Psychomotor development of the child and its evaluation in primary care

Abstract

The evaluation of psychomotor development is one of the basic activities of everyday paediatric practice, since it helps us not only to determine if the child shows some alteration but also to confirm that the child is healthy. It is thus essential to be able to carry out a suitable evaluation, given that an alteration in this might be the only expression of a disorder of the nervous system. Early detection of any dysfunction contributes to a possible early treatment and to minimising the appearance of sequels. A description is given of the normal development of the child up until 2 years, and an analysis is made of the areas of development, variants of normality and the warning signals classified chronologically. From amongst the different tests and appraisment scales, we give the most detailed exposition of the Hizea-Llevant test, since it is applicable to children between 0 and 5 years old, and because it makes it possible to check development in the cognitive, social and motor areas in a simple and rapid way.