Short report on a 6-week at-home exergaming intervention to improve balance in children with developmental coordination disorder.
Six weeks of at-home exergaming balance games improved standardized balance scores for kids with DCD versus no treatment.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Twenty kids with developmental coordination disorder played balance video games at home for six weeks. The games ran on a Wii balance board and gave instant feedback when kids swayed too much.
Parents set up the system once. Kids played 30 minutes a day, four days a week. A control group of the kids with DCD kept their usual routine.
What they found
At the end, the gaming group scored seven points higher on the MABC-2 balance section. The control group stayed flat.
Both groups got better at the exact game they practiced. Only the gaming group carried the skill to new balance tasks.
How this fits with other research
Bart et al. (2009) showed clinic-based balance training cut anxiety in young kids. MacFarland et al. (2025) prove the same idea works at home through a game console.
Spanoudis et al. (2011) found kids with DCD sway more when a table task gets harder. The new study shows you can train that sway away with fun, game-style practice.
Tantam et al. (1993) warned that old exercise studies were weak. This trial answers that call by using a control group and a standard balance test.
Why it matters
You can now send families a $30 balance board instead of booking twelve clinic visits. Kids stay engaged because the game scores them every second. Try starting with 15-minute sessions and add time as stamina grows.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Loan a Wii balance board and set the console to log 15 minutes of ski-slalom or penguin-slide games four days this week.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Previous studies have evidenced balance training for improving postural control in children with DCD, however none have examined how neuromuscular mechanisms controlling balance might be improved with training. AIMS: To assess the neuromuscular control of balance before and after training in children with DCD. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Eleven children with DCD completed a six-week, game-based intervention to train balance, and lower-limb and core strength. Six children with DCD formed the control group. Stepping behaviour, centre of mass variability, centre of pressure area, and postural muscle onset latencies, using a continuous oscillating platform paradigm, were assessed at baseline, immediately-post and six-week-post intervention. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Both groups showed improvement in the oscillating platform task, indicating a learning effect. However, only the training group showed improvements in MABC-2 balance percentile scores from baseline (p = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: These findings suggest that children with DCD can learn through repeated exposure to challenging situations, regardless whether training is given. However, only the training group were able to transfer these improvements to the MABC-2 balance assessment. This may suggest the intervention exposed children to increased movement variations which could be transferred to a different task.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2025 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104900