Motor difficulties from childhood to midlife: A 40-year cohort study.
Clumsy kids often become clumsy, heavier adults—so keep motor goals on the behavior plan for decades.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ilkka and colleagues followed the same people for 40 years. They first marked who had motor difficulties in childhood. At age 40 they tested everyone's motor skills again and checked their weight.
The goal was to see if early clumsiness still matters at mid-life.
What they found
Adults who were clumsy kids still moved more slowly and less accurately than peers. They also had higher rates of obesity.
The study shows childhood motor problems do not fade away—they echo four decades later.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (2014) saw the same pattern in a shorter run. They tracked infant siblings of autistic children for four years and found early motor red flags predicted later delays. Ilkka et al. simply lengthen the timeline to mid-life.
Cummings et al. (2024) seem to disagree. In youth with intellectual disability they found body weight had almost no link to motor skill. The clash clears up when you notice the groups: K studied people with ID, Ilkka studied the general population. Weight and clumsiness travel together in typical development, but not in every diagnosis.
Krakovsky et al. (2007) add a warning from cerebral palsy: teens and young adults lost functional skills year after year. Ilkka’s cohort shows the slide can start even without CP and last into the forties.
Why it matters
If a child on your caseload struggles with balance or fine tasks, plan for the long game. Add goals that keep movement fun into adolescence and adulthood. Teach families that staying active is also obesity prevention. Re-assess motor skills at each transition—do not assume the child will “grow out of it.”
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a quick BOT-2 sub-test or timed reach-and-grasp probe to your re-assessment battery and write a maintenance exercise program the client can do at home.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: There are few studies of the persistence of childhood motor difficulties (MD) into adulthood. AIMS: To investigate the association of childhood MD with motor skills and body mass index (BMI) in midlife. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We studied 324 adults aged 40 from a cohort born in 1971-1974. At age 9, they had undergone the Test of Motor Impairment, used to classify them into groups: childhood MD (cMD), borderline cMD (bcMD), or no cMD. At age 40, participants comprised 23 with cMD, 47 with bcMD, and 254 with no cMD. Participants completed motor tests of balance, manual dexterity, and visuomotor speed, followed by recording of their BMI. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: At age 40, the cMD group performed worse than the no-cMD group on all motor tests (p < .001-.008). The bcMD group had slower visuomotor speed than the no-cMD group (p = .025). The groups differed in BMI (p = .002). Having cMD was associated with obesity in midlife (p < .001). After adjusting for sex, childhood socioeconomic status, and BMI at age 9, both cMD and bcMD were associated with obesity in midlife (p = .015). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Childhood MD are associated with poor motor skills, overweight, and obesity in midlife. This emphasises the importance of early intervention and follow-up when a child exhibits MD. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: This prospective longitudinal study presents novel evidence that individuals with a history of comprehensively and objectively assessed childhood motor difficulties (MD) have worse motor skills and a higher risk of obesity in midlife than do those with no childhood MD. There is a growing literature on adults with developmental coordination disorder or a history of MD. There is, however, a scarcity of longitudinal studies of childhood MD that continue beyond early adulthood, into midlife. In a systematic search, we could identify only one longitudinal study of objectively measured childhood MD with a reassessment of motor skills in those same participants in adulthood, and no study with a reassessment after age 20. Furthermore, longitudinal studies of the association of comprehensively and objectively assessed childhood MD with BMI in midlife have been lacking.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104670