4yr old keeps falling over - advice needed

[Emmalou]

My nearly 4 yr old (April) has always been very clumsy, falling over a lot. It seems she spends her life falling on people (elbows here, feet there) always knocking into people. She's very active and I've always put it down to her being implusive. She usually says sorry and carries on and any discussions with her about it are pretty straight forward but have made no difference whatsover. She just can't seem to help herself. She used to go to private nursery and they mentioned it to me and now she's at a childminder's who says she's upsetting the other children by hurting them when she falls on them. I did talk to the HV about a year ago who thought it was just her nature. She's quite advanced in her development and no signs of any other development problems. She's very tall for her age (90%) on the curve, Dad is 6'5", and has size 8.5 feet. I also don't think it's attention seeking as she has other strategies she usually uses and this isn't one of them, she barely notices she's done it. On top of everything else, it's b**y annoying as in a given half hour she can hurt you around 10 times if she's in the vicinity! Anyone got any advice for me? I plan to go to the doctor's but usually find mumsnet advice is more useful.

I wanted to add that she often complains of acheing joints and backache. She also sleeps LOADS, 2 hrs in the day and then another 11/12 every night. If she's tired the falling over is noticably worse.

I think I posted on something like this about 6 months ago because my then 3.5 yrs DS was the same! He was also big for his age, and I think it just took him longer to develop his weight/body/ co-ordination thing.

However, if you haven't already, you might want to check your DD's eyesight?
My DS was also slightly long-sighted, and now wears glasses which may have helped.

Ds's nursery was also running 'Tots in Sport' classes which encourage movement, co-ordination etc, so we also enrolled him in those, which he really enjoys.

Anyway, pleased to say, about 8 months later this no longer seems to be such a problem, and we don't notice it anymore, so it may just have been a slower developmental thing?

HTH
Mo2

I think it'w worth checking this out with a doctor, as you intend to do. But just to add a personal view point, my oldest son (now 9 years) is sometimes clumsy too, and used to be more so, just like the way you describe your daughter. He couldn't seem to walk down any pavement without tripping up and landing on it. His main habit was accidently knocking over glasses of liquid, often 2 or 3 an hour. We still automatically move cups and glasses out of his range at the dinner table.

He too was fairly advanced in his development at 4 years, and had no other problems. He was not particularly tall like your dd however, but he was very impulsive. Playing ball or riding a bike, his coordination was perfectly ok and his fine motor skills were OK too. The doctor and all the teachers who had met him have never said he had a particular problem. He can still be a little clumsy in some situations ( I would not take him into a china shop for instance!), but I think in his case this clumsyness is just a character trait.

Has she always been this tall? I know when I was younger I used to knock things over/trip quite a lot - it was as if my hands and feet were further away than I realised (don't think I actually fell over but my immense growth spurt was at around 14 so a bit different). The aches and sleeping sound as if she might be shooting up too? (Doesn't necessarily mean she'll be v tall though, I was quite short when I was little IYSWIM, and girls I knew who were tall early ended up shorter than me.)

Are her dad's feet really only 8½? I'm 6' and mine are 8 and that's pretty small - does he fall over? What size are hers?

My DD is tall too (95th %ile) but only 2. She is quite clumsy but recently she had surgery to insert grommets to drain fluid in her ears as she had frequent ear infections. An unexpected side effect seems to have been better balance so get the doctor to check that too. I'm 6' and so expected her to be tall. I don't particularly remember being clumsy as a child but maybe I was as a pre-schooler and grew out of it?