I think I'm confused because with DCD I thought everything with motor skills was pretty much poor.
Forgot to mention - I find DCD confusing! It is a diagnosis that covers a *wide* range of physical issues, and when you read about it you'll find people who are all over the place in terms of how they are impacted. Some folks have just one tiny area (such as the fine motor coordination required for handwriting) and some folks are so impacted globally that they have a really tough time. You wouldn't know just by knowing my ds that he has DCD, but he is impacted in more areas than just fine motor. It's just that it's subtle and you don't necessarily see a challenge until it's really tested in real life, if that makes sense. A few for-instances for you:
1) Gross motor - my ds' OT assessment for gross motor was "near enough average" to not raise any red flags - but the testing situation was one-on-one with no time demands. He struggled tremendously with team sports in upper elementary and early middle school (things like soccer etc) where he had to use gross motor skills to kick/throw/etc when there was a time demand and lots of extra information to process at the same time (direction ball was coming from, where he needed to kick it toward, which teammates were where etc). Yet at the same time, his gross motor skills are a-ok for things like biking and skiing (individual sports) - as long as he's not racing against a same-age or same-size peer.
2) Speech - apraxia of speech is often found in children with DCD. We never really would have suspected this impacted our ds (although one of his diagnostic symptoms of DCD was his lack of early speech). Then in 4th grade, he started telling me that he had a tough time getting his thoughts out verbally (prior to that time he had been struggling tremendously with written expression and we didn't realize that it wasn't all about writing). He also doesn't open his mouth very wide when he talks - and that's something that didn't become obvious until he was a little older.
3) Sensory stuff, knowing when he's hungry, little things that don't seem like much of anything really when you are only looking at them in isolation.. also seem to crop up on lists of DCD symptoms.
More later!
polarbear
