When my son was seen by a developmental pediatrician two years ago at age 7 for handwriting and drawing difficulties, mild hypotonia, and coordination difficulties, she told us that we should do activities from The Out of Sync Child Has Fun and use Handwriting without Tears to help him with proprioceptive, vestibular and visual motor integration proglems. She had an educational psychologist come in to test my son with the WIAT. The educational psychologist that tested him noticed that he seemed to have vision problems, that he tired easily, and was fidgety and had trouble staying in his seat while being tested. Tests showed that he was grade levels ahead of age mates in reading and comprehension and math but only slightly ahead of grade level in spelling. Spelling was tested by having him write the words, which I thought was crazy since one of the reasons we were there was because his handwriting was sloppy and he couldn't write very long without getting tired. So he tested only slightly above grade level in spelling even though he was probably grade levels ahead in that area too, which makes me wonder even more about how accurate tests are for 2e kids. He tested grade levels ahead of age mates even though he only spent a couple hours a day doing what I would consider learning activities. The doctor and the educational psychologist were telling us he was gifted and the doctor said he needed to work on his motor skills at home so I went away thinking okay, we'll do that and he will be fine.
My son is the only child at home and I am homeschooling so I didn't often have the opportunity to compare him to other kids his age except in his musical theatre class where there is only one other child his age and at Cub Scouts where my son refused to do any writing or drawing in front of the other kids.
Since the developmental pediatrician did not give us a diagnosis other than confirming that he still had hypotonia and the sensory issues, I thought maybe he was just on the low end of normal but when he recently took a homeschool PE class and swimming lessons with younger children where the teacher called him a "wuss" for not being able to do some things, the lack of coordination seemed obvious. With the things we did at home the strength in this arms improved a little but the coordination did not. He still takes longer to learn dance steps and he still has some balance issues that he has to deal with and he doesn't have the endurance other kids have. I think his eyes still get tired faster than other kids although it has improved some after vision therapy that we did at home.
He will be seeing the developmental pediatrician, a neurologist, and the developmental optometrist soon. Hopefully I will have answers soon and I can also ask the doctors to write something so we can get accommodations.
