I'm in my third year of a Developmental-Behavioral Pediatric fellowship. Feel free to reach out if you have questions. If your interests are primarily autism, ID, and learning disabilities as you say above, DBP is the way to go. Also, I was told I'd make less money as a DBP than a general pediatrician, but that is not really true. I'll tell you in California, DBPs just out of fellowship are mostly being offered $210s-230s as opposed to about 180s for general peds. Also, DBPs are in short supply and high demand; so, you can basically pick your location (they rarely post openings for DBPs outside of the major academic centers because they assume they won't get applicants; so, a lot of us get positions by cold calling the hospital we want to work in). Although all the below see kids with autism to some degree or another (and all with a different flavor to how they manage the patients), I'll try to outline the differences in the fields suggested below:
DBP: 3 years of peds residency followed by 3 years of DBP fellowship. Programs look really different from each other; so, it's important to find a program that aligns with your interests. Generally, the main patients seen by DBPs are those with autism (often with aggression, self-injury, anxiety, or ADHD as a co-morbidity), intellectual disability, specific learning disabilities, high-risk newborns, ADHD, and anxiety. Depending on the site, they may also do CP, spina bifida, etc., but this is less common. DBP practice is a mixture of evaluations (particularly autism evaluations), recommendations regarding therapies/school services/etc, and medication management. DBPs tend toward more holistic, family-unit evaluation/treatment (I know, letting my bias creep in here). Lifestyle-wise, DBPs usually don't work nights or weekends, take call, or do inpatient consults (though there are very rare places out there that do to some extent).
NDD: 6 year residency/fellowship (usually a combination of training in peds, adult neuro, child neuro, and then specifically NDD). Typically, NDD is more physical-disability focused (cerebral palsy, neuromuscular conditions, etc.) than DBP (though both DBP and NDD have some bleed over and often co-located fellowships) and sees kids and adults.
Pediatric Behavioral Neurology: Would complete a 5-year peds/neuro residency (I think you can also complete a peds psychiatry fellowship but am not sure) and then a 1-2 year behavioral neurology fellowship. Generally deals with brain disorders (delirium, dementia, etc.), syndromes from brain lesions (aphasia, amnesia, etc.), and psychiatric manifestations of neuro conditions.
Child psychiatry: There are some joint peds psychiatry programs (5 years long usually), but otherwise its a 3-year psychiatry residency (combination of internal med, psychiatry, and neurology) followed by 2 year peds psych fellowship. Again, they have a lot of overlap with DBPs, but the emphasis tends toward medication management, and they tend to treat more severe anxiety or depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, conduct disorder etc. (in addition to ADHD and aggression). Although some child psychiatrists have a niche interest in kids with autism, ID, etc., most programs (from what my child psych colleagues tell me) don't train them much in these populations, and they often will send these kids to DBP.
Hope this helps!
