This book is about children who are clumsy or physically awkward. Specifically, it is about the experiences that arise as a consequence of motor clumsiness. While the word “clumsy” has many negative (and potentially stigmatizing) connotations, it is a strikingly descriptive label, as are the words “physically awkward.” In contemporary medical terminology, we refer to children who are clumsy or physically awkward with no apparent medical cause as having developmental coordination disorder, or DCD (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Although DCD has become the dominant label, it is by no means the only one. Clumsy child syndrome (Gubbay, 1975), developmental dyspraxia...

These are only a few examples of the experiences of a boy I know with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). His experiences not only reflect the motor difficulties that disrupt daily living activities but also show how DCD may affect social interactions, academic life, and family relationships. the comments capture the emotional distress that children with DCD often experience, distress that may affect their selfesteem and general well-being. these experiences also exemplify the challenges of managing DCD difficulties, evident in the boy’s choice of activities and how he prefers to participate.

Taking into account that DCD is not an inconsequential condition,...

In this chapter I begin with a familiar narrative in the literature on DCD in children: As a result of their motor coordination problems, children with DCD struggle with everyday tasks, including play.¹ Gross motor problems associated with balance, deficits in hand– eye coordination, and basic skills such as kicking and catching make both organized sports and free play extremely difficult. The result is that when they can, children with DCD avoid such activities. The resultant inactivity is thought to have both social and physical consequences. Children who do not play with other children miss important opportunities for socialization: Play...

The area of developmental psychopathology has been extensively researched over the last decade, and an area that has been of particular interest has been that of comorbidity or co-occurrence of disorders. Rutter and Sroufe (2000) argued that this was one of the major research challenges of the future. Despite this, there remains one disorder that has lacked the research attention given to other developmental disorders, namely, a disorder characterizing those children who have what has been termed “minor motor deficits,” referred to in the DSM-V as developmental coordination disorder (DCD).

Research has now identified social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties often...

This chapter examines the neurocognitive processing deficits that are common in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), focusing on issues of motor control and executive function. Taking an embodied approach, it is argued that the development of motor behaviour is constrained by maturational and experiential factors. movement skills and underlying control processes emerge over a relatively protracted period of development and are viewed as being embedded within a broader neurocognitive system. one prominent account of DCD that is a focus of this chapter is theinternal modelling deficit(IMD) account, perhaps better termed a deficit of predictive control. The chapter...

Considering the nature of the primary motor problems of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and the consequences of these problems for daily life functioning, it is beyond doubt that early identification of these children is important in order to provide timely intervention. indeed, as many chapters in this edited collection highlight, the potential secondary consequences, in regard to physical, emotional, and social well-being are pervasive and troubling (see Chapters 2, 3, and 4 in particular). However, although the prevalence of 5% to 6% for DCD reported in the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) implies the presence of at least one child...

Several authors in this book have already noted the importance of conducting community- or school-based research to increase our understanding of the consequences of DCD and to test interventions to improve the quality of life of children with this disorder. Longitudinal studies, in particular, can do much to illuminate the long-term effects of DCD. Previous chapters have discussed their importance for research on participation in physical activity (Chapter 2), on participation and health-related fitness (chapter three), and on mental health (Chapter 4). In this chapter, we consider the challenges associated with conducting field research of this kind on children with...

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a chronic health condition that affects a child’s ability to perform everyday tasks at home, at school and at play (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Barnett, 2008; Missiuna, Moll, King, King, & law, 2007; Summers, Larkin, & Dewey, 2008; Wang, Tseng, Wilson, & Hu, 2009). It is likely that there is a child with DCD in nearly every primary school classroom in the world, and yet, we know that few educational or health care systems acknowledge or understand it (Barnett, 2008; Gaines, Missiuna, Egan, & Mclean, 2008b; Rodger & Mandich, 2005). Twenty-five years of research has...

As the chapters in this collection show, developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is associated with a variety of physical and mental health outcomes and has a significant impact on social functioning, especially in relation to participation in social activities and active play. We have reviewed the neurocognitive deficits in children with DCD, and how these may affect participation and provide clues to how we might intervene on an individual level. in addition, the authors have discussed the challenges associated with screening and with conducting research on children with DCD, describing some new approaches to intervention that fall outside conventional paradigms of...