Clumsy children

Clumsy childrenClumsiness may be defined as "a deficit in the acquisition of skills requiring fluent coordinated movement, not explicable by general retardation or demonstrable neurological disease."Unfortunately teachers and parents often use the term as a synonym for idleness, untidiness, lack of discipline, or impulsivity, neglecting the essentially motor nature of the concept.'Henderson points out in a recent review that clumsy children do not form an homogeneous group.2The problem may be predominantly with gross motor functions like skipping or with more refined skills such as handwriting.Motor competence is not a single entity.A child might, for instance, play the piano outstandingly but perform poorly at football.Speech is the most sophisticated of all motor skills, and yet many clumsy children have no difficulty with speech.Clumsy children differ widely in intelligence, concentration, reading ability, and temperament.The occasional child with problems in all these areas gives rise to the notion of the "clumsy child syndrome"-an uncoordinated, untidy, lonely, friendless failure.3Although this tragic stereotype is mentioned in many publications, there is no evidence that the clumsy child syndrome is a definable entity.What causes clumsiness?Is it caused by "minimal brain damage"?By definition clumsy children have no formal neurological signs.Most have no history of perinatal events likely to have caused brain damage,4 but prenatal influences on the developing brain may occasionally be responsible.