Is there a difference between dyspraxia and DCD? Which terms should we actually be using?

I think it's really helpful to first think about the sort of formal classification and what they mean in really thinking about what the diagnostic criteria are and take that as a starting point, because there are international agreed sort of terms and classification systems that help us to all understand what we're talking about and make sure we're talking about the same thing.

So if we talk about developmental coordination disorder or DCD, that actually has four formal criteria.

And the first one is that there is a significant movement difficulty.

We can talk about what that means, but that covers things like difficulties with fine motor skills and gross motor skills that have a significant impact on someone's life.

And the second criterion is that it really does impact their everyday life, their everyday skills.

It's not just something you see on a test, but actually it impacts the way they cope at school, the way they are at home, or for adults, how they are in employment or in leisure, and impacts on the things that they want to do in their life.

can mean sometimes people think of you as less competent rather than not confident and then things like new skills like learning to drive a car but I look at learning to drive a car now and I've got a car I don't know how to do it but it can park for me if I learned how to do it so you know we've got bumpers and sensors and things that we didn't have 10 or 15 years ago but learning new skills is still a problem often and and not being fit so that impact on your fatigue so wide-ranging and then with relationships if your confidence has been hammered your relationships self-esteem and creating relationships and friendships has a long-term impact so it has wide-ranging impact