Author(s): Hua Jin , Guxiong Gu, Zhiqiang Qin , Dandan Bai and Yujie Ma
Objective: This paper was aimed to examine the prevalence of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) in preschool children aged 3 to 6 years old in Jiangsu province, China, and to find out the parenting and biological risk factors of DCD. Method: 5691 children were randomly selected from the 25 kindergartens distributed throughout Jiangsu Province. A social-demographic questionnaire was asked to fill out by their parents, and the motor coordination of children was assessed with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2nd edition (MABC-2). According to the assessment, the 5th percentile was used to define DCD, and the 15th percentile to suspicious DCD. Children with any known neurological conditions or an IQ<70 were excluded. Result: 5601 children were available with complete data. 336 children met the criteria for DCD, resulting in a prevalence of 6.0%, with a mean age of (4.94 ± 0.80) years. There were 231 boys and 105 girls with a gender ratio of 2.2 to 1. Additionally, 540 children were considered as suspicious DCD, resulting in a total suspicious prevalence of 15.6%. When classified into different age groups, there are more DCD children in the younger group (3-5 y) than the older group (5-7 y). The children with a birth weight<2500 g, with a history of jaundice or those born before 37 weeks’ gestation, are more likely to suffer from DCD. Different care givers, low social-economic status, and low education of parents, are the parenting risk factors of DCD. Conclusion: Prevalence of DCD in preschool children of Jiangsu in China, is reported in this study, the result indicates that DCD is an important cause of disability in early childhood, especially in children with the risk factors. Besides the biological risk factors, DCD is also related to the parenting factors, which we can give our effort to do some help.
