he often pauses for a while before responding, like he's struggling to gather his words....Finally, he is very cautious (but not clumsy), especially when climbing or walking over uneven surfaces. He was a late crawler and walker. He avoids games where lots of kids are running around; it seems to make him nervous. He was ambidextrous until four and didn't develop a proper pencil grasp until we encouraged him to start using one had for writing/eating/playing guitar. His drawing is poor and mostly consists of scribbles. His handwriting is neat but slow and laborious and he mostly resists doing it. He also has poor eye contact.
This is the part that sounds like my child (DCD/Dyspraxia), except she is clumsy. Does he have a proper pencil grasp now? Both my husband and my daughter hold their pencil tightly in their fist, and it is the fist that is doing the writing--the hand isn't loose. My husband calls himself ambimaldexterous and we thought my daughter was left handed until she started writing. Poor eye contact has been a big problem because teachers think she isn't paying attention. Like someone else said, a lot of these issues have overlapping characteristics. I think the reason the child does the behavior is more important than the behavior itself. For mine, eye contact is difficult because the sensory experience is too intense. She now looks at people in the chin, and that helps. But not looking people in the eyes has caused her a lot of stress.
When I look back over the last four years, I really don't think we could have figured things out any faster than we did and I don't know how much it would have helped. Maybe a little, but I still think she would have struggled. The writing is only now getting challenging enough for her to have real problems
the things I wish I did differently would be: 1) not pay any attention to the behavior charts at all. In fact, I probably would have tried to get her off them. All her bad "choices" are related to physical issues she can't control, 2) not get as frustrated when she drops and spills and falls and gets everything messy, 3) try to get writing and drawing assignments ahead of time so she could plan them out at home in advance.