CDC's Milestone Tracker

I am enjoying this app that I found by looking at a healthcare site. It has an easy to understand interface and adding multiple children was easy. For the milestones, you can look at each section individually or use the tool that goes through all sections while you answer if your child can do the milestones. The answers are ‘yes’ ‘not yet’ and ‘no’. There are usually short videos that demonstrate the milestone. After you answer all the milestones, it provides you with a summary that you can email or send to your child’s physician. The summary is also saved in the app. This is a very easy to use and helpful app that I’m grateful to have found.

The CDC website has so much valuable information. Being a nurse with babies, there is so much potential here that the CDC hasn’t touched. CDC states how breastfeeding stops before 6 months of life (only 22% of mothers continue exclusive BF at this time) because of lack of info, lack of support, and other reasons. This app can help health care providers get parents in touch with breastfeeding support and education. I wish this app would add in the charts for breastmilk storage PDF, safe sleep PDF, how to safely transport breastmilk, ten steps of successful breastfeeding list, etc. (can further expand to provide parents with BF support links like La Leche League, and mental health support, and new family support!!) All of this needs to be incorporated because no parent knows how to navigate the CDC for this information until a healthcare provider shows them. The website is not “patient” friendly, but is “user” friendly. The app can make this “patient” friendly because this can start in the hospital when a baby is born!! Come on CDC, please take my advice! Make this more comprehensive, my patients will love it and then I will become a strong advocate for this in our hospital!!

As a mother of an infant, and as a family doctor, I like the concept of this app. However, in doctor language, the sensitivity of this app is too high and the specificity is too low. If a child is missing any of approximately 10 milestones at each age point, the app 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 the app, 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.