brigid | Tiny Heads (Reply)

One of the search referrers bringing people to my BLAWWWWWG is people concerned about their babies/toddlers having tiny heads.

As you can imagine, a child with a tiny head potentially has all sorts of issues and will possibly experience a host of developmental delays. You have google! You have an imagination! I’m sure you can picture every single thing that could possibly go wrong with a small headed child.

Those things probably won’t happen.

While it’s important to keep your eyes on weird looking child-related measurements, some kids are at the bottom or top of the growth charts. And some kids have tiny heads. Some adults have tiny heads as well; I’m one of them. And it can be hard to accurately measure a squirmy infant or toddler’s head. Errors in reading head circumference are really, really common.

So what do you, as a parent, do?

First of all, is your child’s head growing along the same curve as the rest of his body? For instance, does it increase in size at a steady rate, making a jump (or lagging) when their height/weight makes a jump (or lags)? If your child’s head circumference stagnates or goes down when their height/weight goes up, that’s a sign of a potential problem. If it increases really really rapidly, more quickly than other readings, that’s a sign of a different potential problem. And also a sign that readings at some point were wildly inaccurate.

Secondly, how’s your kid handling milestones? While they aren’t totally exact, if your kid’s in the general ballpark of developmental milestones, you can relax a bit.

Thirdly, what does your pediatrician say? In theory, your pediatrician has the time to listen to your concerns and takes them seriously, and knows your kid fairly well, and has experience with telling when a tiny headed child just has a small head versus has an actual problem, and can advise you accordingly. If you feel your pediatrician doesn’t take the time to listen to you or dismisses your concerns, consider switching practices. I know that can be hard with different insurance plans, availability of doctors, etc but we’re on our second pediatrician now and like her way better than our first (who wasn’t bad, just really rushed). Because I feel that she respects me as a parent and listens to me, I brought up asthma concerns, and she paid extra attention to Niko’s breathing… and prescribed medication for him that worked really well. If we didn’t have that respect, that rapport, I might not have brought it up because oh gosh I’m just so neurotic and worry about everything and a cough that’s lasted for months can’t be THAT bad, right?

So. It’s possible your small headed child has microcephaly or Seckel syndrome or something else you’ve googled and convinced yourself that OH GOD THIS IS IT AHHHHHHHHH, just like I googlediagnosed a mystery rash as fifth’s disease, scarlet fever, measles, septicemia, and a strawberry allergy until it cleared up entirely on its own as quickly as it came (it was none of those things) (maybe the strawberries) (but probably not). But probably it isn’t. That sort of thing usually gets caught by alert pediatricians.

But what if it IS something serious?

Talk to your pediatrician first. They should have good recommendations on what to do next. Does your child need interventions to help them progress in motor or verbal skills? Some kind of therapy/ies? Your pediatrician is your first line of defense and should be able to help you hook up with those folks. You can also find information and support groups online, like the Foundation for Children with Microcephaly.

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