The tin opener stays in the drawer, because the last attempt ended in tears. So does the whisk, the bike, the shoelaces that never behaved. Your child is not broken and not lazy. But a child who trips on the same small steps every day learns something quiet and wrong. They learn that trying is what hurts, so the safe move is to stop trying. That is not clumsiness talking. It is shame, and shame does far more damage than any coordination difficulty on its own.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from The Hidden 20% with Abigail J Jones:
Common questions from parents
Is a clumsy child always going to be clumsy?
Does a coordination difficulty mean my child is less intelligent?
Will coordination exercises improve my child’s reading or handwriting?
Should I get my child formally assessed?
A clumsy child is not stuck being clumsy. Coordination is one of the more trainable skills there is. What lasts is the shame-driven avoidance that quietly stops the practice. Break that first.
The clumsiness is not the fixed part
The old story says a clumsy child stays a clumsy child. It also says that struggling to catch a ball or tie a lace tells you something about how bright a child is. Both halves are wrong. Coordination difficulty and intelligence are separate things, and one tells you nothing about the other.
Coordination itself is one of the more trainable skills we know of. Have a child practise the body awareness and coordination a task needs, in small supported doses. The movement gets more reliable. Researchers who pooled dozens of coordination-training studies found that targeted practice moves the targeted skill. Children who find movement hard tend to reach the same level as their peers over time, making more mistakes along the way there.
One catch is worth holding onto: the practice has to be the skill itself. Coordination work builds coordination. It does not stand in for reading practice, spelling practice or handwriting practice. Expecting it to is where a lot of programs oversell. If handwriting is the worry, the thing that improves handwriting is practising handwriting.
That is not clumsiness talking. It is shame, and shame does far more damage than any coordination difficulty on its own.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Avoidance is the quiet thief
Here is the loop that does the harm. A task goes badly, an adult sighs or a classmate laughs, and the child files the task under not for me. They skip it next time. Skipping feels like relief. It also removes the exact repetitions that would have made the task easier. The skill never gets its practice, so it never improves. That confirms the story the child already told themselves.
Notice that the shame usually tracks expectation, not the difficulty itself. A child expected to be sporty or tidy or quick feels the gap harder. The people around them read the struggle as a personal failing, not a coordination difference. Lift the expectation off the child and you lift a surprising amount of the shame with it.
The thing that breaks the loop is not rescue. Doing the task for a child protects them from the hard feeling. It also protects them from the practice. What helps is guided re-practice: showing the step again, doing it together, standing close while they try it themselves. In the video this article draws on, that is the shift that pulled one adult back to cooking, and back toward learning to drive.
Key takeaways
- The clumsiness is not the fixed part: Coordination is one of the more trainable skills, given supported, low-shame practice.
- Avoidance does the real damage: Shame makes children skip the exact practice that would build the skill.
- Coach the skill itself: Coordination practice builds coordination, not reading or handwriting, so practise each directly.
Why so many children get missed
For a long time, the picture of coordination difficulty was built around one kind of child, mostly young boys. A child who presents differently slips past the checklist. A girl who has learned to mask, to cover, to laugh it off, gets read as dreamy or chatty rather than as someone worth a closer look. Identification built around one profile misses the children who do not match it.
In the interview behind this piece, Abigail J Jones describes exactly that from the inside. She talks about a late diagnosis, years of hiding it, and a single reference point she found by searching online. Her account of how gender and race shaped who got taken seriously is her lived experience, and it is worth hearing as that. The narrow, defensible point underneath it is simple. A system tuned to one presentation will keep missing the others.
You do not have to wait for that system to catch up. Naming the difficulty out loud, without shame, is itself a support. So is finding your child even one reference point who shares it. And so is the low-shame practice above, started at home, today.
Doing the task for a child protects them from the hard feeling, and it also protects them from the practice.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What you want for your child is not a child who never trips. It is a child who tries anyway, who meets a hard thing and reaches for it instead of hiding from it. The obstacle is rarely the coordination. It is an old idea, absorbed early, that struggling at something means the something is not for you, and that the safe answer is to quietly stop. You are the person best placed to prove that idea wrong, one supported, low-shame repetition at a time. Nobody will advocate for your child the way you will, and that is exactly why your presence in the practice matters more than any specialist’s hour. Brain Bloom is built to strengthen the body-awareness and coordination skills underneath tasks like these, with you coaching each short session. Coordination difficulty rarely travels alone: many children who find movement hard also wrestle with focus and attention, and the two feed each other in ways a single-track program leaves untouched. Open the full picture with the assessment inside All Access, so you build around the whole child rather than the loudest symptom.
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Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
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A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
