Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) face difficulties coordinating their movements. This frequently affects their daily activities: drinks are spilled, handwriting is illegible, and “clumsiness” often disturbs children from playing with their peers. Although DCD is a relatively mild disorder, the impact on children’s daily life is evident. Next to their motor problems, children with DCD face physical and psycho-social problems such as poor physical fitness and low self-esteem.

As daily functioning is affected in children with DCD, it is important to assess these children’s activities of daily living (ADL). Therefore, two new instruments were developed - a motor test and a parental questionnaire applicable to five to eight-year-old children: the DCDDaily and DCDDaily-Q. It is concluded in this thesis that both instruments are valid and reliable. Further, this thesis demonstrates that children with DCD, compared to typically developing peers, show limited capacity in ADL, poor performance of ADL, delays in learning of ADL, and less frequent participation in ADL.

The development of the DCDDaily and DCDDaily-Q is an important step to support clinicians in the diagnostic process and to provide tailored intervention for individual children, and to facilitate further research into DCD.