About Our Tools

PEDS-R®, PEDS:DM® and PEDS:DM-AL® are highly accurate, validated tools providing developmental screening and behavioral screening plus ongoing surveillance. Used alone or together, they comply with American Academy of Pediatrics AAP policy and offer the best solution for early detection.

  • Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental Status — Revised (PEDS-R®) -a surveillance and screening tool, for children 0 to 8 years, that elicits and addresses, with evidence-based support, parents’ concerns about development, behavior and mental health. PEDS-R® saves time, promotes family collaboration and willingness to return for future visits. It is published in many languages and includes abundant information to support helping parents learn about child-rearing. PEDS® is being revised to improve the ability of all parents to raise concerns — not only in the domains PEDS® currently probes: expressive/receptive language, gross/fine motor, behavior, self-help, school and social skills, but also in global/cognitive and other issues including psychosocial challenges and health problems. PEDS® depended on parents to spontaneously share their worries without prompting. Parents with limited education and/or difficulty speaking English tended not to volunteer concerns about global/cognitive and other/health issues. To address this challenge, PEDS-R® adds two questions that prompt for global/cognitive and health concerns. PEDS-R® is based on decades of research on PEDS-R® (Glascoe, 2013) plus 20 years of research on Survey PEDS® – an interview protocol used by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine disability prevalence and how well health care providers meet families’ needs (CDC, 2021).
  • PEDS®: Developmental Milestones (PEDS:DM®) — a surveillance and screening tool for children 0 – 8 that enables a swift view of children’s skills in development and mental health, including expressive and receptive language, fine and gross motor skills, self-help, academics, and social-emotional skills. The PEDS:DM® also includes supplemental measures of psychosocial risk, resilience, autism-specific screening (M-CHAT-R), and several screens for older children including the Vanderbilt ADHD Scale. An Assessment Level version is also available to help with early intervention intake and NICU follow-up.
  • The PEDS:DM® Assessment Level (PEDS:DM-AL®) — designed for developmental follow-up (e.g., in NICU, EI, foster care) and all other programs where children are at elevated risk for problems). The PEDS:DM® Assessment Level enables a detailed look at each developmental domain, i.e., expressive language, receptive language, fine motor, gross motor, self-help, social-emotional, and for older children, math and reading skills.
  • PEDS® Online — our online application of PEDS-R®, PEDS:DM®, and the Modified Checklist of Autism in Toddlers-Revised. The site offers automated scoring, generates summary reports for parents, referral letters when needed, and ICD-10 and procedure codes to optimize billing. The site is easy to use, eliminates the need for hand-scoring and referral letter writing, and works well with or without electronic records. Each licensee has a unique administration panel that facilitates quality improvement initiatives and research. The panel is exportable and can be added to existing databases.
  • PEDStest Shop — offers printed versions of PEDS-R®, PEDS:DM®, and PEDS:DM-AL®. The site offers PEDS® Tools as single items and packages. You’ll also find the PEDS Tools® Manuals and Dr. Glascoe’s book, “Identifying & Addressing Developmental-Behavioral Problems: A Practical Guide for Medical & Non-Medical Professionals, Trainees, Researchers, & Advocates”.

PEDS® Tools were developed by Dr. Frances Page Glascoe, PhD and were designed for primary care to be fast, accurate, and simple. PEDS® Tools screen for development, behavior, social-emotional/mental health and autism in 3-6 minutes and are available in 50+ languages. For settings where children are at elevated risk for developmental-behavioral problems, we have a mid-level assessment tool; PEDS:DM-AL®.