Symptoms of Coordination Disorder in Childhood

Coordination Disorder

The symptoms of developmental coordination disorder vary greatly from child to child. The general characteristic is that the child has abnormal development of one or more types of motor skills when the child’s age and intelligence quotient (IQ) are taken into account.

In some children these coordination deficiencies manifest as an inability to tie shoes or catch a ball, while in other children they appear as an inability to draw objects or properly form printed letters.

Some investigators believe that there are different subtypes of developmental coordination disorder. While there is disagreement over how to define these different subtypes, they can provide a useful framework for the categorization of symptoms. There are six general groups of symptoms.

These include:

general unsteadiness and slight shaking
an at-rest muscle tone that is below normal
muscle tone that is consistently above normal
inability to move smoothly because of problems putting together the subunits of the whole movement
inability to produce written symbols

Children with developmental coordination disorder have difficulty performing tasks that require motor skills or eye-hand coordination, such as catching a ball.

(Anthony Nex. CORBIS. Photo reproduced by permission.)
visual perception problems related to development of the eye muscles.

Many parents think that kids who appear to be uncoordinated or refuse to participate in extracurricular activities will eventually grow out of these behaviors, but recent research published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities indicates that these may be two symptoms of developmental coordination disorder (DCD). According to the scientists, DCD affects half of ADHD children, as well as many others that do not suffer from attention problems.

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