Parents are living in a flurry of information about childhood developmental disorders – everything from autism to ADHD – and now the Centers for Disease Control has a new video to help them recognize symptoms early.

“Baby Steps” is part of the CDC’s campaign “Learn the Signs. Act Early.”

The sooner parents recognize their child has a disorder the earlier they can act, which can improve treatment.

Today, autism grabs most of the headlines, but there are other developmental disorders that emerge in the first three years of life. To get a jump on treating these disorders, the CDC’s video encourages parents to connect with their kids to “observe how they play, learn, speak and act.”

And it is not uncommon for a child to develop a disorder.

“In the U.S. nearly 17 percent of all children experience some form of developmental or behavioral disability.” – “Baby Steps: Learn the Signs. Act Early,” CDC-TV.

In Seattle, the University of Washington is in the middle of one of the nation’s first studies into preventing the most well-known childhood developmental disorder, autism, in infants. Even though the study is underway, researchers are looking for new families.

One of the study’s goals is to diagnose autism earlier – it’s often picked up at age two.

"Other research has shown that the earlier the intervention the better the outcome in treating children with autism.  One of our goals is to be able to identify autism as early as possible before obvious symptoms show up so we can intervene while the connections in a child's brain are still plastic.” – Annette Estes, associate director of the UW Autism Center in the University of Washington News, 1/2/08. (Interested parents can call the Autism Center at (800) 994-9701 or check http://depts.washington.edu/uwautism.)

There may be more money for this type of work because the economic stimulus package may contain more funds for autism research in the early years, one source reports.