Assessment & Red Flags

The initial assessment may indicate the need to further investigate for DCD

Physiotherapy assessment includes measuring actual or potential impairments, activity limitations, participation restrictions and abilities/disabilities by history-taking, screening and the use of specific tests and measures.
- World Confederation for Physical Therapy, 2011.

  • The referral and assessment process might vary according to the work context; however, when offering management advice, PTs should consider potential underlying causes of impairments, as well as activity limitations and/or participation restrictions.
  • Whenever possible, PTs should include children's, parents' and teachers' views in their assessment.
  • Parents are often concerned at an early age but these concerns change over time (see figure 1 in Missiuna, Gaines and Soucie, 2006).
If children are referred with a diagnosis of DCD
  • You can use the evaluation forms and standardized tools in your work setting to document your findings; you can also refer to the Recognizing DCD section of this workshop for an overview of assessment tools.
If children are referred to you for "general motor delays"
  • Not all motor delays are due to DCD. The questions outlined below may help to identify children who might have DCD.

Assessment - Questions to Identify Children who might have DCD


This video illustrates an interview with a mother of a child with DCD

Question for Reflection
Why do children with DCD avoid sports and leisure activities?
Click here for some thoughts on this question
Why do children with DCD avoid sports and leisure activities?

Sports and leisure activities require complex movements and adaptations to changes in the environment during the execution of motor skills. In addition, to participate actively, children must also understand the rules of game play. It is challenging for children with DCD to pay attention to game play when they are simultaneously concentrating on performing the motor skills required. They typically enjoy sports more in the early years when the focus is on participation and fun but have more challenges as they mature, often signing up for activities and sports but quitting out of frustration, and fear of failure or humiliation. Over time children with DCD become passive and sedentary.


During sports and leisure activities, you may observe the following in children with DCD:

  • Stiff posture
  • Slow reactions
  • Poor use of the opposite sides of the body when different actions are required (eg. catching and trapping a ball in a baseball glove)
  • Poor eye-hand coordination
  • Difficulty monitoring performance
  • Inability to adapt quickly to a changing environment (eg. running on a bumpy field, catching a ball thrown from a different direction or height)
  • Lack of body awareness or their position in relation to other objects or people
  • Difficulty judging the speed of oncoming objects or people
So what about Max?
Max is not yet able to ride his bicycle. During assessment, you will want to ask his parents if Max has had opportunities to learn to ride his bicycle.