{"id":10162,"date":"2021-09-09T13:12:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T12:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/?p=10162"},"modified":"2021-09-09T13:12:09","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T12:12:09","slug":"coordination-is-it-a-problem-for-many-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/coordination-is-it-a-problem-for-many-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Coordination, is it a problem for many children?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since I have been working in pediatrics, I have seen hundreds and hundreds of children (many more boys than girls) with coordination problems. I remember a fairly recent case. A patient brought his 7-year-old son to me because he stumbled and was not good at sports. On closer inspection we saw that he had great difficulty balancing on one foot or with the feet in tandem. It was very suprising to observe how difficult was to unbutton his shirt. His manual function was very difficult, and it was clearly seen in the way he held the pen and in the quality of his handwriting. <\/strong>He was a boy with typical development, without brain damage but we cannot say that neurological was optimal for his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This child came without any diagnosis like many others that I have encountered over the years. All signs lead to a possible developmental coordination disorder or DCD. The origin of this diagnosis is around 1994 and it became part of the DSM-IV. However, children with these difficulties were seen long before. It was called clumsy child syndrome, developmental dyspraxia, sensory integration disorder, perceptual-motor difficulty, or minor neurological dysfunction. Many names to describe the same child.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studies speak of an incidence of 5% -6% but is it really like this? The fantastic APTA Pediatric Physiotherapy Academy Clinical Guide, developed by Dannemiller and colleagues last year, makes that clear. The incidence of DCD is probably “underestimated.”<\/strong> I think those of us who work in pediatrics can confirm this fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the fact that it is a really frequent problem, our health systems seem to lack a particular sensitivity to detect, intervene and especially prevent this type of disorder. The diagnosis must be made by doctors, psychologists or psychiatrists, but given the importance of the motor aspect in this disorder, pediatric physiotherapy could greatly contribute to its diagnosis.<\/strong> This confirms two things for us. On the one hand, that the pediatric physiotherapist should be more present in the evaluations and screenings of development in health centers and on the other hand that pediatric physiotherapy should, without a doubt, commit to typical development children’s problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DCD is defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder, subcategorized as a motor disorder in DSM-5. Children (almost 3 times more boys than girls with DCD) show difficulties with predictive motor control, learning new patterns, pacing, or acquiring and executing gross and fine motor skills. This has a clear influence on activities of daily living and on school performance. This last point is essential. How many children with learning disabilities show motor clumsiness or sensory difficulties?<\/strong> Really knowing this data would lead us to the need for a more integrated pediatric physiotherapy in the school environment and its difficulties. Of course, accompanying children with typical development, their families and attending the pedagogical teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch this youtube video<\/a> about attention and learning problems and everything that can be done from physiotherapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a very curious post<\/a> on the relationship of developmental coordination disorder with problems in mathematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the next posts we will review evaluation and treatment keys for this type of children,<\/strong> some already used in PIMT Pediatric Integrative Manual Therapy for years, and others new and interesting for clinical practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Dannemiller, Melinda Mueller, Adrah Leitner, Erin Iverson, Sandra L Kaplan.\u00a0Physical Therapy Management of Children With Developmental Coordination Disorder: An Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guideline From the Academy of Pediatric Physical Therapy of the American Physical Therapy Association.\u00a0Pediatr Phys Ther. 2020 Oct; 32 (4): 278-313.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I have been working in pediatrics, I have seen hundreds and hundreds of children (many more boys than girls) with coordination problems. I remember a fairly recent case. A patient brought his 7-year-old son to me because he stumbled and was not good at sports. On closer inspection we saw that he had great difficulty balancing on one foot or with the feet in tandem. It was very suprising to observe how difficult was to unbutton his shirt. His manual function was very difficult, and it was clearly seen in the way he held the pen and in the quality of his handwriting. He was a boy with typical development, without brain damage but we cannot say that neurological was optimal for his age. This child came without any diagnosis like many others that I have encountered over the years. All signs lead to a possible developmental coordination disorder or DCD. The origin of this diagnosis is around 1994 and it became part of the DSM-IV. However, children with these difficulties were seen long before. It was called clumsy child syndrome, developmental dyspraxia, sensory integration disorder, perceptual-motor difficulty, or minor neurological dysfunction. Many names to describe the same child. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":10159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neurodevelopment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmpi-pimt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}