was a long road and I got introduced to a speech language pathologist in the hospital helping her to recover. I remember her. She was so cute. She wore the cutest outfits with the lab coat over her. And being a 16-year-old girl, I was like, “I can dress like that. Hold on a second.”

I ended up interviewing her and asking her all of these things about being a speech pathologist. And she’s like, “Yeah, you can work with babies, you can work with adults.” And I was like, “Oh, I like this.” And I actually fell in love with the profession from that. So something good came from something sad and horrible at the time.

I went into peds, had my dream job and then became a mom and realized that was actually my dream job, left my fantastic position at a rehab hospital, started Eat Play Say, sharing my tips and tricks and education online, and it grew into now a whole team of pediatric professionals, helping me reach thousands, millions of parents all over the world. It’s incredible.

Amy: Oh, that is such a beautiful story. I kind of got into what I wanted to do to be home with my kids and it’s so neat that there’s options that we can do that in today’s world. But I want to talk about what you share and what you teach and how you help and make a difference in the world.

One of the things that you talked about and I feel like this is important is you said that delayed milestones don’t always mean something’s wrong. So we have this list, I feel like, of milestones and we have our baby and then they’re like, “Here’s all the things your kid should be doing.”

And then we’re watching faithfully because we just have to, it’s almost like we could maybe control things if we watch the milestone chart or whatever, right? But then if something doesn’t happen at quite the right time or our friend has a kid that’s doing something slightly before ours and we’re like, “Oh no, what’s happening with my child?” So can you just talk to me about that? Like, if something’s delayed, what does that mean?

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah, it’s a really gray area, especially when little ones are very small. There’s always this range of normal. We’re looking for walking between 12 and 15 months. We’re looking for that first word between 10 and 14 months. You know, there’s a big range. So sometimes when we hit the bottom of that range and we’re not seeing that milestone, parents start to panic. So I always first try to tell parents if your little one is not hitting it at the minimum age requirement, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to hit it in a few weeks and a few months.

We want to look at a child as a whole, which is also why I grew my team to also have PT and OT because even when you’re looking at something like speech, you want to look at development as a whole to see is the child moving forward in all of their milestones because that’s a great indicator that perhaps that next milestone that they’re not yet hitting is right around the corner.

So maybe they’re not delayed, they’re just taking a little bit of time getting where they’re going in this one area because another area is bursting and they’re focusing on their motor skills and their speech and language skills are catching up little by little. So when parents are looking at those charts, try not to panic and look at your little one as a whole. Are they moving forward as a whole? Then that is such a good indicator that things are coming right around the corner.

Amy: Oh, I love the way you just put that. I don’t think I’ve had anyone say that to me in that way before, just look at it as the whole and if they’re moving forward then it’s possible they’re just focusing on one thing, right? I love that. That’s amazing. Okay, so on the other hand, right? I feel we get this mixed messaging as parents. And we’re like, “It’s our kid and we care so much, right?” So there’s the thing of, “Don’t panic,” which I think is so true and panicking doesn’t help anyone ever almost, right?

And then there’s the, “Let’s just wait and see what happens.” And I grew up in a house where that was maybe taken too far. So talk to me, I think I went to a doctor for the first time when I was at university just to put that out there. So are there drawbacks to waiting and seeing? Is that a good strategy and for how long? What does that look like?

Jordyn Gorman: These are great questions. If we’re looking at the typical wellness visit for little ones, babies, obviously they go more often. So waiting a month or two to the next visit might not be the big of a deal. But if you’re seeing a little one at 2 years and you want to wait and see until they’re 2 and a half, that’s a huge gap. That’s, you know, a quarter of their life that you’re waiting and adding on before you’re going to do something.

So us as professionals really don’t like that wait and see mentality when it’s coming from perhaps a pediatrician or a professional that doesn’t see the child super regularly because it can actually put them further behind if there is a cause for concern right there at that moment.

So I try to tell parents if you’re concerned and you want to wait and see, I try to give it a month. Are you seeing any forward progress in 30 days? Were they not imitating and now all of a sudden they’re imitating? That’s fantastic. That’s indicative that more progress is to come. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Were they not showing signs of walking and now all of a sudden are cruising around and walking? Or were they not putting two words together and now they’re actually trying to put two words together? That’s great. If you’re feeling stuck and you give yourself a few weeks and a month and you’re like, “You know what, I’m really not seeing any forward progress,” that gut feeling of, “I should do something,” that’s a good time to take action.

Amy: And what would that action be? What action do we take at that point?

Jordyn Gorman: Sure. So in the United States, early intervention evaluations in every state are free. So you can call your state’s early intervention. You can actually just Google early intervention contact by state and the CDC has a nice list of all of the numbers to call by state. And you can schedule an evaluation without any pediatrician referral, you just self-refer.

Somebody will have to contact you back, come to your house and do an evaluation, absolutely free, which is great and can either validate your concerns or give you some peace of mind that your little one is where they should be. If they qualify for services, those services are either free or low cost in the United States. So it’s a great tool that parents can use that doesn’t cost them any money to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I would like you to come to my house.”

Both of my kids have received services. Penelope, my daughter, received early intervention for crawling, standing and walking. And my son now is actually receiving occupational therapy because I watched him for a little bit and then right around 4, he started having issues with his grasping, not really able to keep up with where he should have been. So I was like, “You know what, now it’s time to get some help.”

Amy: I love that so much. Okay, so the free option to just have someone come. And what does that look like? They come to your house to do, are they just observing? Do they have tasks? Is it hard on your child to go through this evaluation or is it pretty nice, relaxed, not causing stress to your child to go through this?

Jordyn Gorman: It’s not causing stress. So they do it in your home. So immediately that, “I have to go to a clinic” or “I have to drive somewhere,” is taken away because it’s in your natural setting, which we know for little ones especially 0 to 3, that is the best place to do therapy with them because you’ll be able to use their toys, see how they interact with their parents, how do they move around in their house. All of those things are great.

And then they do standardized assessment or parent report assessment and a parent’s judgment of their child. Like, you can say, “You know what, he knows how to do this but he’s not showing you how to do it right now.” The clinician will say, “Okay, you know your child best, I will mark that down.” Or you can say, “He really is struggling with this. It’s wild that he’s showing you that he can do this because we have meltdowns every day about this.” They’ll take that into consideration too.

They can qualify you for services based on the score or based on informed clinical opinion, it’s called ICO, which is how my daughter Penelope qualified. She actually scored low average. So they weren’t going to qualify her, but through informed clinical opinion because they saw how frustrated she was, she wasn’t able to move, wasn’t able to access her environment, they were able to qualify her for services based on all of the things that I shared, which was great. And she was in therapy for 6 months, was able to make good progress and then discharged. So I was so thankful for those services personally.

Amy: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay, so let me ask you this question because I’m kind of a – now, a parent, I’m so grateful for different interventions and doctors and things that can help us, but I also am a little bit of a do-it-myselfer sometimes.

If we have a parent that, say, their child’s in the acceptable range time and they’re wanting to, maybe they feel like their child’s making progress in some areas like we talked about, but is having a struggle with a particular area. Is there value to doing exercises or something with them to help their child maybe start making progress in this specific area that they’re struggling with so they can keep up with everything else that they’re doing well at?

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s where social media education can be so positive or reading the blogs on our website or downloading our free downloads of activities to do with your little one because so many times parents will look at a milestone checklist and be like, “Oh my kid can’t do that.” But then they think about it and they’re like, “I’ve never tried that. I’ve never modeled sticking out my tongue for my child. I don’t know if they could do that.” Then they work on it for a few weeks and they’re like, “Oh, they can totally do that.”

So I think that there’s a lot of things parents can do at home before jumping right to an evaluation. And also to be frank, sometimes the wait list for these evals or the wait list for therapy is so long depending on what the volume is with wherever you’re going for those services.

So absolutely parents can educate themselves on best practices at home, how to talk to their little one like a speech pathologist does, how to get their little one in certain positions or motivate them to move their body if they’re not moving their body in that way.

And then sometimes when it comes time for eval, they might be like, “You know what, we were able to work on some things. I’m really not that concerned anymore,” and can cancel it or they can go through the eval and get that reassurance that their little one was able to make progress through their efforts at home.

Amy: I love that so much. Oh, that is so cool. Okay, so is there a good list that you would recommend that we could send our listeners to? Here’s a list of milestones to actually be looking at just to pay attention to and then yeah, if there’s something your kid hasn’t done, I totally remember that happening to me and looking at it and like, “Oh, my kid’s supposed to do this,” but I’d never showed them how, right?

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah, so we actually have a 0 to 36 months comprehensive checklist where it’s gross motor, fine motor and speech and language milestones all in one place on our website, eatplaysay.com/checklist. You can download it for free.

And what’s different about our milestone checklist is that it’s very descriptive. So it gives the milestone and then gives the example, like what you would do in order to elicit that response. Instead of when you look at some milestone checklists it’s like, “says one word,” but it doesn’t tell you, “says one word independently or not via imitation,” or here’s an example of the most common 10 first words that you can hear out for, or that the word doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be ba for ball instead of ball.

So we really took the time to make the checklist for all of the different motor and speech and language milestones very specific so parents aren’t like, “I don’t know what that means,” and they have an idea of how to cue their little one to try to actually meet the milestone.

Amy: I love that. That’s so good because yeah, the ones we’re getting from at least when I was taking kids to their beginning appointments, I didn’t get that. So that’s amazing. I love that. And then how do we go from that to if there’s an area, right, that a kid is falling behind, where do we go to get the exercises for that specific thing?

Jordyn Gorman: Sure. So then we have our playbooks. So we have our infant and toddler playbooks on our website, super affordable, cost effective. Each one has a hundred different activities that require no toys, no special equipment. And each page of activities specifically relates to each milestone. So you have the milestones on one side, all of the very simple play-based activities that you can do with your little one to try to get them to check off and hit those milestones. and you move through each playbook for each year.

So 0 to 12 months is the infant one, toddler playbook one is 12 to 24 months, and toddler playbook two is 24 to 36 months. And we’ve heard from parents, especially little ones that are premature or they’re on the lower end of hitting their milestones, parents are like, “These are great activities that supported my little one to get them where they needed to be and make me feel confident that I can help them get where they need to be.”

Amy: I love that so much. It just sounds so simplified. Oh my goodness. Okay, so let me ask you this question too because if it’s a smaller thing and we address it early, we can potentially have it not become an issue, right? Which is valuable. Even if it’s something that’s going to require more intervention later, is it going to be helpful that we started trying to do these things with the kid?

I guess what I’m asking is, is it beneficial either way if it ends up being something that requires an assessment and intervention from a provider? Is it beneficial either way for parents to be able to start working and doing some of these things in the playbook with their children?

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah, absolutely because we’ve also heard that parents have started doing these exercises with them and they realize that, “Oh, my little one is sitting atypically. I didn’t notice that before. I’m going to reach out to physical therapy because it doesn’t seem to be getting better,” or, “I’ve been trying these exercises for a bit and my little one’s really struggling in this area. I’m going to check and see with early intervention if there is a speech and language delay.”

So they’re kind of twofold. It’s to bring awareness to what is appropriate for your child’s age, what they should be able to do even if you have to support them, and then also giving parents age appropriate activities and things to do because sometimes it doesn’t come so naturally. “What do I do with my 15-month old now that’s running around the house? What is age appropriate for that? What’s age appropriate to prepare my little one for preschool?”

So we kind of have it there for parents to use as a guide and then also use as preventative measures like, “Oh, let me see if there’s something going on if my little one can’t do these things.”

Amy: Yeah. Okay. I know in the information you sent over you talked about even from your position maybe having some concerns when you had your son and I just feel sometimes as parents, maybe we’re even expressing concerns and people are kind of downplaying it or we’re not really sure where to go from there. Can you tell us a little bit about that story that happened to you and your perspective on that and then share that with us so we can feel we can relate and then know what to do if we find ourselves in that situation?

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah. So when my son was born, I immediately red flagged the first couple days at home. I just felt he was so tight and I’ve worked with babies and toddlers and I’ve held them and bottle fed them and I’m like, “This doesn’t feel like the floppy, the floppy baby that I typically hold.” And I go to the pediatrician’s office and they’re like, “He’s gaining weight fine. It’s totally normal. You’re fine.” Because I really do think that they were coming from a place of, “I’m seeing an anxious mother. I want to let her know she’s doing a good job,” instead of validating me, which internally just made me think I was crazy.

And I’m like, “They’re all telling me everything’s fine, but my mom gut is [buzzing] that something is not right here.” So let’s wait and see. Yes, I noticed a little flatness on the back of his head, but let’s wait and see for the second appointment, which is two months. It still didn’t get any better. “Let’s wait and see.”

Now it’s the four month appointment and it’s really not looking good. So I ended up self-referring to a head shape consultation to get a helmet because I had missed the window for physical therapy. And if they would have validated me with, “You know what, think he’s tight, call early intervention and let’s get an evaluation,” then he would have gotten what he needed and maybe we wouldn’t have needed the helmet.

So I’m trying to tell parents that now, it’s a free resource. Early intervention is there for you. You don’t need anybody else’s validation to pick up the phone and call. The worst thing that’s going to happen is they’re going to come and say he’s actually fine and you’ve spent zero dollars to find out that information. So that’s the fire that was lit under me when I started Eat Play Say and I’m glad that we’re able to tell parents, “Hey, go get this help if you need it.”

Amy: I think that’s such a valuable message too. In my situation, I had a situation where the child was within the parameters, if you’re just looking at the numbers or whatever, of being okay, but I knew they weren’t okay, right? And having to kind of talk to and work with, and mine was a different situation. It wasn’t a therapy situation, but I ended up talking a doctor into hospitalizing my child that thought that she should go home and she coded during the night and the only reason she’s alive today is because I talked a doctor into hospitalizing her.

And so I think it is so good to have this messaging of – medical professionals are so amazing and they’re such a huge help to us and they’re also a part of the puzzle. You have a different piece of information than they have, and those things working together are what really help us get more of a full picture of what’s going on with our child. And I will be forever grateful for this doctor who listened to me over the numbers on the machine and took what I said into account with that and we worked together and it saved my baby’s life. And so I’m with you on that one and it’s okay to speak up and say something.

I wanted to just ask you, are there any specific – I know there’s so many things on the list. But are there like some most common or red flags you would specifically point out that are like, “These are maybe some things to watch out for?” Are there any of those that can just come off the top of your head that you’d say or just all of them matter?

Jordyn Gorman: All the milestones are definitely important, but I think if we’re talking about baby babies, I know recently, especially since the CDC removed crawling from the milestone checklist in 2022, parents are really disregarding crawling all together because they’re like, “Oh, it’s fine if they just go right to walking.”

But we have a lot of research and we have a lot of understanding about how moving on all fours like that integrates a lot of things. It integrates reflexes, it’s good for cognitive development, it’s the only activity that weight bears on the hands, which is so important for grasping, for writing, for all of those things.

So I think the main thing here, the skipping milestones thing is something I think that it’s good to address. We really don’t want to be skipping milestones. And I think sometimes we have this race of development. “My child went right to walking. My child went right to saying X amount of words and didn’t babble.”

Those stepping stones exist for a reason. That’s a foundation, a foundation of language, a foundation of motor. So if we’re skipping over those things, down the line, we can see some issues perhaps come up, especially related to crawling. It’s correlated with attention difficulties in school, being able to sit still in school, could have some later academic impacts.

So look at the milestone checklist, try to hit all of them. You can always go backwards. If your kid skipped crawling? Make a fort, let them go under it. “Oh, you’re crawling, even though you’re 3 years old, at least you’re crawling now.” and not just be in that rush to move over things. There’s a reason that we have this foundational milestone setup.

Amy: I am so glad you said that because I don’t think I’ve heard that before and I think it’s, gosh, it feels like a badge of honor if your kid is ahead and they skipped over these things. It’s almost like, “Oh, they skipped a grade and now they’re doing,” it’s like this, we’re so proud of ourselves. So it’s so good to hear that we actually want to hit all of the ones in between because all of them matter and have pieces of them that are connected to other things and that’s so good to know.

Okay, we are out of time, but I just want to ask you, is there anything else you would share with our moms or our educators that are listening? What would you just leave them with? And then I want to ask you just once again to share where we can send people to find more information from you.

Jordyn Gorman: Sure. I think one thing I would love parents to know, especially in this age of all the information always at our fingertips, is that there is such a thing as having too much information and information overload and overwhelm. And if you are following someone on social media or you are getting your information from somewhere and it feels like parenting is becoming unattainable, that is a really good indicator that you need to take a break.

Go back to the basics. You don’t have to plan a Pinterest perfect playroom. You don’t have to plan out a day of activities for your little one or you’re not being a good mom or not good enough. You totally are and simple is often best. That’s why we create the activities that we do to be so simple and so basic. So parents can feel like parenting is attainable and enjoyable. It should be fun. If you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed, take a step back, focus on you, your mom gut, and your little one.

Amy: So good. Oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And tell us where, just once again, just where we can send everyone. We’ll put a link in the show notes, but just let us know where we can get that checklist, which sounds amazing. And then also find those resources of the playbook for each year and all of that.

Jordyn Gorman: Yeah, so you can get the checklist at eatplaysay.com/checklist. We also have 11 other freebies. So if you just go to our freebies tab on our website, you can download crafts, things about feeding, all kinds of things. And then if you go to our handbooks page, eatplaysay.com/handbooks, you can see all of our digital resources. If you download them, they are yours to keep forever, which is something that I really feel is important. No subscription, no access lost. It’s yours forever because you’re a parent. If you’re going to put money into something, you should have access to it forever. I think it’s only fair.

Amy: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for coming and for sharing today and that’s such a great resource for parents and it sounds simple, but with everything that you need to know all in one place, which is so much better than the big great wide world of all the information that’s kind of piece by piece by piece. So thank you for putting that together.

Jordyn Gorman: Yes. Oh, for sure.

Amy: All right, thank you for coming on today. It’s been so lovely to talk with you.

Jordyn Gorman: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website PlanningPlaytime.com. See you next week.