I think it's impossible for any of us to really be able to tell you much about what might be up with your ds based on reading a post online rather than seeing your ds and his challenges in person, but fwiw, there are things that could be present in a child with DCD. For instance, its' not easy to "see" DCD in physical behavior - especially when you're not a trained OT and you're only used to seeing your own child's development. We didn't notice anything pointing to DCD in our ds until he was diagnosed with it - but then, looking back, we could see that the signs had been present since he was an infant. His ped never recognized them as being anything to take note of, because none were so far on the late side of development that they caused any red flags to go up (things like late walking, late sitting etc.... all fell within the range of "normal" - just on the late side of normal). Weak hand strength, moving slowly, not being terribly athletically inclined, etc could all be a part of DCD.
Re not remembering steps or forgetting what you've asked him to do - these could be caused by different things. Just curious, have you had his vision tested? It may not seem relevant, but the way we found out our dd had severe vision issues was through seeking an evaluation that we pursued because we thought she had memory challenges - we would tell her to do something like "take your clothes up to your bedroom and put them away" and she'd never get there, would forget what she was doing by the time she'd walked up the stairs. The real challenge wasn't remembering, the challenge was remembering when she was also doing so much work to focus her eyes to get up the stairs to begin with. DD also couldn't make eye contact because she was seeing two heads at once when looking at another person
So that's just one example of why it's really difficult to assess what's up without a thorough exam that looks at the global range of a young child's abilities and functioning.
Re what kind of professional to see, I'd start with your pediatrician and see what he/she recommends. We've found having a neuropsych eval to be very helpful, because it looks at the whole child's functioning. It's not been the "end" of evals for our kids, but it has pinpointed where the root of their challenges was, and we were referred on to other professionals such as OTs/SLPs/etc as appropriate to help further define the diagnoses and to recommend premeditation / accommodations as needed.
Best wishes,
polarbear
